The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2001 Wagner.

German family of musicians.

(1) (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner

(2) Johanna Wagner [Jachmann-Wagner]

(3) Siegfried (Helferich Richard) Wagner

(4) Wieland (Adolf Gottfried) Wagner

(5) Wolfgang (Manfred Martin) Wagner

BARRY MILLINGTON (1, work-list with JOHN DEATHRIDGE, CARL DAHLHAUS, ROBERT BAILEY, bibliography), ELIZABETH FORBES (2), CHRISTA JOST (3),PAUL SHEREN (4, 5)

Wagner

(1) (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner

(b Leipzig, 22 May 1813; d Venice, 13 Feb 1883). Composer. One of the key figures in the history of opera, Wagner was largely responsible for altering its orientation in the 19th century. His programme of artistic reform, though not executed to the last detail, accelerated the trend towards organically conceived, through-composed structures, as well as influencing the development of the orchestra, of a new breed of singer, and of various aspects of theatrical practice.

1. The formative years: 1813–32.

2. Early career: 1833–42.

3. Kapellmeister in Dresden: 1843–9.

4. Zürich essays.

5. Composer in exile: 1849–63.

6. Munich and Bayreuth: 1864–77.

7. ‘Regeneration’ writings.

8. The final years: 1878–83.

9. Writings.

10. Dramatic works.

11. Non-dramatic works.

12. Projected and unfinished dramatic works.

13. Orchestration.

14. Sources.

15. Wagnerism.

WORKS

WRITINGS, SPEECHES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wagner: (1) Richard Wagner

1. The formative years: 1813–32.

It is both fitting and psychologically congruous that a question mark should hover over the identity of the father and mother of the composer whose works resonate so eloquently with themes of parental anxiety. Richard Wagner’s ‘official’ father was the police actuary Carl Friedrich Wagner, but the boy’s adoptive father, the actor-painter Ludwig Geyer, who took responsibility for the child on Carl Friedrich’s death in November 1813, may possibly have been the real father. Wagner himself was never sure, though any concern he may have had about Geyer’s supposed Jewish origins would have been misplaced: Geyer was of incontrovertibly Protestant stock. Recent research has further established that Wagner’s mother Johanna was not the illegitimate daughter of Prince Constantin of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, as previously believed, but his mistress (Gregor-Dellin, 1985).

Wagner’s formal education began on 2 December 1822 at the Kreuzschule in Dresden, where his mother and stepfather had moved to enable Geyer to undertake engagements for the Hoftheater. On returning to Leipzig with his mother and sisters he entered the Nicolaischule on 21 January 1828, but school studies were less enthusiastically pursued than theatrical and musical interests, which resulted in a ‘vast tragic drama’ called Leubald and conscientious perusal of Logier’s composition treatise. Harmony lessons (initially in secret) with a local musician, Christian Gottlieb Müller (1828–31), were followed by enrolment at Leipzig University (23 February 1831) to study music, and a short but intensive period of study with the Kantor of the Thomaskirche, Christian Theodor Weinlig (about six months from October 1831).

In his autobiographical writings Wagner later played down the significance of his musical education in order to cultivate the notion of the untutored genius. But its fruits were evident in a series of keyboard and orchestral works written by spring 1832 and particularly in the Beethovenian Symphony in C major which followed shortly after. A genuine passion for Beethoven, while confirmed by such works and the piano transcription of the Ninth Symphony made in 1830–31, was exaggerated in another typical piece of mythification: Wagner’s account of a supposedly momentous portrayal of Leonore by the soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient in Leipzig in 1829 is undermined by the unavailability of any evidence that the singer gave such a performance. Yet the fable (probably a semi-conscious conflation of two separate events) attests to the young composer’s ambition to be proclaimed the rightful heir to the symphonic tradition embodied in Beethoven.

Wagner’s first attempt at an operatic project was a pastoral opera modelled on Goethe’s Die Laune des Verliebten (? early 1830); the work was aborted with only a scene for three female voices and a tenor aria written. His second project, Die Hochzeit, was conceived in October–November 1832, while he was visiting the estate of Count Pachta at Pravonín, near Prague. Based on a story from J.G.G. Büsching’s Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, Die Hochzeit was a grisly tale of dark passions, treachery and murder. The libretto, according to Wagner’s autobiography, Mein Leben, was destroyed by him as a demonstration of confidence in the judgment of his sister Rosalie. Such music as was completed, between December 1832 and February 1833 – an introduction, chorus and septet – survives.

Wagner: (1) Richard Wagner