A brass instrument with the tubing curled in an elliptical loop ending in a small bell and fingered using four valves, this is a type of tuba probably based on the saxhorn. When writing the Ring, Wagner wanted a brass instrument to bridge the gap between the French horns and the trombones. The 1853 sketch for Das Rheingold specifies ...
(Rich’-ärd Varg’-na) 1813–83 German composer Wagner is one of the most influential and controversial composers in the history of classical music. He was born in Leipzig and educated there and in Dresden. His later years were spent in Bayreuth, the home of the festival theatre and the yearly summer festival he founded, which still flourish today. The idea of Bayreuth ...
Between 1860 and 1918 Wagner became the most influential intellectual figure in Europe. For his Gesamtkunstwerk (‘Complete Art-Work’) he drew on a wide range of inspirations, including Greek tragedy, the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) and his own historicist ideas of realizing the latent tendencies of all arts. This ensured that his music-dramas reached into almost every area ...
The invention of valves meant that brass instruments could now explore the bass register, and soon after 1835 bass tubas started being manufactured in Germany. Essentially a keyed bugle by descent, the bass tuba (confusingly, the name tuba comes from the Latin word for trumpet) has a very wide conical bore and as a result requires a good ...
The tuba is essentially a large, valved bugle, designed to take the bass part in an orchestra or band. Like the trumpet, it is sounded by buzzing the lips into a mouthpiece. It is conically bored, like the horn, and consequently has a smooth, velvety sound. History The tuba is a youngster among brass instruments; ...
1813–83, German If – to quote Mark Twain – Wagner’s music ‘is not as bad as it sounds’, then the composer’s life was by no means as turpitudinous as it is generally claimed to be. Idolized by his friends and supporters as a family man who was kind to animals and plagued by self-doubts, he was demonized by his ...
‘The Flying Dutchman’ Initially a one-act opera, Der Fliegende Holländer was later expanded to three. Wagner was anxious to make sure it was performed in the way he wished, and wrote detailed production notes for the directors and singers. He also conducted the first performance at the Hofoper or Court Opera in Dresden on 2 January 1843. Although Wagner ...
The full title of this opera in three acts is Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (‘Tannhäuser and the Song Contest on the Wartburg’). Wagner, who took nearly three years to write the opera, conducted the first performance at the Dresden Hofoper on 19 October 1845. This was the first of two Wagner operas in which a song contest ...
Franz Liszt, the great Hungarian composer whose daughter Cosima married Wagner in 1870, conducted the first performance of the three-act opera Lohengrin at the Court Theatre, Weimar on 28 August 1850. Wagner provided a blueprint for productions of Lohengrin, just as he did for Tannhäuser, and emphasized the duty of the stage manager not to leave ...
Wagner’s music drama Tristan und Isolde, written between 1856 and 1859 and first produced at the Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865, broke the established mould of opera and took it to the threshold of ‘modern’ music. Tristan was based on an Arthurian legend, and featured a regular theme in Wagner’s operas – the plight ...
Wagner’s Ring cycle is made up of four works – Das Rheingold (‘The Rhinegold’, 1851–54), Die Walküre (‘The Valkyrie’, 1851–56), Siegfried (1851–57; 1864–71) and Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’, 1848–52; 1869–74). Although there have been other, even more ambitious projects in the history of opera – Rutland Boughton’s cycle of choral dramas based on the Arthurian legends and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ...
The Rhinemaidens, who guard the magic gold hidden beneath the waters of the Rhine, are approached by Alberich, a Nibelung dwarf. They tease him mercilessly and, unwisely, reveal that if someone were prepared to renounce love and fashion a ring from the gold, he would acquire the power to dominate the world. Failing to woo ...
Act I A storm rages. Siegmund enters a forest cottage and collapses. Sieglinde offers him refreshment. She persuades him to stay and meet her husband Hunding, who arrives and is suspicious. Siegmund reveals that his mother and sister were abducted and that he and his father were separated. Earlier that day he fought to rescue a girl from a forced ...
Act I The act opens in Mime’s smithy, in a forest near where Fafner, now a dragon thanks to the tarnhelm, lives in a cave guarding his treasure. Years before, Sieglinde sheltered there and, dying, entrusted her child and the broken sword to Mime’s care. He has raised Siegfried as his son, hoping to ...
Prologue Erda’s daughters, the Norns, sit on a rock spinning the rope of destiny. They recall recent events but are unable to see the future, since the rope has frayed. The rope beaks and they return under the earth. Siegfried prepares to set off. He gives Brünnhilde the ring and she gives him her horse, Grane. Act ...
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