Music drama
Music drama is the term ascribed to the revolutionary medium of artistic expression created by the
German composer Richard Wagner. It was in large part through this novel form that Wagner had a major effect on the course of
European classical music. The creation of this art form was borne of Wagner's thorough dissatisfaction with the prevailing trends and strictures in the
operatic presentation of his time.
Richard Wagner viewed the opera as potentially the most powerful form of artistic expression available to man. He saw in its form the capacity to revive the art of the
Classical Greek drama in the modern Western world. His was a quasi-religious fascination with the ability of art to compound existence with a depth and feeling that many
intellectuals felt was entirely absent in
19th Century Europe (most notably the German
philosopher and
aesthete Friedrich Nietzsche). The respected tradition of composing operas allowed in the views of these thinkers only for facile and shallow thematic material, thereby restricting the genre to 'mere' entertainment. Together with this view came therefore a certain moral disapprobation of art-forms which did not achieve the standards of those who set themselves up as arbiters.
A full comprehension of the extent and depth of Wagner's revolution can come only with an understanding of the
de facto standards of opera throughout Europe at the time when Wagner first approached the subject.
The Italian School
As fathers of the operatic genre, the undisputed masters of
18th and
19th Century opera were the
Italians. Having pioneered the form several hundred years prior to Wagner's life, Italian composers, in Wagner's estimation, had failed to seize upon the true strength of the opera; they had perverted the form with the cold and unwieldy segments and divisions of the drama into arias, recitatives, and choruses. However, after Wagner died, his style of nonstop music was attempted by some Italian composers, most notably,
Giacomo Puccini.
Carl Maria von Weber
Weber is today virtually the only remembered practitioner of German romantic opera of the early 19th century, a style which influenced Wagner considerably in his early period, as evidenced in his operas at least up to
Lohengrin. Weber introduced more 'dramatic' use of modulation and instrumental colour, breaking away from the formulaic styles of classical Italian opera.
Grand opera
The Parisian style of
Grand opera as exemplified by the works of
Giacomo Meyerbeer and
Fromental Halévy dominated Europe of the 1830s and 1840s. Meyerbeer, who had been a fellow-student of Weber with
Georg Joseph Vogler, in many ways carried Weber's innovations onwards, linking them with the Parisan developments of theatrical technology to produce powerful and spectacular stage-works which seized the imagination of his audiences. Wagner was to be more indebted in his innovations to 'grand opera' than he cared to admit.
Wagner strove for an aesthetic texture and artistic synthesis that was prefigured by the dramas of the Greek
dramatists and
tradegians Sophocles,
Euripedes,
Aristophanes, and
Aeschylus. His aim was not only a revival of the role of drama, but a reworking of the intensity and complexity of the drama while integrating music. Wagner wished to differentiate his music dramas from operas in part by enhancing the quality of the story and theme, seeking to use the orchestra as the Greeks used the
chorus. However, for him, the music was the unifying medium and certainly the occupant of the deepest level of the drama. For Wagner, it was in the music that the deepest aspects of the dramatic conflicts were personified and experienced.
The true essence of the music drama is inextricably linked with Wagner's idea of a
Gesamtkunstwerk (a total art-work and literally meaning a synthesis of art-work). He firmly believed that each breed of art, including visual, dramatic, and, most fundamental, musical, working cooperatively would result in the most powerful transcendence and reckoning of the human condition. However, Wagner sought not merely to revive the Greek tragedy, but to surpass it by drawing on resources that they didn't have, such as
Shakespeare,
Beethoven and
Goethe. Wagner's reverence of William Shakespeare was evident in his statement that Shakespeare was "a genius the like of which was never heard of" to the Greeks.
Whereas Shakespeare had surpassed the Greeks in poetic drama, Beethoven had done so in musical expression, and it was simply the artist's duty to fuse these two most powerful artistic legacies into one. Thus Wagner, by analogy to Shakespearian poetic drama, named his art-form "music drama". In so doing, it is perhaps not surprising that Wagner, by both incidence and intention, managed to insult and condescend many other composers of his time.
One of the most penetrating distinctions between Wagnerian music drama and continental opera is the focus of thematic substance. In opera, the attention lies at the activity
between characters and
outside of characters, and the probing questions focus primarily on the motivations behind characters' actions. The interplay between motive and decision often leads to a dramatic sequence of events that results in changes of situations and thoughts. Thus, imposed upon traditional opera is the limitation of language and its communicative shortcomings at expressing the deepest glare of human reality. Additionally, the task of establishing a historical, social, and political context is indispensable when composing an opera, and therewith comes a large restriction. Music drama, conversely, focuses on the internal aspects of the characters, with emphasis on emotion, not motive. This means that music becomes a complement to the drama, not (as with the Italians) the ends to which drama was the means. Additionally, Wagner wished to disabuse his art of the limitations of social and historical context, and thus he turned to the
myth, in its universality in time and place.
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Richard Wagner*
Gesamtkunstwerk*
Weltanschauung*
Opera*
Aspects of Wagner (ISBN 0192177680)
