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1. Describe Wagners views on art, as expressed in The Artwork of the Future and Opera
and Drama. How did these views inform his music?
Wagner believed that the ancient Greeks had only one concept for art that united all artistic
media (drama, poetry, music, visual arts, etc.). During the cultural decline that followed, the arts
were divided into separate, isolated forms. The great task of the artist, Wagner claimed
reflecting the influence of a range of philosophers (Feuerbach, Schopenhauer) and radical
political theorists (Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon)is bringing these disparate, alienated artistic
media back into union with one another. The unification of the arts is also a political goal, since
music serves a social purpose. These views informed his music profoundly: Operas were set to
epic, mythological stories; individual musical numbers (e.g., aria and recitative) were done away
with in favor of a continuous musical texture (unending melody, or unendliche Melodie); the
orchestra was employed as a storyteller equal to the singers (as opposed to accompaniment);
sung texts were alliteratively unified using the technique of Stabreim; and the composer
coordinated all aspects of operatic production himself, from writing the libretto to designing the
staging (and, with Bayreuth, even the whole theater).
2. What is a Gesamtkunstwerk, and how is it reflected in Wagners music dramas?
The Gesamtkunstwerk is a Wagnerian total work of art that merges music with drama, poetry,
set design, costumes, and more. Wagner conceived of this union as a complete aesthetic
experience where all aspects of the production work together in perfect accord. The chief goal of
the Gesamtkunstwerk concept was unity, and this was accomplished through the characteristics
listed in Question 1, in addition to the all-important motivic principle of the leitmotif. Wagner
associated all the important elements of an opera (including characters, things, places, emotions,
and abstract concepts) with very short leading motives (or leitmotifs) that undergo constant
juxtaposition and metamorphosis over the course of the story.
3. How do Wagners leitmotifs work to support the development of the drama? How do
they affect the way one listens to his scores?
Leitmotifs support the development of Wagners operas both musically and dramatically.
Musically, the device works in a manner similar to the ide fixe of Berlioz or the thematic
transformation of Liszt; it unifies the work by functioning as an associative pattern that repeats in
different forms throughout the work. For example, the leitmotif for Valhalla in The Ring
occurs repeatedly in different contexts throughout the fifteen hours of the opera, adding musical
coherence to a vast and potentially stupefying temporal canvas. They also serve a dramatic
function, as this example indicates: By linking sonic material to important aspects of the story
(people, objects, places, etc.), leitmotifs allow the music to tell a story in the absence of words.
This affects the way one listens to Wagner by blending the musical characteristics that unify the
score with the dramatic elements that unify the libretto.
tenore di forza role, belies the heroic quality of his singing with tunes that reveal him to be cruel
and vapid, most notably in the merry ditty La donna mobile. All of this gay music
accompanies a scene in which the Duke is supposed to be murdered, adding to the morose irony.
The tune reappears throughout the rest of the act to function as a reminiscence motif. Further, the
four characters are a study in contrasts and mutual isolation: With a divided stage, Rigolettos
murderous plot is put in direct dramatic conversation with the dastardly doings of the Duke.
8. How did Verdis Falstaff differ from his earlier operas?
Verdi wrote Falstaff in his retirement, for his own amusement; the composer was fantastically
wealthy already, so he was not looking for a hit. Rather, he treated this comedy as a summation
of his career, a swan song that looks back on his life in opera. The work is full of quotations
(including many self-quotations), parodies of operatic convention, and comedic irony (especially
the dead-pan character Ford). It also features a melodic seamlessness reminiscent of Verdis
great rival Wagner, though he was quick to reject the comparison.