IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Richard Wagner Sings the “Eroica” Symphony
The composer Felix Draeseke (1835–1913) visited Richard Wagner in the summer
of 1859 in Lucerne, just when Wagner was completing his opera Tristan und Isolde,
and Draeseke’s later recollections of the visit are a valuable document concerning
Wagner’s thoughts at this time. According to Draeseke, Wagner repeatedly criti-
cized the music of Liszt, his “New German School,” and Berlioz because of their
excessive attention to harmony at the expense of pure and continuous melody. One
of Wagner’s outbursts on this subject stuck in Draeseke’s mind:
At last he [Wagner] gave me an explanation of melody, which entirely changed my
musical outlook and has remained more useful to me than my entire course of study
at the Leipzig Conservatory. On a warm August afternoon, quite unexpectedly and
provoked by I don’t know what, he began to sing the first movement of the “Eroica.”
He became frightfully excited, sang on and on, became heated and beside himself and
didn’t stop until he had reached the end of the first part. “What is that?” he yelled to
me. To which I of course replied, “the ‘Eroica.’ ” “So, isn’t a bare melody enough? Must
you all always have your crazy harmonies?” At first it was not clear to me what he
meant by this. He later explained more calmly that the melodic stream in Beethoven’s
symphonies flows onward inexhaustibly and that by virtue of this melody, one can
clearly call to mind an entire symphony. This got me to thinking in a way that much
influenced my entire approach to composition.

Source: Felix Draeseke, “Was tut der heutigen musikalischen Produktion not?” Signale für die musika-
lische Welt 65 (1907).