Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (Wilhelm Richard Wagner, May 22, 1813 - February 13, 1883) was a German composer. He is a pivotal figure in the history of German opera. The former inherited the opera tradition of Mozart and Beethoven, and the latter started the trend of post-romantic opera composition, followed closely by Richard Strauss. At the same time, Nietzsche's introduction, because of the complexity of his political and religious thoughts, became the most controversial figure in the history of European music.

Wagner was born in Leipzig. He received sound music training since childhood and was very interested in music and drama. He later studied composition at the University of Leipzig, dropped out of school and was hired as a chorus conductor at the Wirz Opera House. He devoted his life to opera creation and made great contributions to the development of German opera. On February 13, 1883, the composer died at the Vendelamin Palace in Venice.

In the era when Wagner lived, people in Germany generally believed that the German language was not elegant enough. Italian and French operas were popular both inside and outside the court, which focused on the magnificence of musical techniques and ignored the content of drama. Therefore, Wagner proposed "musical drama" The slogan advocates the creation of operas with equal emphasis on music and drama, recommends that composers personally participate in the creation of scripts, and believes that opera themes should only be suitable for musical treatment. He elevated the status of the orchestra, which had previously only appeared in the prelude or overture, to the extreme, making it the unifying pillar of the entire play. Another obvious reform lies in the dominant motives in his musicals. In fact, no matter in the past or modern times, composers will use dominant motives in their works. But Wagner was different from them. He systematically used leading motives and combined several leading motives through polyphony. It can be said that the web of dominant motives created by the extremely concentrated plot covers the entire play, making the perfect combination of written language and musical language a precise and simple subtext. In addition, there are almost no parts in his musicals. The use of brass is more free and flexible. The emotional meaning is expressed by the band through melody and harmony. The vocal parts float on the surface of the orchestral flow, announcing There is no clear distinction between aria and aria. Wagner's opera reform mainly began with "Tristan and Isolde". The performance of this opera in Munich in 1865 marked the beginning of a new dialect in the musical language of the Western world and the beginning of the disintegration of the tonal system. From then on, "Wagnerian style" became synonymous with "advanced" and unconventional in opera or music in general.

Many people want to mention Wagner’s thoughts while listening to his music. Of course, the musician’s own personality and thoughts have a great influence on his creative works, but overemphasis on his thoughts is detrimental to appreciating his As for the work, it is a pity. It is said that Hitler once asked someone to perform Wagner's works specially for him in Bayreuth. At that time, he was moved to tears and wished he could hold hands and talk with this genius of the last century. The Nazis distorted some ideas in Wagner's works to beautify their crimes, but this cannot be used as a reason to blame Wagner's music. In his youth, Wagner's thoughts mainly tended to be "German". He was influenced by Feuerbach and Bakunin, wrote many fanatical and radical articles, and even participated in the Dresden revolution. After the failure of the European bourgeois revolution in 1848, Wagner gradually accepted Schopenhauer's pessimism, Nietzsche's theory of the Superman, and later Gobineau's theory of Germanic origin. In his later years, Wagner was also influenced by religious mystical thoughts. Wagner and Nietzsche were close friends, and their friendship lasted for ten years. When Wagner changed his musical style, Nietzsche broke with him, calling him a cunning man and saying that listening to his music drove people crazy. On January 3, 1878, Wagner presented "Parsifal" to Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote his last letter to Wagner and gave him his new book "Human Nature, All Too Human" in return. In 1888, Nietzsche wrote "The Wagner Affair" and "Nietzsche vs. Wagner" to formally express his views on this former friend.

Here, it is worth mentioning that Wagner showed his worship of women in his musicals. For many years, Wagner has always believed that women have two characteristics: redemption and destruction. This contradiction makes the female images he created usually complex, heroic sopranos with great pain.

It is reflected in his musicals, such as Elizabeth in "Tanh?user", Isolde in "Tristan and Isolde", Bruno who solicits mankind through devotion to love in "The Ring". De and the allegorical female Condry in "Parsifal".

Wagner's musical techniques and theater concepts have deeply influenced various arts in the twentieth century. Film art in particular was most inspired by Wagner.

It is worth mentioning that Israel has always had an informal ban on Wagner’s anti-Semitic ideas and the Nazis. Wagner’s works have never been performed in Israel, but it has been slightly relaxed in recent years.

List of representative works:

Musical Drama

Fairy (DieFeen1833-34,première1888)

Forbidden Love (Das LiebesverbotoderDieNovizevonPalermo1834-36,première1836 )

Rienzi (Rienzi, der Letzteder Tribunen 1837-40, première 1842)

The Wandering Dutchman (Der Fliegen de Holl?nder, 1843)

Tannhāeuser , 1845)

Lohengrin (1850)

Tristan und Isolde (1865)

Meistersinger of Nuremberg ( Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg, 1868)

Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876)

Das Rheingold (1854)

Die Walküre (1856) )

Siegfried (1871)

G?tterd?mmerung (1874)

Parsifal Introduction to Nietzsche, 1882)

Orchestral arrangements

Re-orchestration of the overture to Gluck's opera "Iphigenia in Taurid"

Orchestral music

Symphony in C major

Faust Overture

Songs

5 songs by Weisendonk

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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900 Japanese), famous German philosopher and thinker. Nietzsche was first a linguist and then a philosopher or free thinker, and many of his works contain the content of modern psychology. He was a poet-philosopher full of rebellious spirit. He strongly criticized the traditional Western Christian culture, denied the traditional Christian moral system, and advocated the revaluation of all values. He also proposed the theory of superman and the proposition of eternal recurrence, and aspired to establish a A new and powerful ideological and cultural system. In essence, Nietzsche is a nihilist, but what makes him different from Schopenhauer, the spiritual mentor of his youth, is that he longs to find a meaning, or creation, in this nihilistic world. To find a meaning of existence, in order to affirm the value of human existence. His ideas laid the foundation for later existentialism and he is known as one of the pioneers of existentialism. However, because some of Nietzsche's ideas were too extreme and too powerful, they were later used by the Nazis and he was stigmatized as a "Nazi philosopher." As he himself wrote in his book, any greatness can be misunderstood.

Nietzsche’s Chronology

Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Roecken, a small village in Saxony, Prussia. His father was a Lutheran pastor. Nietzsche believed that he had Polish aristocratic ancestry and was proud of it.

In July 1846, his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche was born.

In 1849, Nietzsche's father died of illness.

In 1850, he moved to Naumburg on the Saale River

In 1864, he entered the University of Bonn and studied theology and classical philology.

In 1865, Nietzsche entered the University of Leipzig to study classical linguistics and began to come into contact with Schopenhauer's philosophical thoughts. These ideas later became the starting point for Nietzsche's philosophical thinking.

In 1868, I first met Wagner, who was Nietzsche’s friend in his youth.

In 1869, Nietzsche, who was only 25 years old, was hired as a professor of classical linguistics at the University of Basel in Switzerland before he officially graduated.

In 1870, he was promoted to full professor. In August, the Franco-Prussian War broke out. He volunteered to join the army and retired due to injuries.

In 1879, Nietzsche resigned from his teaching position at the University of Basel and began a ten-year wandering career. At the same time, he entered a golden period of creation.

In 1882, he traveled to Italy. I got acquainted with Rosa Salome through someone's introduction. In May, "The Science of Happiness" was completed and published. In the same month, he proposed to Salome but was rejected.

In 1883, he began to write the first part of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". In July, he started writing the second part of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

In 1884, he wrote the third part of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" in Venice. In November, he started writing the fourth part of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

In 1889, Nietzsche, who had not been understood for a long time, could not bear the loneliness for a long time. He hugged the neck of a horse that was being abused by the groom on the streets of Turin, and finally lost his mind.

The sick Nietzsche at home in Weimar. In 1897, his mother died of illness, and his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche took her to live in Weimar, a famous cultural city.

Nietzsche died in Weimar in 1900 at the age of 55. Buried in the church of his hometown Roecken.

Influence

The influence of Nietzsche's works on later generations is undoubtedly huge. His thought has an extremely powerful impact. It subverts Western Christian moral thought and traditional values, and reveals the spiritual crisis that mankind must face after the death of God. Jaspers said that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard brought a tremor to Western philosophy, but the final significance of this tremor has not yet been assessed. An entire generation of thinkers and artists at the beginning of the 20th century found in Nietzsche's writings the ideas and images that inspired their most creative works. Jaspers, Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, etc. are all philosophers deeply influenced by Nietzsche's thoughts, and there are also countless writers directly influenced by him: Zweig, Thomas Mann, Shaw Bernard, Hesse, Rilke, Gide and Lu Xun.

Main works

1872: The Birth of Tragedy (DieGeburtder Trag?die)

1876: Untimely Investigation (Unzeitgem?sseBetrachtungen)

1878-1880: Humanity, all-too-humanity (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches)

1881: Dawn (Die Morgenr?te)

1882: Happy Science (Diefr?hliche Wissenschaft)

1883-1885: Alsosprach Zarathustra (Alsosprach Zarathustra)

1886: Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gutund B?se)

1887: On the Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogieder Moral )

1887: The Twilight of the Idols (G?tzend?mmerung)

1888: The Wagner Affair (DerFallWagner)

1895: Against Christ (DerAntichrist)

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1895: NietzschecontraWagner

1908: Look, this man (EcceHomo)

1911: The Will to Power (Der Willezur Macht)

When two people become close friends because of similar interests, there will always be some friction and minor unhappiness. The different psychological reactions of the two to this hint to us that one is strong and the other is weak. Let me call them one party. One is the strong one, and one side is the weak one (it has nothing to do with whether one is strong or weak in life; strong or weak has nothing to do with talent or talent). The performance is that the strong one is in the central position; the controlling position. The strong one attracts the weak ones. The weak ones devote their feelings, And feel obviously inhibited; the strong will be calm and rarely feel guilty when they violate the wishes of the weak without hesitation. The weak will have a strong sense of unease when they disobey the strong (often deliberately because they feel suppressed), and the strong will He often hurts the weak without hesitation, but the weak sometimes understands that he is unknowingly and that he is not at fault. Like all things, the relationship between a pair of friends also has its ups and downs. When it declines, the weak always seems to abandon the strong. , this is also understandable, because the weaker party has been suppressed for too long. (A person with a little sense will feel the strong or weak position in his relationship with others).

There is no doubt that in the friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner, Nietzsche is the weak one and Wagner is the strong one. How can it be seen? While Wagner is constantly busy with Bayreuth affairs, Nietzsche has no idea. Inserting remarks about the completed work, Nietzsche was so depressed (Nietzsche was also an egomaniac and egocentrist) that he refused Wagner's last invitation. After rejecting the invitation, he felt a strong sense of restlessness and was in harmony with his sister. A follow-up visit was made to Mr. and Mrs. Wagner.

There are no two days in the sky and no two kings in the country. One is a great philosopher of art, and the other is a great dramatic musician who wants to rebuild art on the ruins of art. However, their contradictions and frictions are not great. , but trivial, intermittent, and completely encountered by two sensitive and neurotic people. Two arrogant people like this would not usually quarrel. They would blame each other and even bother to explain their misunderstandings. (due to the relationship between language and experience, misunderstandings between people are inevitable), but the accumulation of contradictions will inevitably break out one day. That day Nietzsche brought Brahms's piano score and played his works to Wagner (Brahms Varona, who is Varona's mortal enemy), is the expression of an explosion after long-term suppression. How could the rude Wagner, who was rude to all his friends except Nietzsche, the master at the top of the romantic school, not produce a thunderous roar? So? How could it not make Nietzsche, who claimed to be a superman (although he did not explicitly say that he was a superman, but regarded himself as a superman), not feel long-term and intense harm? In the end, Nietzsche abandoned Wagner, and he later stayed away from Wagner. Living alone in the world, he finally became the best single man in the world.

This loneliness is in perfect contrast to Wagner's crowd of friends. Nietzsche must have agreed with me, and he was proud of it. Once the weak Nietzsche resisted, he became more and more angry and used the most harsh words to attack his beloved. Isn't it an expression of extreme love in one's heart for a person who has lived through it? And the rude Wagner's attitude towards Nietzsche was restrained. Poor Nietzsche was always worried about him, but stubbornly refused to reconcile. What a terrible and fragile self-esteem! When he was about to go crazy, he wrote a poem "Ariadne's Lament". When he went crazy, he unconsciously sent it to Wagner's wife, Cosima Wagner, which shows that he has never forgotten Wagner. I still remember these few days. Sentence:

"No!

Come back!

With all your pain!

...

All my tears flow into a river towards you

The last flame in my heart

sends out light and heat to you.

Oh, come back< /p>

My strange God! My sorrow!

My last happiness!"

Despite analyzing so much, what I really don’t understand is why the two There will be a strong and a weak relationship between individuals. A kind of harmony? A state of things? A kind of nature?

Maybe.