Wagner Sentence Examples

On the operatic scale established by Wagner such detail is simply lost.

With it is associated the legend of the "Knights of the Swan," immortalized in Wagner's Lohengrin.

The accuracy and the paraphernalia are equally exemplified in all Wagner's additions and alterations of the classical orchestral scheme, for these all consist in completing the families of instruments so that each timbre can be presented pure in complete harmony.

But the greatness of Wagner is shown in the fact that with all the effect his additions have in revolutionizing the resources of orchestration, he never regards his novelties as substitutes for the natural principles of instrumental effect.

Whether this justifies Wagner's successors and imitators in showing a constant preference for passages of which not even the general outline is practicable; whether it justifies a state of things in which the normal compass of every instrument in an advanced loth-century score would appear to be about a fifth higher than any player of that instrument will admit;, whether it proves that it is artistically desirable that when there.

It is therefore not a criterion which can do justice to the principles of Wagner's non-symphonic art, for its.

In Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner specifies the proportions of the string-band as 16 first and 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 violoncellos, 8 double basses.

Wagner's year-book, Geographische Jahrbuch, published at Gotha, is the best systematic record of the progress of geography in all departments; and Haack's Geografihen Kalender, also published annually at Gotha, gives complete lists of the geographical societies and geographers of the world.

From this it would appear that 43% of the to Wagner.

By the device of a hypsographic curve co-ordinating the vertical relief and the areas of the earth's surface occupied by each zone of elevation, according to the system introduced by Supan, 2 Wagner showed his results graphically.

Wagner, Lehrbuch der Geographie, p. 658.

He first devoted his attention to painting, but afterwards took up the serious study of music. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, but did not remain there long, because he had espoused too warmly the cause of Wagner against his professor.

Joncieres' admiration for Wagner asserted itself rather in a musical than a dramatic sense.

He may indeed be said to have been at least as much influenced by Gounod as by Wagner.

The writer of this article is much indebted to the works of Schmoller, particularly his Grundris der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre (1900), and Adolph Wagner, particularly his Grundlegung der politischen Okonomie.

Upon these descriptions he was still engaged till death, in 1837, put an end to his labours, when his place as Naumann's assistant for the remainder of the work was taken by Rudolph Wagner; but, from time to time, a few more, which he had already completed, made their posthumous appearance in it, and, in subsequent years, some selections from his unpublished papers were through the care of Giebel presented to the public. Throughout the whole of this series the same marvellous industry and scrupulous accuracy are manifested, and attentive study of it will show how many times Nitzsch anticipated the conclusions of modern taxonomers.

Clamatores, being a majority of that division of the Picariae of Nitzsch, so called by Andreas Wagner, in 1841, 1 which have their feet normally constructed; 3.

Strisores, a group now separated from the Clamatores of Wagner, and containing those forms which have their feet abnormally constructed; and 4.

Wagner foresaw the use that would be made of this discovery by the adherents of the new philosophy, and, in the usual language of its opponents at the time, strove to ward off the " misinterpretations " that they would put upon it.

The post was unprofitable, and Wagner's life at this period was very unsettled.

In that year Wagner married Wilhelmina Planer, an actress at the theatre at Konigsberg.

Wagner failed to gain a footing, and Rienzi, destined for the Grand Opera, was rejected.

But though in Rienzi Wagner had shown energy and ambition, that work was far from representing his preconceived ideal.

On the 2nd of February 1843 Wagner was formally installed as Hofkapellmeister at the Dresden theatre, and he soon set to work on a new opera.

This last-named legend introduces the incidental poem of " Loherangrin," and so led Wagner to the study of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, with great results later on.

But for the present he confined himself to the subject in hand; and on the 19th of October 1845 he produced his Tannhauser, with Schroeder Devrient, Johanna Wagner,' Tichatschek and Mitterwurzer in the principal parts.

But Wagner boldly fought for them, and might have prevailed earlier had he not taken part in the political agitations of 1849, after which his position in Dresden became untenable.

Wagner fled to Paris and thence to Zurich, where he lived in almost unbroken retirement until the autumn of 1859.

The medieval studies which Wagner had begun for his work at the libretto of Tannhauser bore rich fruit in his next opera Lohengrin, in which he also developed his principles on a larger scale and with a riper technique than hitherto.

It was a severe trial to Wagner not to hear his own work, but he knew that it was in good hands, and he responded to Liszt's appeal for a new creation by studying the Nibelungenlied and gradually shaping it into a gigantic tetralogy.

During his exile Wagner matured his plans and perfected his musical style; but it was not until some considerable time after his return that any of the works he then meditated were placed upon the stage.

But the music was delayed until the strange incident of a message from the emperor of Brazil encouraged Wagner to complete it in 18J9.

In that year Wagner visited Paris for the third time; and after much negotiation, in which he was nobly supported by the Prince and Princess Metternich, Tannhduser was accepted at the Grand Opera.

But, for political reasons, a powerful clique was determined to suppress Wagner.

Wagner was broken-hearted.

Wagner now settled for a time in Vienna, where Tristan and Isolde was accepted, but abandoned after fifty-seven rehearsals, through the incompetence of the tenor.

Lohengrin was, however, produced on the 15th of May 1861, when Wagner heard it for the first time.

King Ludwig of Bavaria was much struck with it, and in 1864 invited Wagner, who was then at Stuttgart, to come to Munich and finish his work there.

Wagner accepted with rapture.

Wagner laid the first stone of this in 1872, and the edifice was completed, after almost insuperable difficulties, in 1876.

After this Wagner resided permanently at Bayreuth, in a house named Wahnfried, in the garden of which he built his tomb.

A small portion of this was raised (at great risk) by performances at the Albert Hall in London, conducted by Wagner and Richter, in 1877.

Wagner's next and last work was Parsifal, based upon the legend of the Holy Grail, as set forth, not in the legend of the Morte d'Arthur, but in the versions of Chrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach and other less-known works.

The first sixteen performances took place at Bayreuth, in July and August 1882, under Wagner's own directing, and fully realized all expectations.

Wagner was buried at Wahnfried in the tomb he had himself prepared, on the 18th of February; and a few days afterwards King Ludwig rode to Bayreuth alone, and at dead of night, to pay his last tribute to the master of his world of dreams.

Wagner's earlier works have too long been treated as if they represented the pure and healthy childhood of his later ideal; as if Lohengrin stood to Parsifal as Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven stand to Beethoven's last quartets.

But Wagner never thus represented the childhood of an ideal, though he attained the manhood of the most comprehensive ideal yet known in art.

Now Wagner's excellent teacher Weinlig did certainly, as Wagner himself testifies, teach him more of good music than Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart could have seen in their youth; for he showed him Beethoven.

But this would not help Wagner to feel that contemporary music was really a great art; indeed it could only show him that he was growing up in a pseudo-classical time, in which the approval of persons of " good taste " was seldom directed to things of vital promise.

Wagner was always an omnivorous reader, and books were then, as now, both cheaper than music and easier to read.

Moreover, the higher problems of rhythmic movement in the classical sonata forms are far beyond the scope of academic teaching; which is compelled to be contented with a practical plausibility of musical design; and the instrumental music which was considered the highest style of art in 18 3 0 was as far beyond Wagner's early command of such plausibility as it was obviously already becoming a mere academic game.

Lastly, the rules of that game were useless on the stage, and Wagner soon found in Meyerbeer a master of grand opera who was dazzling the world by means which merely disgusted the more serious academic musicians of the day.

In Rienzi Wagner would already have been Meyerbeer's rival, but that his sincerity, and his initial lack of that musical savoir faire which is prior to the individual handling of ideas, put him at a disadvantage.

Though Wagner cannot as yet be confidently credited with a satiric intention in his bathos, the fact remains that all the Rossinian passages are associated with the character of Daland, so as to express his vulgar delight at the prospect of finding a rich son-in-law in the mysterious Dutch seaman.

Meanwhile the rest of the work (except in the prettily scored " Spinning Song," and other harmless and vigorous tunes) has more affinity with Wagner's mature style than the bulk of its much more ambitious successors, Tannhauser and Lohengrin.

Moreover, the work was intended to be in one act, and is now so performed at Bayreuth; and, although it is very long for a one-act opera, this is certainly the only form which does justice to Wagner's conception.1 Spohr's appreciation of Der fliegende Hollander is a remarkable point in musical history; and his criticism that Wagner's style (in Tannhauser) " lacked rounded periods " shows the best effect of that style on a well-disposed contemporary mind.

But Spohr would feel Wagner's works to be an advance upon contemporary romantic opera rather than a foreshadowing of an unknown future.

To Spohr the frequency of these incidents must have produced the impression that Wagner was perpetually beginning arias and breaking them off at once.

With all its defects, Der fliegende Hollander is the most masterly and the least unequal of Wagner's early works.

And as the twofold musical and dramatic achievement of one mind, it already places Wagner beyond parallel in the history of art.

Not until the third act does the great Wagner arbitrate in the struggle between amateurishness and theatricality in the music, though at all points his epoch-making stagecraft asserts itself with a force that tempts us to treat the whole work as if it were on the Wagnerian plane of Tannhauser's account of his pilgrimage in the third act.

But the history of mid-19thcentury music is unintelligible until we face the fact that, when the anti-Wagnerian storm was already at its height, Wagner was still fighting for the recognition of music which was most definite just where it realized with ultra-Meyerbeerian brilliance all that Wagner had already begun to detest.

These features established the work in a position which it will always maintain by its unprecedented dramatic qualities and by the glory reflected from Wagner's later achievements; but we shall not appreciate the marvel of its nobler features if we continue at this time of day to regard the bulk of the music as worthy of a great composer.

With the growing certainty of touch a stiffness of movement appears which gradually disturbs the listener who can appreciate freedom, whether in the classical forms which Wagner has now abolished, or in the majestic flow of Wagner's later style.

The mature Wagner would not have carried out twenty bars in his flattest scenes with so little musical invention.

Wagner had hardly finished the score of Lohengrin before he was at work upon the poem of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

In the development of characters and intellectual ideas Wagner's later works show a power before which his earlier stagecraft shrinks into insignificance.

The faults make analysis exceptionally difficult, for they are no longer commonplace; indeed, the gravest dangers of modern Wagnerism arise from the fact that there is hardly any non-musical aspect in which Wagner's later work is not important enough to produce a school of essentially non-musical critics who have no notion how far Wagner's mature music transcends the rest of his thought, nor how often it rises where his philosophy falls.

Thus the prominent school of criticism which appraised Wagner in the 10th century by his approximation to Darwin and Herbert Spencer, appraises him in the aoth by his approximation to Bernard Shaw; with the absurd result that Gatterdammerung is ruled out as a reactionary failure.

But so long as we treat Wagner like a prose philosopher, a librettist, a poet, a mere musician, or anything short of the complex and many-sided artist he really is, we shall find insuperable obstacles to understanding or enjoying his works.

Wagner added all the arts to each other, and in one of them he attained so consummate a mastery that we can confidently turn to it when his words and doctrines fail us.

The vast myth of the Ring is related in full several times in each of the three main dramas, with ruthless disregard for the otherwise magnificent dramatic effect of the whole; hosts of original dramatic and ethical ideas, with which Wagner's brain was even more fertile than his voluminous prose works would indicate, assert themselves at all points, only to be thwarted by repeated attempts to allegorize the philosophy of Schopenhauer; all efforts to read a consistent scheme, ethical or philosophical, into the result are doomed to failure; but all this matters little, so long as we have Wagner's unfailing later resources in those higher dramatic verities which present to us emotions and actions, human and divine, as things essentially complex and conflicting, inevitable as natural laws, incalculable as natural phenomena.

Wagner's choice of subjects had from the outset shown an imagination far above that of any earlier librettist; yet he had begun with stories which could attract ordinary minds, as he dismally realized when the libretto of Der fliegende Hollander so pleased the Parisian wire-pullers that it was promptly set to music by one of their friends.

But with Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner devoted himself to a story which any ordinary dramatist would find as unwieldy as, for instance, most of Shakespeare's subjects; a story in which ordinary canons of taste and probability were violated as they are in real life and in great art.

There is little doubt that some redundant narratives in the Ring were of earlier conception than the four complete dramas, and that their survival is due partly to Wagner's natural affection for work on which he had spent pains, and partly to a dim notion that (like Browning's method in The Ring and the Book) they might serve to reveal the story afresh in the light of each character.

Be this as it may, we may confidently date the purification of Wagner's music at the moment when he set to work on a story which carried him finally away from that world of stereotyped operatic passions into which he had already breathed so much disturbing life.

Again, the appeal to " God's judgment " in the trial by battle in Lohengrin is a subject of which no earlier librettist could have made more than a plausible mess - which is the best that can be said for the music as music. But as dramatist Wagner compels our respect for the power that without gloss or apology brings before us the king, a model of royal fair-mindedness and good-nature, acquiescing in Telramund's monstrous claim to accuse Elsa without evidence, simply because it is a hard and self-evident fact that the persons of the drama live in an age in which such claims seemed reasonable.

Telramund, again, is no ordinary operatic villain; there is genuine tragedy in his moral ruin; and even the melodramatic Ortrud is a much more life-like intrigante than might be inferred from Wagner's hyperbolical stage-directions, which almost always show his manner at its worst.

In Lohengrin we take leave of the early music that obscured Wagner's ideals, and in the Ring we come to the music which transcends all other aspects of Wagnerism.

But it is much more likely that Wagner would then have found his artistic difficulties too formidable to let the ideas descend to us from Walhalla and the Hall of the Grail at all.

More than a modicum of rusticity is needed as a protection to a man who attempts such colossal reforms. This necessity had its consequences in the disquieting inequalities of Wagner's early work, and the undeniable egotism that embittered his fiery nature throughout his life; while the cut-and-dried system of culture of later Wagnerian discipleship has revenged him in a specially sacerdotal type of tradition, which makes progress even in the study of his works impossible except through revolt.

Genuinely dramatic music, even if it seem as purely musical as Mozart's, must always be approached through its drama; and Wagner's masterpieces demand that we shall use this approach; but, as with Mozart, we must not stop on the threshold.

But with Wagner, just as there are people who have never tried to follow a sonata but who have been awakened by his music-dramas to a sense of the possibilities of serious music, so there are lovers of music who avow that they owe to Wagner their appreciation of poetry.

But, as a rule, Wagner's poetic diction must simply be tolerated by the critic who would submit himself to Wagner's ideas.

If we wish to know what Wagner means, we must fight our way through his drama to his music; and we must not expect to find that each phrase in the mouth of the actor corresponds word for note with the music. That sort of correspondence Wagner leaves to his imitators; and his views on " Leit-motifhunting," as expressed in his prose writings and conversation, are contemptuously tolerant.

All that kind of pre-established harmony Wagner left behind him the moment he deserted the heroes and villains of romantic opera for the visionary and true tragedy of gods and demi-gods, giants and gnomes, with beauty, nobility and love in the wrong, and the forces of destruction and hate set free by blind justice.

Let us illustrate Wagner's mature use of Leitmotif by the theme which happens to be associated with Alberich's ring.

The fact that this theme is commonly called the " Ring-motif " is a glaring instance of what Wagner has had to endure from his friends.

Siegfried's whole character and career is, indeed, annihilated in the clumsy progress towards this consummation; but Shakespeare might have condoned worse plots for the sake of so noble a result; and indeed Wagner's awkwardness arises mainly from fear of committing oversights.

The bare conception of such art as this shows how perfect is the unity between the different elements in Wagner's later musicdrama.

Apart from the gain in tragic force resulting from Wagner's masterly development of the character of Brangaene, the raw material of the story was already suggestive of that astounding combination of the contrasted themes of love and death, the musical execution of which involves a harmonic range almost as far beyond that of its own day as the ordinary harmonic range of the 19th century is beyond that of the 16th.

In his next work, Die Meistersinger, Wagner ingeniously made poetry and drama out of an explicit manifesto to musical critics, and proved the depth of his music by developing its everyday resources and so showing that its vitality does not depend on that extreme emotional force that makes Tristan and Isolde almost unbearably poignant.

Die Meistersinger is perhaps Wagner's most nearly perfect work of art; and it is a striking proof of its purity and greatness that, while the whole work is in the happiest comic vein, no one ever thinks of it as in any way slighter than Wagner's tragic works.

These two works interrupted the execution of the Ring and formed the stepping-stones to Parsifal, a work which may perhaps be said to mark a further advance in that subtlety of poetic conception which, as we have seen, gave the determining impulse to Wagner's true musical style.

But in music he had no more to learn, and Parsifal, while the most solemn and concentrated of all Wagner's dramas, is musically not always unsuggestive of old age.

Certainly no poet would venture to despise Wagner's imaginative conception of Kundry.

In Wagner's harmonic style we encounter the entire problem of modern musical texture.

Wagner effected vast changes in almost every branch of his all-embracing art, from theatrebuilding and stage-lighting to the musical declamation of words.

The last two examples at the end of the article on Harmony show almost all that is new in Wagner's harmonic principles.

And of Debussy's antipolyphonic art there is less in Wagner than in Beethoven.

The brilliant success of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, in which Wagnerian technique is applied to the diatonic style of nursery songs with a humorous accuracy undreamed of by Wagner's imitators, points a moral which would have charmed Wagner himself; but until the revival of some rudiments of musical common sense becomes widespread, there is little prospect of the influence of Wagner's harmonic style being productive of anything better than nonsense.

The very sense of dramatic fitness has temporarily vanished from public musical opinion, together with the sense of musical form, in consequence of another prevalent habit, that of presenting shapeless extracts from Wagner's operas as orchestral pieces without voices or textbooks or any hint that such adjuncts are desirable.

But this vandalism, which Wagner condoned with a very bad grace, now happily begins to give way to the practice of presenting long scenes or entire acts, with the singers, on the concert-platform.

This has the merit of bringing the real Wagner to ears which may have no other means of hearing him, and it fosters no delusion as to what is missing in such a presentation.

List Of Wagner'S Works The following are Wagner's operas and music-dramas, apart from the unpublished Die Hochzeit (three numbers only), Die Feen, and Das Liebesverbot (Das Liebesverbot was disinterred in 1910).

This is the last work Wagner calls by the title of Opera.

Wagner's retouching of Gluck's Iphigenie en Aulide and his edition of Palestrina's Stabat Mater demand mention as important services to music, by no means to be classified (as in some catalogues) with the hack-work with which he kept off starvation in Paris.

The collected literary works of Wagner in German fill ten volumes, and include political speeches, sketches for dramas that did not become operas, autobiographical chapters, aesthetic musical treatises and polemics of vitriolic violence.

Rapidly as the standard of musical translations was improving before this work appeared, no one could have foreseen what has now been abundantly verified, that the Ring can be performed in English without any appreciable loss to Wagner's art.

Bernard Shaw, though concerned mainly with the social philosophy of the Ring, gives a luminous account of Wagner's mastery of musical movement.

The highest English authority on Wagner is his friend Dannreuther, whose article in Grove's Dictionary is classical.

Wagner's Lehrbuch (Hanover, 1908, pp. 241-252) refers to numerous authorities who deal fully with the whole question of measurement.

Wagner, to the inexperience of the cartographers who first combined the charts of the separate basins of the Mediterranean so as to produce a chart of the whole.

He directs this spirit of revolt also against the sources of his own inspiration; he turns bitterly against Wagner, whose intimate friend and enthusiastic admirer he had been, and denounces him as the musician of decadent emotionalism; he rejects his "educator" Schopenhauer's pessimism, and transforms his will to live into a "Will to Power."

The art of the Meistersingers has been immortalized by Richard Wagner in his music drama, Die Meistersinger (1868).

As modern standard works there may also be quoted Tiedemann's Geschichte des Tabaks (1856) and Wagner's Tabakcultur, Tabakand CigarrenFabrication (1884).

This has been practically proved by the extraordinary success which has attended Richard Wagner's dramatic re-telling of the legend in his Parsifal.

The immediate source of this version is the poem of Wolfram von Eschenbach, though the Grail, of course, is represented in the form of the Christian relic, not as the jewel talisman of the Parzival; but the psychological reading of the hero's character, the distinctive note of von Eschenbach's version, has been adapted by Wagner with marvellous skill, and his picture of the hero's mental and spiritual development, from extreme simplicity to the wisdom born of perfect charity, is most striking and impressive.

Reports of many minor expeditions and researches have appeared in the Reports of the Fishery Board for Scotland; the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth; the Kiel Commission for the Investigation of the Baltic; the Berlin Institut fur Meereskunde; the bluebooks of the Hydrographic Department; the various official reports to the British, German, Russian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Belgian and Dutch governments on the respective work of these countries in connexion with the international cooperation in the North Sea; the Bulletin du musee oceanographique de Monaco (1903 seq.); the Scottish Geographical Magazine; the Geographical Journal; Petermanns Mitteilungen; Wagner's Geogi'aphisches Jahrbuch; the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh; the Annalen der Hydrographie; and the publications of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Wagner (Leipzig, 1830), and a new edition was published by P. de Lagarde (Göttingen; 1888-1889); also Opere Italiane, ed.

The theatre, built under Goethe's superintendence in 1825, memorable in the history of art not only for its associations with the golden age of German drama, but as having witnessed the first performances of many of Wagner's operas and other notable stage pieces, was pulled down and replaced by a new building in 1907.

Wagner, writing of the censuses of Sweden, said to have been taken in the 18th century, uses these words, "Since 1749 careful parish registers have been kept by the clergy and have in general the value of censuses."

It is suggested, then, in the light of modern psychical research, that Mephistopheles, though (as the Faust-books record) invisible to any one else, was visible enough to Faust himself and to Wagner, the famulus who shared his somnambulistic experiences.

Like the story of Perceval that of Tristan has been made familiar to the present generation by Richard Wagner's noble music drama, Tristan and Isolde, founded upon the poem of Gottfried von Strassburg; though, being a drama of feeling rather than of action, the story is reduced to its simple elements; the drinking of the love-potion, the passion of the lovers, their discovery by Mark and finally their death.

In this direction lies Chapelizod, said to take its name from that Iseult whom Tennyson, Matthew Arnold and Wagner made a heroine; beyond which is Lucan connected with the city by tramway.

Some of the plants are among the largest in existence, notably the Union and the Wagner Palace car works, the Union dry docks, the steel plants of the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, and the Larkin soap factory.

Founded by Augustus II., it has become famous throughout the world, owing to the masters who have from time to time been associated with it - such as Pair, Weber, Reissiger and Wagner.

In this connexion he figures in Wagner's Tannhduser.

The name is derived from imba, fish, and bura, mother, and is said to have originated from the quantities of a fish called " prenadilla " (Pimelodus cyclopum) discharged from its crater during one of its eruptions - a phenomenon which, after a searching investigation, was discredited by Wagner.

The French academician Bouger, who was chief of the scientific commission sent to Ecuador in 1736 to measure a degree of the meridian on the equator, made a trigonometrical measurement of Iliniza, and Wagner ascended to within 800 ft.

Pichincha, its famous neighbour, is apparently of later origin, according to Wagner, and of slightly lower elevation.

In the treeless region lying between 11,600 and 13,800, or in other places between 12,000 and 14,000 ft., the similarity of the vegetation to that of the corresponding European region, according to Wagner, is especially striking.

He was especially anxious to obtain works of art, mainly sculpture, for the famous Munich collections which he started, and in this he had the advantage of the assistance of the painter Martin Wagner.

Freshficld, Travels in the Central Caucasus and Bashan (1869); Parrot, Reise zum Ararat (1834); Wagner, Reise nach dem Ararat (1848); Abich, Die Besteigung des Ararat (1849); articles "Ararat," in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, and the Encyclopaedia Biblica.

His appeal to musicians was made in a threefold capacity, and we have, therefore, to deal with Liszt the unrivalled pianoforte virtuoso (1830 - r848); Liszt the conductor of the "music of the future " at Weimar, the teacher of Tausig, Billow and a host of lesser pianists, the eloquent writer on music and musicians, the champion of Berlioz and Wagner (1848-1861); and Liszt the prolific composer, who for some five-and-thirty years continued to put forth pianoforte pieces, songs, symphonic orchestral pieces, cantatas, masses, psalms and oratorios (1847-1882).

As virtuoso he held his own for the entire period during which he chose to appear in public; but the militant conductor and prophet of Wagner had a hard time of it, and the composer's place is still in dispute.

During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre, gave lessons to a number of pianists, wrote articles of permanent value on certain works of Berlioz and the early operas of Wagner, and produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly depends.

His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance of Lohengrin on the 28th of August 1850, before a special audience assembled from far and near.

Among the works produced for the first time or rehearsed with a view to the furtherance of musical art were Wagner's Tannhduser, Der fliegende Hollander, Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, and Eine Faust Overture, Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, the Symphonie Fantastique, Harold en Italie, Romeo et Juliette, La Damnation de Faust, and L'Enfance du Christ - the last two conducted by the composer - Schumann's Genoveva, Paradise and the the music to Manfred and to Faust, Weber's Euryanthe, Schubert's Alfonso and Estrella, Raff's Kanig Alfred, Cornelius's Der Barbier von Baghdad and many more.

Wagner's activity as a writer and worker was enormous, and his range extensive, most of his hard work having been done at Erlangen while his health was good.

In 1854 Richard Wagner sent him a copy of the Ring of the Nibelung, with some words of thanks for a theory of music which had fallen in with his own conceptions.

Wagner (Dingier's Journal, 218, p. 253) and others, but its cost has restricted its general application.

Eisenach has a school of forestry, a school of design, a classical school (Gymnasium) and Modern school (Realgymnasium), a deaf and dumb school, a teachers' seminary, a theatre and a Wagner museum.

Among the celebrated natives of the town are the philosopher Leibnitz and the composer Wagner.

Probably it was ahead of the times, for not until nearly twenty years later was any prominence given to it, when Samuel Wagner, founder and editor of the American Bee Journal, became impressed with Mehring's invention and warmly advocated it in his paper.

Mr Wagner first conceived the idea of adding slightly raised side walls to the hexagonal outlines of the cells, by means of which the bees are supplied with the material for building out one-half or more of the complete cell walls or sides.

In Richard-Wagner-strasse is Wagner's house, with his grave in the garden.

Among the many advantages which Wagner gained from his intimacy with Ludwig II., king of Bavaria, not the least was the practical support given to his plan of erecting a theatre for the ideal performance of his own music-dramas.

The funds for the erection of the theatre were raised in part by the issue of 1000 certificates of patronage (Patronatsscheine), but the bulk of the sum was raised by founding "Wagner Societies" from St Petersburg to Cairo, from London to New York; these societies sprang up with such success that the theatre was opened in the summer of 1876 with the first complete performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The theatre, which stands on a height a little under a mile from the town, is built from the plans of Gustav Semper, the idea of the design being Wagner's own, and experiment indeed, but one which succeeded beyond all expectation.

The special feature upon which most stress has been laid, ever since Wagner's death in 1883, has been not so much the musical as the dramatic significance of the works; it is contended by the inmost circle of Wagnerian adherents that none but they can fully realize the master's intentions or hand down his traditions.

What is called the "Bayreuth Idea" is set forth in much detail from this point of view by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in his Richard Wagner (1897 and 1900).

Wagner A wise man finds agreeable, A dog that's learned its lesson well.

With Richard Wagner, opera reached the apex of German Romanticism.

Mr Wagner chose the costly procedure of going to crown court, where total court costs run to around £ 9,000 per day.

The Kirov is playing for very high stakes Kirov Opera is taking a huge gamble in touring with Wagner's Ring cycle.

The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

In June of 2005, I went there to see the birds of the Tibetan plateau... George Wagner reports.

Mine comes from Wagner & Hand's reliance on 16th-century Italian rapier and dagger sources for their footwork.

He also appears in the recent remake of the 1958 classic ' Indiscreet ' with Robert Wagner.

With Richard Wagner, opera reached the apex of german romanticism.

Wagner wrote the soundtrack and Hitler became the leading scriptwriter.

However, Mr Wagner announced he would be defending himself to save the taxpayer footing his legal aid bill.

The standard bikes sound good and throaty, but with a free breathing pipe they sound vicious, more Wagner.

And, moreover, those composers who have done most to realize this new nature (as Wagner has done for the brass instruments) have also retained, to an extent unsuspected by their imitators, the definite character which the instrument had in its earlier form.

In his gigantic designs it inevitably happens that instrumental resources are strained to their utmost, and there is, perhaps,, hardly anything which the makers and players of instruments can be trained to do which is too remote to be demanded by some extreme dramatic necessity in Wagner's scheme.

Least of all can it conduce to the formation of sound critical standards for the new instrumentation which is now in process of development for the future forms of instrumental music. These, we cannot doubt, will be as profoundly influenced by Wagner as the sonata style was influenced by Gluck.

An elaborate criticism of all the existing data regarding the volume relations of the vertical relief of the globe was made in 1894 by Professor Hermann Wagner, whose recalculations of volumes 4 " On the Height of the Land and the Depth of the Ocean," Scot.

This extremely elaborate subdivision may be reduced, as Wagner points out, to three types-the continental coast where the sea comes up to the solid rock-material of the land; the marine coast, which is formed entirely of soft material sorted out by the sea; and the composite coast, in which both forms are combined.

Wagner made his classical observations on the production of larvae from unfertilized eggs developed in the precociouslyformed ovaries of a larval gall-midge (Cecidomyid), and subsequent observers have confirmed his results by studies on insects of the same family and of the related Chironomidae.

Most of them are but luxuries, and there is some degree of truth in the remark of Andreas Wagner in his Report on the Progress of Zoology for 1843, drawn up for the Ray Society (p. 60), that they " are not adapted for the extension and promotion of science, but must inevitably, on account of their unnecessary costliness, constantly tend to reduce the number of naturalists who are able to avail themselves of them, and they thus enrich ornithology only to its ultimate injury."

To change the metaphor - the ideal was always in sight, and Wagner never swerved from his path towards it; but that path began in a blaze of garish false lights, and it had become very tortuous before the light of day prevailed.

The wonderful overture is more highly organized and less unequal than that of Tannhduser; and although Wagner uses less L eit-motif than Weber (see Opera, ad fin.) and divides the piece into " numbers " of classical size, the effect is so continuous that the divisions could hardly be guessed by ear.

Of course, from Wagner's mature point of view his early style is far too much cut up by periods and full closes; and its prophetic traits are so incomparably more striking than its resemblance to any earlier art that we often feel that only the full closes stand between it and the true Wagner.

No contemporary, unaided by personal knowledge, could be expected to trust in Wagner's purity of ideal on the strength of Tannhauser, which actually achieved popularity by such coarse methods of climax as the revivalistic end of the overture, by such maudlin pathos as 0 du mein holder Abendstern, and by the amiably childish grand-opera skill with which half the action is achieved by processions and a considerable fraction of the music is represented by fanfares.

After even the finest things in Tannhauser, the Vorspiel to Lohengrin comes as a revelation, with its quiet solemnity and breadth of design, its ethereal purity of tone-colour, and its complete emancipation from earlier operatic forms. The suspense and climax in the first act is so intense, and the whole drama is so well designed, that we must have a very vivid idea of the later Wagner before we can see how far the quality of musical thought still falls short of his ideals.

Full closes and repeated sentences no longer confuse the issue, but in their absence we begin to notice the incessant squareness of the ostensibly free rhythms. The immense amount of pageantry, though (as in Tannhauser) good in dramatic motive and executed with splendid stage-craft, goes far to stultify Wagner's already vigorous attitude of protest against grand-opera methods; by way of preparation for the ethereally poetic end he gives us a disinfected present from Meyerbeer at the beginning of the last scene, where mounted trumpeters career round the stage in full blast for three long minutes; and the prelude to the third act is an outburst of sheer gratuitous vulgarity.

Wagnerism was henceforth proclaimed out of the mouths of babes and sucklings; learned musicians felt that it had an unfair advantage; and by the time Wagner's popularity began to thrive as a persecuted heresy he had left it in the lurch.

It is true that its only conceivable moral is flatly the opposite of that " redemption by love " which Wagner strenuously preaches in a passage at the end which remained unset because he considered it already expressed by the music. Indeed, though Wagner's later treatment of love is perhaps the main source of his present popularity it seldom rises to his loftiest regions except where it is thwarted.

Wagner's first inspiration was for an opera (Siegfried's Tod, projected in 1848) on the death of Germany's mythical hero; but he found that the story needed a preliminary drama to convey its antecedents.

Thus the plan of the Ring was sketched in reverse order; and it has been remarked that Gotterdammerung shows traces of the fact that Wagner had begun his scheme in the days when French grand opera, with its ballets and pageantry, still influenced him.

In Tannhauser and Lohengrin Wagner's intellectual power develops far more rapidly in the drama than in the music. The Sangerkrieg, with its disastrous conflict between the sincere but unnatural asceticism of the orthodox Minnesingers and the irrepressible human passion of Tannhauser, is a conception the vitality of which would reduce Tannhauser's repentance to the level of Robert le Diable, were it not that the music of the Sangerkrieg has no structural power, and little distinction beyond a certain poetic value in the tones of violas which had long ago been fully exploited by Mozart and Mehul, while the music of Tannhauser's pilgrimage ranks with the Vorspiel to Lohengrin as a wonderful foreshadowing of Wagner's mature style.

Had Wagner been a man of more urbane literary intellect he might have been less ambitious of expressing a world-philosophy in music-drama; and it is just conceivable that the result might have been a less intermittent dramatic movement in his later works, and a balance of ethical ideas at once more subtle and more orthodox.

But people whose love of literature is more independent find it hard to take Wagner's poetry and prose seriously, unless they have already measured him by his music. He effected no reform in literature; his meticulous adherence to the archaic alliteration of the Nibelungenlied is not allied with any sense of beauty in verbal sound or verse-rhythm; and his ways of expressing emotion in language consist chiefly in the piling-up of superlatives.

Yet he was too full of dramatic inspiration to remain perpetually victimized by the conscientious affectations of the amateur author; and, where dramatic situations are not only poetical but (as in the first act of Die Walkilre and the Waldweben scene in Siegfried) too elemental for strained language, Wagner is often supremely eloquent simply because he has no occasion to try to write poetry.

Sometimes, too, when a great dramatic climax has given place to a lyrical anticlimax, retrospective moods, subtleties of emotion and crowning musical thoughts press in upon Wagner's mind with a closeness that determines every word; and thus not only is the whole third act of Tristan, as Wagner said when he was working at it, of " overwhelming tragic power," but Isolde's dying utterances (which occupy the last five minutes and are, of course, totally without action or dramatic tension) were not unlike fine poetry even before the music was written.

Important as the ring is throughout the tetralogy, Wagner would no more think of associating a theme with it for its own sake than he would think of associating a theme with Wotan's hat.

A famous and typical instance of Wagner's use of Leitmotif in tragic irony is the passage where Hagen gives Siegfried friendly welcome, to the melody of the curse which Alberich pronounced on the ring and all who approached it.

In spite of the necessary allusions to the ominous theme of the curse, which would give any less great composer ample excuse for succumbing to the listener's sense of impending doom, Wagner's music speaks to us through the child-minds of the Rhine-daughters and terrifies us with the ruthless calm of Nature.

But the greatness of the art is, like its subject, worlds away from material impressions; and a wide consensus regards Wagner's last work as his loftiest, both in music and poetry.

The chief excuse for doubting whether Wagner's last work is really his greatest is that most of its dramatic subtleties are beyond musical expression, since they do not lead to definite conflicts and blendings of emotion.

Most of his reforms have since been intelligently carried out as normal principles in more arts than one; but, shocking as the statement may seem to loth-century orthodoxy, Wagnerian harmony is a universe as yet unexplored, except by the few composers who are so independent of its bewildering effect on the generation that grew up with it, that they can use Wagner's resources as discreetly as he used them himself.

Wagner's orthodox contemporaries regarded such mixtures of key as sheer nonsense; and it would seem that the rank and file of his imitators agree with that view, since they either plagiarize Wagner's actual progressions or else produce such mixtures with no vividness of key-colour and little attempt to follow those melodic trains of thought by which Wagner makes sense of them.

The important small published works are Eine Faust Overture (1839-1840; rewritten, 1855); the Siegfried Idylle (an exquisite serenade for small orchestra on themes from the finale of Siegfried, written as a surprise for Frau Wagner in 1870); the Kaisermarsch (1871), the Huldigungsmarsch (1864) for military band (the scoring of the concert-version finished by Raff); Fiinf Gedichte (1862), a set of songs containing two studies for Tristan; and the early quasi-oratorio scene for male-voice chorus and full orchestra, Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (1843).

A careful reading of the score to this English text reveals not a single false emphasis or loss of rhetorical point in the fitting of words to notes, nor a single extra note or halt in the music; and wherever the language seems stilted or absurd the original will be found to be at least equally so, while the spirit of Wagner's poetry is faithfully reflected.

Wagner (Leipzig, 1830), and a new edition was published by P. de Lagarde (Göttingen; 1888-1889); also Opere Italiane, ed.

The story of Siegfried in Richard Wagner's famous opera-cycle Der Ring der Nibelungen is mainly taken from the northern version; but many features, especially the characterization of Hagen, are borrowed from the German story, as is also the episode of Siegfried's murder in the forest.

He was an early champion of Richard Wagner and of Henrik Ibsen, and indicated his aesthetic point of view in the pamphlets, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891) and The Perfect Wagnerite (1898).

Beethoven's Nine Symphonies; Berlioz's " Symphonie fantastique," " Harold en Italie "; Benediction et Serment (Benvenuto Cellini); Danse des Sylphes (Damnation de Faust); Weber's overtures, Der Freischiitz, Euryanthe, Oberon, Jubilee; Beethoven's and Hummel's Septets; Schubert's Divertissement a la Hongroise; Beethoven's Concertos in C minor, G and E flat (orchestra for a second piano); Wagner's Tannhauser overture, march, romance, chorus of pilgrims; Lohengrin, Festzug and Brautlied, Elsa's Brautgang, Elsa's Traum, Lohengrin's Verweiss an Elsa; Fliegender Hollander, Spinnlied; Rienzi, Gebet; Rheingold, Walhall; Meistersinger, " Am stillen Herd "; Tristan, Isolde's Liebestod; Chopin's six Chants Polonais; Meyerbeer's Schillermarsch; Bach's six organ Preludes and Fugues; Prelude and Fugue in G minor; Beethoven, Adelaide; 6 miscellaneous and 6 Geistliche Lieder; Liederkreis; Rossini's Les Soirees musicales; Schubert, 59 songs; Schumann, 13 songs; Mendelssohn, 8 songs; Robert Franz, 13 songs.

The first plan of building a new theatre for the purpose in Munich itself was rejected, because Wagner rightly felt that the appeal of his advanced works, like the Nibelungen trilogy, would be far stronger if the comparatively small number of people who wished to hear them were removed from the distractions of a large capital; Bayreuth possessed the desired seclusion, being on a line of railway that could not be approached from any quarter without changing.

The municipality furthered Wagner's scheme in every way, and in May 1872 the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus was laid, the event being commemorated by a notable performance of Beethoven's Choral Symphony in the old opera-house.

Mine comes from Wagner & Hand 's reliance on 16th-century Italian rapier and dagger sources for their footwork.

However, it was natural that Wagner wanted to use this instrument to extend the brass sonorities for his Ring cycle.

John Wagner was a recent graduate from Vesper George School of Art in Boston, Massachusetts, and as an employee of Hallmark he became a part of the Shoebox Greetings group.

Of course, the most popular ceremony song is the "Bridal Chorus" by Richard Wagner, also known as "Here Comes the Bride".

The Wagner Power Painter is a revolutionary, power paint sprayer that's designed to take the hard work out of virtually every large-scale painting job, inside the home and out.

The Wagner Power Painter resembles a hand drill, with a plastic chamber right below the nozzle where the paint is stored.

Wagner claims that their line of power painters can have a dramatic impact on the time you spend painting, the ease with which you paint and the quality of the results.

While Wagner claims that their power painters produce less overspray, it still produces some as it is virtually impossible to completely prevent it; use masking tape and drop cloths to protect anything you want to avoid painting.

Wagner offers four paint speeds on their power painters, with four producing the fastest paint speed and one the slowest.

Cleaning the Wagner Power Painter after using oil-based paints is a little different, but just as easy.

The Honus Wagner card (T206) was sold for a record $2.35 million.

The classic definition of polyamory, as described by Anita Wagner of the Loving More Foundation, is "multiple simultaneous romantic relationships with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved."

However, some actors have been with their shows through thick and thin, such as Helen Wagner.

Blackie worked hard to make his music band a success and his manager brought in a front man singer, Frisco Jones (Jack Wagner).

Actress Helen Wagner plays the longest running As the World Turns characters Nancy Hughes.

As the World Turns debuted on CBS in 1952 with actor Don Hastings, Eileen Fulton and Helen Wagner in the roles they would continue to play for more than 50 years.

In 2009, Hastings' veteran character Dr. Bob Hughes began experiencing symptoms related to Alzheimer's, leading fans to wonder whether Wagner who turned 90 in 2008 would be featured more prominently in the storylines.

When Jack Wagner joined the show, many General Hospital and Melrose Place fans sought out updates to find out what one of their favorite actors was doing.

When Jack Wagner's Nick came on as the "anti-Ridge," I was rooting for him with Brooke, especially since I was ticked at Ridge for getting involved with Bridget.

Tremendous contributions to the tattoo industry came from Wagner and Alberts.

On the East coast during the 1920's, Wagner and Alberts worked together to sell tattoo supplies in Chatham Square.

Although they both collaborated and practiced tattooing, Wagner was recognized as a tattoo gun originator and Alberts is said to have contributed greatly to today's old school tattoo flash.

Wagner used these leitmotif throughout his operas, particularly to identify a particular character whenever they made their appearance in the film.

Inspired by the rich architecture of Wagner's music on an epic story, Williams chose to score the first Star Wars and subsequent films using leitmotif.

Space opera is not the marriage of soap opera to science fiction, but rather incorporates the grandeur of the "opera" such as Wagner's Ring Cycle.

Originally developed for Hallmark by the artist John Wagner (nicknamed "arty-boy" by his character, Maxine), Maxine was only supposed to be a part of the Shoebox brand of cards.

Rienzi's life and fate have formed the subject of a famous novel by Bulwer Lytton, of an opera by Wagner and of a tragedy by Julius Mosen.

The story was followed closely in its main outlines by Richard Wagner in his opera Lohengrin.

There is hardly one of Wagner's orchestral innovations which is not inseparably connected with his adaptation of music to the re q uirements of drama; and modern conductors, in treating Wagner's orchestration, as the normal standard by which all previous and contemporary music must be judged, are doing their best to found a tradition which in another fifty years will be exploded as thoroughly as the tradition of symphonic additional accompaniments is now exploded in the performances of Bach and Handel.

The weakest passages in Der fliegende Hollander are not so helpless as the original recitatives of Venus in the first act; or Tannhauser's song, which was too far involved in the whole scheme to be ousted by the mature " New Venusberg music " with which Wagner fifteen years later got rid both of the end of the overture and what he called his " Palais-Royal " Venus.