# Is Wagner's Das Rheingold a seminal work in opera?



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

*Was Wagner's Das Rheingold a seminal work in opera?*

I think of "opera" before Rheingold and after Rheingold.
It seems like a tremendous change in how an opera is composed. With its integrated music and dialogue and no "set" numbers and its continuous form.
It seems like a monumental ground breaking work to me.
What do you think?
:tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yes, I agree with your observation. Often we speak of _Tristan und Isolde_ as the start of Wagner's musical "revolution," and in terms of harmony - the preoccupation of musical theorists - it is. But following the composition of _Lohengrin,_ Wagner, in exile in Zurich, wrote his theoretical essays, The _Art work of the Future_ (1849) and _Opera and Drama_ (1851), in which he laid out his original thinking on the "total art work" (_Gesamtkunstwerk_) which was to be exemplified by the _Ring._ _Das __Rheingold_ and _Die Walkure_ are the purest expression of the ideas expounded in those essays, in which Wagner envisions music as accompanying and illuminating the text in a manner more detailed, intimate and exact than any composer had ever attempted, using the _leitmotiv_ as a kind of narrator, both commenting on the action and revealing dramatic meanings of which even the characters onstage are unaware. It's this continuous orchestral "stream of consciousness" that marks the _Ring_ as a new thing under the sun, and that made an enormous impact on both subsequent composers of opera and artists in other fields, especially literature. Wagner's handling of the _leitmotiv _grew more and more complex and sophisticated throughout his career, but the relative simplicity of _Das Rheingold_ affords us the very pleasant experience of being able to follow easily all the motifs and their deployment. By the time we reach _Gotterdammerung_ the motifs have become the basis of a rich orchestral fabric often too complex and multilayered to comprehend fully in the moment of hearing, with themes transforming and combining to suggest concepts that continue to reveal themselves on further acquaintance, and are not always clear even so.

Wagner didn't use the term _Leitmotiv,_ by the way. He preferred the term _Grundthema_ - roughly, "basic theme."


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## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, I agree with your observation. Often we speak of _Tristan und Isolde_ as the start of Wagner's musical "revolution," and in terms of harmony - the preoccupation of musical theorists - it is. But following the composition of _Lohengrin,_ Wagner, in exile in Zurich, wrote his theoretical essays, The _Art work of the Future_ (1849) and _Opera and Drama_ (1851), in which he laid out his original thinking on the "total art work" (_Gesamtkunstwerk_) which was to be exemplified by the _Ring._ _Das __Rheingold_ and _Die Walkure_ are the purest expression of the ideas expounded in those essays, in which Wagner envisions music as accompanying and illuminating the text in a manner more detailed, intimate and exact than any composer had ever attempted, using the _leitmotiv_ as a kind of narrator, both commenting on the action and revealing dramatic meanings of which even the characters onstage are unaware. It's this continuous orchestral "stream of consciousness" that marks the _Ring_ as a new thing under the sun, and that made an enormous impact on both subsequent composers of opera and artists in other fields, especially literature. Wagner's handling of the _leitmotiv _grew more and more complex and sophisticated throughout his career, but the relative simplicity of _Das Rheingold_ affords us the very pleasant experience of being able to follow easily all the motifs and their deployment. By the time we reach _Gotterdammerung_ the motifs have become the basis of a rich orchestral fabric often too complex and multilayered to comprehend fully in the moment of hearing, with themes transforming and combining to suggest concepts that continue to reveal themselves on further acquaintance, and are not always clear even so.
> 
> Wagner didn't use the term _Leitmotiv,_ by the way. He preferred the term _Grundthema_ - roughly, "basic theme."


I haven't read The _Art work of the Future_ (1849) and _Opera and Drama_ (1851), so do Siegfried and Götterdämmerung not express those ideas?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

FrankE said:


> I haven't read The _Art work of the Future_ (1849) and _Opera and Drama_ (1851), so do Siegfried and Götterdämmerung not express those ideas?


They do substantially, but after composing _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_ Wagner's purely musical impulses are given freer reign in the second half of the _Ring._ In his essays he talks about how operatic music had become mere entertainment, enjoyed for its own sake and often having little relationship to its dramatic context, and he expressed the desire to restore music's original role as an integral element of the drama, a medium for expressing the text in a manner that supported a vocal style best described as intensified or elevated speech. In _Rheingold_ and _Walkure_ he adheres strictly to this idea of heightened realism, to the extent of not permitting the usual operatic convention of people singing together, except in the case of characters who function as a single dramatic entity such as the Rhinemaidens and valkyries. He also keeps purely orchestral passages to a minimum; the preludes to the two works are not full-scale overtures but rather depictions of scene and action. These same principles are strictly observed in the first two acts of _Siegfried. _With the composition of _Tristan und Isolde,_ however, Wagner's concept of dramatic music expands in the direction of a more thorough exploration of music's intrinsic potentialities; the musical structure is no longer so constrained by the goal of depicting the events of the story in a quasi-realistic way. The lovers are permitted to sing together, and the action is prolonged and at times brought to a halt in order to allow music to fill the space. Having opened the floodgates to freer musical expression, Wagner proceeds in _Die Meistersinger_ to write what is virtually an old-fashioned opera, with an elaborate overture, set pieces, ensembles and choruses. When he then resumes work on the _Ring_ he brings all his newly developed musical powers and his liberated sense of how to legitimately use them to the third act of _Siegfried_ and to _Gotterdammerung._

That's the short version.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> The _Art work of the Future_ (1849)


It seems to me like a Wagnerian version of "The Art of the Fugue (1750)"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Really? ...................


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Das Rheingold
Die Walküre
Siegfried
Götterdämmerung
Parsifal
Tristan und Isolde
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Tannhäuser
Lohengrin
Der fliegende Holländer

All of them strike me as absolutely seminal works that forever changed the course of music.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Probably the most remarkable thing about Das Rheingold is you could take orchestral excerpts and insert them into modern cinematic films like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc, and nothing would sound out of place. That is, film music hasn't really moved beyond the foundations Wagner laid out for scoring dramatic accompaniment over 150 years ago. It was truly the "Music of the Future".


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> It was truly the "Music of the Future".[/COLOR]


I remember coming across a comment on reddit that we're still in the Romantic period; it hasn't ended yet.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

lextune said:


> seminal works that forever changed the course of music.


indeed; changed it so much that the only way to do it further would be to write like:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> indeed; changed it so much that the only way to do it further would be to write like:


A wonderful chord. It suggests all sorts of overlapping tonalities, yet sounds harmonious.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Yes. The so called mystic chord, or Prometheus chord, though Scriabin preferred the "chord of the pleroma".

On topic, Wagner had a large influence on Scriabin. Wagner and Chopin were really the only composers Scriabin had a lasting appreciation of. (Although he also derided both of them on occasion as well.) 

He (Scriabin) could not abide other people attacking Wagner though. Despite Scriabin's high esteem of Nietzsche, he lost some of his enthusiasm for him after reading Nietzsche's later criticisms of Wagner.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

lextune said:


> Wagner had a large influence on Scriabin. Wagner and Chopin were really the only composers Scriabin had a lasting appreciation of.


"Seventeen-year-old Authur Rubinstein (1897-1982) appeared at the door, and Scriabin said of himself: "I was once a Chopinist, then a Wagnerist, now I am only a Scriabinist." When young Rubinstein mentioned Brahms, Scriabin was annoyed, "How can you come to me wanting to be a Scriabinist and yet praise Brahms?""


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Seventeen-year-old Authur Rubinstein (1897-1982) appeared at the door, and Scriabin said of himself: "I was once a Chopinist, then a Wagnerist, now I am only a Scriabinist." When young Rubinstein mentioned Brahms, Scriabin was annoyed, "How can you come to me wanting to be a Scriabinist and yet praise Brahms?""


By that time - 1914, the year before he died - the screws holding Scriabin's head on had loosened.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> By that time - 1914, the year before he died - the screws holding Scriabin's head on had loosened.


And was probably having mysterious nightmares in sleep like this (seen from the perspective of the family inside the house):




hence his mysterious reaction to Rubinstein.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> And was probably having mysterious nightmares in sleep like this (seen from the perspective of the family inside the house):
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 :lol: Good Lord. Where do you find this stuff?


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> By that time - 1914, the year before he died - the screws holding Scriabin's head on had loosened.


Lol. Come on now, jokes aside, Scriabin was brilliant in the extreme! Many people thought Wagner crazy too. For the same reason.

Artistic genius is often perceived as lunacy by those who are "uninitiated".

I wouldn't go so far as to say they were on the same "level" (Wagner being one of the greatest artists in history), but Scriabin went a good long way down the same road of artistic integrity.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

The Rubinstein story is a great one. But it is better in his own words, and was not in 1914, because as Rubinstein tells it, he met with Scriabin again "a few years later" and was received "very politely"...

I'll take screenshots...


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

http://imgur.com/GFwf2S2




http://imgur.com/cM53yrF


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

lextune said:


> The Rubinstein story is a great one. But it is better in his own words, and was not in 1914, because as Rubinstein tells it, he met with Scriabin again "a few years later" and was received "very politely"...
> 
> I'll take screenshots...


The problem seems to be the birth year of 1897 you gave for Rubinstein. I looked it up, and it was actually 1887. If he was 17 when he met Scriabin, the year would have been 1904. Scriabin's head was still screwed on tight then.

I intended no criticism of Scriabin's music.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, I agree with your observation. Often we speak of _Tristan und Isolde_ as the start of Wagner's musical "revolution," and in terms of harmony - the preoccupation of musical theorists - it is. But following the composition of _Lohengrin,_ Wagner, in exile in Zurich, wrote his theoretical essays, The _Art work of the Future_ (1849) and _Opera and Drama_ (1851), in which he laid out his original thinking on the "total art work" (_Gesamtkunstwerk_) which was to be exemplified by the _Ring._ _Das __Rheingold_ and _Die Walkure_ are the purest expression of the ideas expounded in those essays, in which Wagner envisions music as accompanying and illuminating the text in a manner more detailed, intimate and exact than any composer had ever attempted, using the _leitmotiv_ as a kind of narrator, both commenting on the action and revealing dramatic meanings of which even the characters onstage are unaware. It's this continuous orchestral "stream of consciousness" that marks the _Ring_ as a new thing under the sun, and that made an enormous impact on both subsequent composers of opera and artists in other fields, especially literature. Wagner's handling of the _leitmotiv _grew more and more complex and sophisticated throughout his career, but the relative simplicity of _Das Rheingold_ affords us the very pleasant experience of being able to follow easily all the motifs and their deployment. By the time we reach _Gotterdammerung_ the motifs have become the basis of a rich orchestral fabric often too complex and multilayered to comprehend fully in the moment of hearing, with themes transforming and combining to suggest concepts that continue to reveal themselves on further acquaintance, and are not always clear even so.
> 
> Wagner didn't use the term _Leitmotiv,_ by the way. He preferred the term _*Grundthema*_ - roughly, "basic theme."


Excellent text!

> I remember at the time I was studying Counterpoint & Fugue, that my professor used also the term _Expose_ (FR) for such instances (Wagner included) This _Zusammenstellung _ which will partially reveal what will come later. So, _Grundthema_ is super to describe the Wagnerian evolution (although not a revolution because somehow I find connection (as Hammerklavier written) with the Bach) but I could have chosen the plural of this word: _Grundthemen. _Rheingold is a massive example of this Zusammenstellung and, of course, the most successful in the history of music.

> I have the impression that Wanger with his Rienzi gave the world the first big sample of this evolution. (fell free to correct me, if you find that I have something misunderstood) Thanks!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

lextune said:


> Lol. Come on now, jokes aside, Scriabin was brilliant in the extreme! Many people thought Wagner crazy too. For the same reason.
> 
> Artistic genius is often perceived as lunacy by those who are "uninitiated".
> 
> I wouldn't go so far as to say they were on the same "level" (Wagner being one of the greatest artists in history), but Scriabin went a good long way down the same road of artistic integrity.


Different levels of crazy. Wagner merely dramatized the apocalypse. Scriabin was writing the _Mysterium_ to actually bring it about.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Different levels of crazy. Wagner merely dramatized the apocalypse. Scriabin was writing the _Mysterium_ to actually bring it about.


:lol: Yes, that is indeed a different level.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Different levels of crazy. Wagner merely dramatized the apocalypse. Scriabin was writing the _Mysterium_ to actually bring it about.


I don't mean to derail the thread too much, but Scriabin's initial idea for the Mysterium owed a huge debt to Wagner's idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, but Scriabin wanted not just a fusion of the arts, but a total fusion of the arts and the senses.

Scriabin loved to talk about it, and his adoration of Wagner was in full force when doing so, but he gave in eventually, and proclaimed the world unready for the Mysterium. He shifted his focus to planning a (still gigantic) Prefatory Act. Not dissimilar to Rheingold's relation to the rest of the Ring.

Also, many of the smaller pieces from Scriabin's middle, and late period, which Scriabin often thought of as sketches for(towards) the Mysterium, (while simultaneously being stand alone works) show enormous Wagnerian influences. And not just harmonically.

One of the most well known examples of this is Scriabin's "Ver la flamme" (Op.72). It's pianistic textures were clearly inspired by a very famous (at the time) solo piano transcription of Wagner's "Magic Fire Music" by Louis Brassin. And of course both focus on the magical/mystical properties of fire.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

lextune said:


> I don't mean to derail the thread too much, but Scriabin's initial idea for the Mysterium owed a huge debt to Wagner's idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, but Scriabin wanted not just a fusion of the arts, but a total fusion of the arts and the senses.
> 
> Scriabin loved to talk about it, and his adoration of Wagner was in full force when doing so, but he gave in eventually, and proclaimed the world unready for the Mysterium. He shifted his focus to planning a (still gigantic) Prefatory Act. Not dissimilar to Rheingold's relation to the rest of the Ring.
> 
> ...


Interesting stuff. I'm not surprised to hear that Scriabin went through a Wagner phase.

Although Wagner's strong impact on music is not in dispute, I think the extent to which his ideas pervaded the culture (not only music) and the extent to which he had other composers at least temporarily reassessing their artistic reality went farther than most of us realize. Virtually everyone, it seems - even composers who don't sound particularly Wagnerian to our ears - studied his scores eagerly, and contemporary critics and audiences were quite sensitive to "Wagnerism" in new music and apt to take sides over whether what they were applying that term to was or was not a good thing. Imagine Bizet's _Carmen_ being criticized for "Wagnerism," as it apparently was by one critic! I was surprised, initially, to hear a musician friend of mine speak of Wagnerian influence in Brahms; he cited the opening melody of Brahms's String Quintet No.2 in G Major, Op. 111, as a "Wagnerian melody," and I knew immediately that his observation was right on target. Think of the vaulting lines of Elisabeth's "Dich, teure Halle" in _Tannhauser, _ or the ecstatic duets of Siegfried and Brunnhilde in the _Ring:_






It's a melody quite unusual for Brahms, but it's also notable that he's quick to contain its wild abandon and reassure us that he isn't about to forsake Classical terra firm for the roiling waters of "endless melody." The last thing Brahms, idol of musical conservatives, needed was to be accused of Wagnerism!


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## dave2708 (Sep 28, 2020)

...............


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

This was a response to a post that has since been deleted but it’s useful info anyway.

Rheingold completed 1854 first performance Munich 1869
Walküre 1856 first perf Munich 1870
Siegfried 1871 first perf Bayreuth 1876
Götterdämmerung 1876 first perf Bayreuth 1876

He wrote the prose sketches in a different order but the musical compositions were written and performed in that order.


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## dave2708 (Sep 28, 2020)

Yeah, The Prose came last in the cycle but the music came first.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> Probably the most remarkable thing about Das Rheingold is you could take orchestral excerpts and insert them into modern cinematic films like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc, and nothing would sound out of place.


True, but (arguably) the first work in history that does not at all sound out of place in such a context-


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Lol, the very prelude is a seminal five minutes or so.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> Lol, the very prelude is a seminal five minutes or so.


When did the insemination happen? 134 bars of Eb? Maybe it foreshadowed minimalism, but only superficially.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> When did the insemination happen? 134 bars of Eb?


Yes.


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