# Harmonic Similarities in Wagner and Mozart



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Look at measure 18 in slow movement (A flat major, 6/8) of Mozart String Quartet K428:









14:18






if you transpose this up a semitone to A major, it looks like this:









D -------------------------

---G#---A ---A#--- B --- C#

---B --- A ---G#-------

--------- F ---E ----------------

Now look at this passage in Wagner Tristan und Isolde Prelude (A major, 6/8)









D--------------------------

---G#---A ---A# --- B --- C#

B-------------

F--------------E--G#-B---- E

6:08






Aren't they similar? What do you think?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier - if you pause a YT video at the spot you want to reference and right click you can 'Copy video URL at current time'.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mozart:




Wagner:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A momentary similarity. A melodic figure of four-notes, rising chromatically, is an often-used motif in _Tristan und Isolde,_ but other composers have used the figure, and it isn't "Wagnerian" in itself. What makes Wagner's use of it distinctive is context - the prolonged ambiguities and rapid modulations of his harmonic idiom. You can listen to the entire _Tristan_ prelude and hear a striking variety of melodic permutations and harmonic adventures through which that simple motif leads, but all you really have to hear to realize the difference between Wagner's thinking and Mozart's is the very opening of _Tristan_, where the four chromatic notes, beginning in a chord so ambiguous that it's been named for the opera, lead us by sleight of hand through a rapid sequence of tonal centers. Had Mozart's successive iterations of the figure taken place at different tonal levels, in the context of an overall modulation, we might have had something more genuinely Wagnerian. Instead, it simply hovers on the dominant of Eb.

That movement of Mozart's quartet contains some beautiful chromaticism. Maybe it's a mite closer to being Wagnerian in bar 8, where it fleeting - very fleetingly - suggests the possibility of moving to a distant tonal area.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The Mozart passages are of genuine interest, but I do not feel that they create the same tonal ambiguity, the suspense and uncertainty of key like the Tristan chord does. The Mozart examples are not drawn out long enough to have that kind of impact though there is a beautiful working out of these harmonic passages. There is also an entirely different intent behind them that is certainly not dramatic in the Wagnerian sense despite there being a harmonic similarity. But it’s also true that Wagner was very much interested in Mozart’s music, perhaps highly influenced by it. Wagner was influenced by many different composers, even the ones that he didn’t personally like or he condemned later. I believe the difference between the classical and romantic era is that each had an essentially different sense of time and space. The romantic composers could draw out harmonic passengers in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of. The sense of expanded space and time can also be found in Chopin’s music, such as in his Barcarolle and Fantasie in F Minor. The music seems to float and be suspended in the air, and on the scale that was used by Wagner and others, it was a revelation.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


> Aren't they similar? What do you think?


No, not even remotely.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Of course I'm not trying to suggest Wagner and Mozart wrote in the same style. I'm suggesting the possibility Mozart could have been one of many predecessors of Wagner that inspired Wagner in writing the prelude.



Woodduck said:


> other composers have used the figure,


But the similarities of those specific passages are striking. The same notes laid out almost identically (deviated by a semitone), in 6/8 time.



Larkenfield said:


> I believe the difference between the classical and romantic era is that each had an essentially different sense of time and space. The romantic composers could draw out harmonic passengers in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of.


I'm well aware (thank you) that the later composers were eager to learn from the old ways, but at the same time tried to move away from them to try new things.

Although Wagner admired Bach, he ridiculed Brahms by saying: _"Brahms wished he could compose like Bach"_. 
(Brahms's "Liebe und Frühling II", Op. 3, No. 3: A New Path to the Artwork of the Future?
- Ira Braus)
And Mozart wrote to his father: _"musical taste is continually changing and what is more, this extends even to church music, which ought not to be the case."_
http://mrc.hanyang.ac.kr/wp-content/jspm/20/jspm_2006_20_10.pdf


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Of course I'm not trying to suggest Wagner and Mozart wrote in the same style. I'm suggesting the possibility Mozart could have been one of many predecessors of Wagner that inspired Wagner in writing the prelude.
> 
> But the similarities of those specific passages are striking. The same notes laid out almost identically (deviated by a semitone), in 6/8 time.


The moment you're pointing to in Wagner is a development of the material in his own prelude. Are you seriously suggesting that when he reached that moment in the piece he was suddenly thinking of a Mozart quartet?

Wagner's expansive harmonic vocabulary takes in virtually the whole of the Western tonal tradition. I'm certain that if you were to search his works you would find a great many places in which he shared a chord progression or a pattern of notes with some previous composer. I could find you passages obviously influenced by Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Berlioz and Liszt. The coincidence of this short bit of Mozart with a brief moment in _Tristan_ doesn't suggest influence to me.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Originally Posted by *hammeredklavier* 
Of course I'm not trying to suggest Wagner and Mozart wrote in the same style. I'm suggesting the possibility Mozart could have been one of many predecessors of Wagner that inspired Wagner in writing the prelude.
---
I also believe it's possible. But I don't consider it a difference in style but intent because they obviously had different styles, and Wagner took the harmonic progressions similarity and made it his own-that is, if he'd heard some of these Mozart passages and I doubt there's an absolute way of knowing exactly what he may have been influenced by unless he specifically mentioned that he'd heard Mozart's String Quartet K. 428 or similar works. Wagner had his own genius whether the ultra-conservatives are willing to grant him that or not. It's possible that the Tristan chord was inspired by something related to the context of Wagner's opera that was deeply subconscious rather than consciously appropriating a passage from Mozart. Nevertheless, Wagner held Mozart in high regard and was familiar with some of his work. One can only speculate on Mozart's possible influence even with the similarities. 
---


> Wagner said: "Mozart's music and Mozart's orchestra are a perfect match."... On another occasion, he said, "Of Mozart I only cared for the Magic Flute. Don Giovanni went against my grain, because of the Italian text: It seemed to me such rubbish."... On still another occasion, he said, "Mozart is the founder of German declamation. What fine humanity resounds in the priest's replies to Tomino! Think how stiff such high priests are in Gluck. When you consider that this text, which was meant to be a farce, and the theater for which it was written, then compare what was written before Mozart's time (even Cimarosa's still famous Matrimonio Segreto)-on the one side the wretched German Singspiel, on the other, the ornate Italian opera-one is amazed by the soul he managed to breathe into such a text."... He also said: "The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts." [unquote] Wagner obviously held him in high regard.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Similar but in context it's merely a coincidence I would say.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

the Tristan chord is an altered V/V, same as the Augmented 6th chords, and there are alot of A6s in Mozart


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Bwv 1080 said:


> the Tristan chord is an altered V/V, same as the Augmented 6th chords, and there are alot of A6s in Mozart


And therefore...?


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

The first example is a genius playing around saying, "Hey, look what I can do with the chromatic scale." And then he's done with it. Never comes back to it as far as we know! The second example, the "ghost chord," properly an appoggiatured augmented sixth chord, is a genius showing the logical breakdown of major-minor tonality. Unlike Mozart, Wagner would use that chord again and again to punch a whole in a system that was becoming boring. It's the _Ars Antiqua_ giving way to the _Ars Nova_......in a single chord.

Not the same!


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The chromatic scale consists of 12 semi-tones. The limitations of the average human ear is in the range of 9 or 10 octaves, but the"comfortable" zone is basically two or two and a half octaves on either side of middle C -- ie 50 or 60 notes Given the hundreds of thousands of hours of Western music composed and the limitations of customary harmonic practice, the likelihood of two more composers creating completely independently the same sequence of a handful or more of notes approaches certainty -- as has been noted and seen in many many examples. This can both be intentional hommage and completely random chance, but in 90+% of cases nothing should be read into it. This why musical plagerism charges are often just so much smoke.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Room2201974 said:


> The first example is a genius playing around saying, "Hey, look what I can do with the chromatic scale." And then he's done with it. Never comes back to it as far as we know! The second example, the "ghost chord," properly an appoggiatured augmented sixth chord, is a genius showing the logical breakdown of major-minor tonality. Unlike Mozart, Wagner would use that chord again and again to punch a whole in a system that was becoming boring. It's the _Ars Antiqua_ giving way to the _Ars Nova_......in a single chord.
> 
> Not the same!


Sigh. This old canard. If one is aware of each tonic that doesn't appear after the famous chord and the dominant it sets up, then one has composed a firmly tonal work. The Tristan chord and prelude don't assault tonality, they reaffirm it. The whole myth is just an artifact of a new religion's quest for a compelling and credible origin story.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

janxharris said:


> And therefore...?


Its not difficult to find similar chord progressions


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

If you're looking for a classical-era anticipation of the Tristan prelude, I think the opening of Beethoven's _Pathetique_ is a better bet...but also, what everyone else said.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Sigh. This old canard. If one is aware of each tonic that doesn't appear after the famous chord and the dominant it sets up, then one has composed a firmly tonal work. The Tristan chord and prelude don't assault tonality, they reaffirm it. The whole myth is just an artifact of a new religion's quest for a compelling and credible origin story.


Never said it wasn't a "tonal" work. It's the beginning of the breakdown of the major minor system, not THE breakdown. I'm not aware of any chord in usage in 1849 that is itself as far away from tonic as the ghost chord.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

What is the origin of the term ‘ghost chord’ ? I assume it means the same thing as the Tristan chord?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Room2201974 said:


> Never said it wasn't a "tonal" work. It's the beginning of the breakdown of the major minor system, not THE breakdown. I'm not aware of any chord in usage in 1849 that is itself as far away from tonic as the ghost chord.


Is the Tristan chord that much further away than a Fr6, which in modern jargon is a V7-5 Tritone sub for V/V?

But even if we say that the chord is a Fr6 with an appoggiatura, which has ample precedent, the prominence is what matters. The analogy is both Schumann and Mozart used diminished 7th chords, but Mozart's use was within the tonic-dominant polarity that defined the classical style, but Schumann use of the same chord disrupted the earlier conventions and created a new style


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Bwv 1080 said:


> What is the origin of the term 'ghost chord' ? I assume it means the same thing as the Tristan chord?


Sorry, my bad. My profs description of what you get when you outline the appoggiatura notes with the chord using chalk on a blackboard. I'll stop using it.....except Halloween is coming.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Is the Tristan chord that much further away than a Fr6, which in modern jargon is a V7-5 Tritone sub for V/V?
> 
> But even if we say that the chord is a Fr6 with an appoggiatura, which has ample precedent, the prominence is what matters. The analogy is both Schumann and Mozart used diminished 7th chords, but Mozart's use was within the tonic-dominant polarity that defined the classical style, but Schumann use of the same chord disrupted the earlier conventions and created a new style


I think there is precedent in going: _Tristian_ - _Verklarte Nacht_ - _Opus 23_. I don't know of a Schumann piece that starts that progression. I mean, the chord also appears in Machaut, but we don't have a transitional piece by Schoenberg where he is channelling color and talea before he gets to 12 tones.

So canard? Hmmm, do I have to quote Inigo Montoya's second most famous saying here?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> I believe the difference between the classical and romantic era is that each had an essentially different sense of time and space. The romantic composers could draw out harmonic passengers in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of. The sense of expanded space and time can also be found in Chopin's music, such as in his Barcarolle and Fantasie in F Minor. The music seems to float and be suspended in the air, and on the scale that was used by Wagner and others, it was a revelation.


You and some other people on other threads seem to argue that the Romantics moved away from the Classicist ways because it was more challenging for them to do so. But you people often forget, for the Romantics, "staying within the Classicist ideals (balance, order, restraint)" was just as challenging as doing the opposite; "moving away from them and toward Romanticism".

https://books.google.ca/books?id=MBR-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT84
_"If his (Tchaikovsky's) preference for Mozart, who is in many respects his musical antithesis, is somewhat unaccountable, so, at first sight, his want of sympathy for Chopin has its element of mystery. For many years he felt no enthusiasm whatsoever for the works of the Polish master, and would only grudgingly admit that there was a certain "charm" in the Barcarolle and the F minor Fantasia. Yet there is undoubtedly some affinity between Chopin and Tchaikovsky in temperament and, in a much less degree, in style. Both have the tendency to alternate between profound melancholy and fiery energy characteristic of the Slav; both have the same rather morbid preference for the minor, the same chromatic colouring; the same restless agitation in the middle parts. *Tchaikovsky seems to have been aware of this likeness, and to have turned from Chopin as from a reflection of his own weaknesses.* In later days, Nicholas Rubinstein partially converted Tchaikovsky from this prejudice against Chopin's works."_


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> *You and some other people on other threads seem to argue that the Romantics moved away from the Classicist ways because it was more challenging for them to do so.* But you people often forget, for the Romantics, "staying within the Classicist ideals (balance, order, restraint)" was just as challenging as doing the opposite; "moving away from them and toward Romanticism".
> 
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=MBR-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT84
> _If his (Tchaikovsky's) preference for Mozart, who is in many respects his musical antithesis, is somewhat unaccountable, so, at first sight, his want of sympathy for Chopin has its element of mystery. For many years he felt no enthusiasm whatsoever for the works of the Polish master, and would only grudgingly admit that there was a certain "charm" in the Barcarolle and the F minor Fantasia. Yet *there is undoubtedly some affinity between Chopin and Tchaikovsky in temperament and, in a much less degree, in style. Both have the tendency to alternate between profound melancholy and fiery energy characteristic of the Slav; both have the same rather morbid preference for the minor, the same chromatic colouring; the same restless agitation in the middle parts. Tchaikovsky seems to have been aware of this likeness, and to have turned from Chopin as from a reflection of his own weaknesses.* In later days, Nicholas Rubinstein partially converted Tchaikovsky from this prejudice against Chopin's works._


So you're saying that the tendency to alternate between profound melancholy and fiery energy, a preference for the minor, chromatic colouring, and restless agitation in the middle parts are _weaknesses?_ Why?

Who has said that the Romantics moved away from "Classicist ways" because it was more challenging for them to do so? That's one of the sillier explanations for stylistic change I've heard, and I can't imagine anyone advancing it.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> So you're saying that


It's from this book: https://books.google.ca/books?id=MBR-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT84



Woodduck said:


> Who has said that the Romantics moved away from "Classicist ways" because it was more challenging for them to do so?


Larkenfield said _"The romantic composers could draw out harmonic passengers in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of."_ I'm just saying the converse is also true: the Romantics could not write like the Classicists. So they founded other ways of expression.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> I'm just saying the converse is also true: the Romantics could not write like the Classicists. So they founded other ways of expression.


Of course they could, they just didnt want to, just as the Classical composers didn't want to write like Handel or Bach.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Of course they could, they just didnt want to, just as the Classical composers didn't want to write like Handel or Bach.


Maybe I didn't word correctly. I mean there's a continual trend among the greats through history: the later ones find the earlier ones "unsurpassable", "inimitable" and so they find their own unique ways of expression in attempt to match the earlier ones in achievement.

Bach/Handel
Haydn/Mozart
Beethoven
Wagner/Brahms

_"Handel understands effect better than any of us -- when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt."_
-Mozart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_C_major_(Beethoven)
_"On accepting the prince's commission Beethoven had praised Haydn's masses, calling them *"inimitable masterpieces."* Beethoven meant it. He clearly studied Haydn's masses while composing his own, no doubt for reasons far beyond the fact that the Esterházys had commissioned it, as we see from his sketches for the Gloria."_

_ "Cramer, Cramer! we shall never be able to do anything like that!"_ -Beethoven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Romantics
_"Composers from both sides looked back on Beethoven as their spiritual and artistic hero; the conservatives seeing him as an unsurpassable peak, the progressives as a new beginning in music."_


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Well, I used the word "might" because it would also depend upon the work, wouldn't it? The Romantics brought something new to music: _themselves_, and that's what some object to despite that bringing an expanded emotional range to all of music and a different idea of time and space (the use of the Tristan chord) through Wagner, Chopin, and others to create a new sense of suspense and drama. That's one of the differences between Mozart and Wagner, the Classicists and the Romantics. It happened. Every era in music has its pluses and minuses and I'm more interested in the pluses while others focus on the minuses because evidently they hear music in only one way and seem to think (rather than actually hearing with an open mind) that music stopped developing and took a turn for the worst after Mozart's death, or he wasn't given sufficient credit, because he's used as a fixed frame of reference for just about everything. But unfortunately, there's evidently no way to open somebody's mind unless one decides to do it himself. While there is a similarity between the harmonies of Mozart and Wagner, it was Wagner who used them in a revolutionary way for dramatic purposes that changed music forever and expanded chromatic harmonies along broader lines. It led to a different exploration* of the human condition and the genie is not going back into the bottle.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> it was Wagner who used them in a revolutionary way for dramatic purposes that changed music forever and expanded chromatic harmonies along broad lines. It led to a different expiration of the human condition and the genie is not going back into the bottle.


So what do you think about this,
Best harmonist among the Romantics?
in regards to our discussion here? Wouldn't it reasonable to conclude Wagner is the best harmonist among the Romantics?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> It's from this book: https://books.google.ca/books?id=MBR-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT84


Since you quote the book, I assume you agree with it.



> Larkenfield said _"The romantic composers could draw out harmonic passages in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of."_ I'm just saying the converse is also true: the Romantics could not write like the Classicists. So they founded other ways of expression.


So your translation of Larkenfield's "the romantic composers could draw out harmonic passages in a way that the classical composers might never have conceived of" is "the Romantics moved away from the Classicist ways because it was more challenging for them to do so"?

That is in no sense what Larkenfield said. His statement is true. Yours is nonsense. And then you attribute this nonsense to "some other people on other threads" as well. What other people? I've never seen anyone express this bizarre idea. (It should also be said that your "explanation" of your misrepresentation, "the Romantics could not write like the Classicists, so they founded other ways of expression," is no better. The Romantics wrote what they did because it's what they felt like writing, not because they couldn't write like Haydn and Mozart.)

Why set up straw men to set fire to? Why search so hard for things to argue with? Isn't there enough actual falsehood in the world to keep us busy?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

-----------------


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

isorhythm said:


> If you're looking for a classical-era anticipation of the Tristan prelude, I think the opening of Beethoven's _Pathetique_ is a better bet...but also, what everyone else said.


_"Beethoven stole off Mozart.  He had good taste. "_










http://www.cmpcp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PSN2011_Chueke.pdf
_"Mozart C minor Fantasy KV 475 is a perfect illustration example of what Brahms had in mind when proclaiming Mozart as "a fellow modernist."Extremely controversial, generating doubts and questions from the very first measure, musical ideas far ahead of their time make the adventure of exploring this piece with performance purposes one of the most exciting... 
...Through the Fantasy's musical discourse, the confirmation of C minor as the main key
is held until the end of the piece, justifying the term "musical plot"; the "mystery" will be
solved only at the end, like in his operas..."_


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I said in another thread this passage anticipates Wagner in gesture, and someone asked me how.

*[ 5:05 ~ 5:37 ]
Piano Sonata No. 15 in F Major, K. 533: II. Andante*
Look how the passage slowly and repeatedly ascends in stepwise motion with chromaticism, and eventually upon reaching the climax on dominant 7th, falls in a quick arpeggio, and goes to the recap the opening material.









Now look at:
*[ 7:00 ~ 7:30 ]
Richard Wagner "Tristan und Isolde" - Prelude*

I don't think the similarities are a mere coincidence. For one thing, this sort of expression


hammeredklavier said:


> View attachment 125240


shows up in other places in Mozart, and Wagner knew Mozart's work pretty well.
*Fortepiano Concerto No.22 in E Flat Major, KV 482: II. Andante*

*[ 5:10 ]*













"... It had been no empty rhetoric when the German musician in his Parisian tale died professing his faith in Beethoven and Mozart. A biography of Mozart, read to him when he was only six, had made an undying impression on him. ...
The overture to Die Zauberflöte was his earliest musical love: it captured so exactly the note of a fairy tale. He conducted it in Mannheim in 1871 at the concert celebrating the founding of the German Richard Wagner Society. He often reminisced about his childhood impressions when Mozart was played at Wahnfried. He had discovered the C minor Fantasy at his Uncle Adolf's house and had dreamt about it for ages afterwards. ...
During his studies with Weinlig he had tried to discover the secret of Mozart's fluency and lightness in solving difficult technical problems. In particular he tried to emulate the fugal finale of the great C major Symphony, 'magnificent, never surpassed', as he called it years later, and at eighteen he wrote a fugato as the finale of his C major Concert Overture, 'the very best that I could do, as I thought at the time, in honour of my new exemplar'. In the last years of his life he liked to call himself the 'last Mozartian'. ..."
(Wagner: A Biography, By Curt von Westernhagen, Pages 81~82)

*Adagio in B Minor, K. 540*
"There is something Tristanesque avant la lettre about the opening vertical sonority of the Adagio; and in fact, three of its four notes (E-sharp, B, G-sharp) are enharmonically identical to the so-called Tristan chord, even in their register. As in Tristan und Isolde, the dissonance of this initial descends here rather than rising, as in Wagner's opera. The composer of Tristan greatly admired Mozart, particularly his works in the minor, and regarded him as "der große Chromatiker"- a quality that undoubtedly inspired Wagner."
(Mozart's Piano Music, By William Kinderman, Page 35)


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## Caryatid (Mar 28, 2020)

It is hard to establish what exactly Wagner thought of Mozart. He made dozens of remarks about him, but they are contradictory, and many of them are from contemporary biographies that may not be trustworthy in any case. Certainly he was familiar with the major operas from early on, first as a music student, then as a conductor. He seems to have taken less interest in the instrumental music. But I agree with you that there is a more than superficial resemblance between their harmonic languages.

I don't think it helps your case to dwell on _Tristan_, an extreme work, as if it were typical of Wagner's style. His most Mozartean production is probably the _Siegfried Idyll_, which to my ears resembles the Clarinet Quintet, among other things. After that the clearest case may be the B minor Adagio you mention, which definitely prefigures the shadowier side of Wagner's style. We are not the first people to hear Wagner in that piece.

On balance I think Wagner may or may not have imitated specific pages of Mozart, but they likely worked from similar theories of harmony, and it sometimes led to similar results. It is natural to see them as world's apart, but in fact Wagner met people who had met Mozart and apparently even consulted someone who had attended the premiere of _Figaro _ about how fast the overture should be played.

Here's Wagner's Op. 1:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

hammeredklavier said:


> Aren't they similar? What do you think?


You'll never win this argument, because the opposing team sees Wagner as the end-all be-all. They like Mozart for what he is, Wagner for what he is, and are repelled by any sort of creative, metaphoric comparisons and conclusions.

I think it's fun, though. I do it all the time. The big difference is in the thought-styles: people like yourself try to see the similarities in things, and others like to see the differences. This is basically inductive vs. deductive reasoning.

Analogical induction, according to which things alike in certain ways are more prone to be alike in other ways, was explored in detail by philosopher John Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, wherein he states: "There can be no doubt that every resemblance [not known to be irrelevant] affords some degree of probability, beyond what would otherwise exist, in favour of the conclusion."

So they are compelled to render your observations as "irrelevant."


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