Precursors to Modernism: Richard Wagner, Part 2

Opera was the original multimedia entertainment, combining text, singing, orchestral music, dance, costumes, sets, and lighting. German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883), a consummate showman, had a hand in all aspects of the creation and production of his operas.

When the audience at the premiere of Wagner’s 1865 opera Tristan and Isolde heard the opening measures of the prelude, they were hearing sounds that would change the future of music–not just classical but jazz, Broadway, and rock.

The pulsating, swelling, unresolved dissonances mirrored the longing and lust experienced by the story’s namesake characters. Wagner had broken the sound barrier of traditional classical music, and in doing so paved the way for modernist composers such as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg.

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Met Opera staging of Tristan from 2016, with Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton, metopera.org

Precursors to Modernism: Richard Wagner, Part 1

It is hard to overstate the importance of German opera composer Richard Wagner, one of music’s first rock stars, to the cultural life of the mid- to late-nineteenth century (and even beyond). So writes Alex Ross in his 2020 book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music.

Ross presents a long list of familiar artists, poets, and novelists who engaged with Wagner’s dramas—whether by appropriating his themes, adopting his compositional methods, or using specific operas as inspiration, plot driver, or metaphor.

Ross says Wagner was particularly influential to the development of modernism. He quotes the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who was friends with the composer (until they fell out over Nietzsche’s repudiation of Wagner): “Wagner sums up modernity. It can’t be helped, one must first become a Wagnerian.”

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German opera composer Richard Wagner, wagnermuseum.de