Richard Wagner

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FORWARD the writer of a thumbnail biography of richard strauss finds himself confronted with a troublesome assignment strauss lived well beyond the scriptural age allotted the average man he would have been eighty-six had he reached his next birthday there was nothing romantic or sensational about his passing for he died of a complication of the illnesses of old age there was not much truly spectacular about the course of his life which was most happily free from the material troubles which bedevilled the existence of so many great masters and he was not called upon to starve or to struggle to achieve the material rewards of his gifts he had not to pass through the conflicts which embittered the lives of wagner or berlioz and he was never compelled to suffer like mozart or schubert there is no record of his ever humiliating himself or performing degrading chores for publishers in return for a wretched pittance he had wealth enough without compromising his art to keep the pot boiling and for this one can only feel devoutly thankful what if he was taxed with sensationalism how many of the masters of music has not had at one time or another to endure this reproach if salome and elektra ein heldenleben and till eulenspiegel were in their day scandalously sensational did not the whirligig of time reveal them as incontestable products of genius irrespective of inequalities and flaws however richard strauss compares in the last analysis with this or that master he contributed to the language of music idioms procedures and technical accomplishments typical of the confused years and conflicting ideals out of which they were born his works are most decidedly of an age whether or not they are for all time in a way he was almost as fortunate as mendelssohn need any one begrudge him this The late spring of 1864 brought two events which, though seemingly unrelated, actually had a kind of mystic kinship and were to stir the surfaces of music.

Early in May of that year, Richard Wagner was summoned to Munich to become the friend and protégé of the young Bavarian sovereign, Ludwig II, whose real mission on earth was to save the composer for the world.

hardly more than a month later there was born in the same city a boy likewise named ricard who was destined in the fulness of time to become in a sense an heir and continuator of the old master though by no means a vain copy of his artistic and spiritual lineaments and long before the span of his days reached its end he had taken an undisputed place in history as a seminal force in music for all the disagreements and conflicts his art was to engender through a large part of his more than fourscore years richard strauss first saw the light on june eleventh eighteen sixty four in a house on the altheimer eck munich at the centre of the town and a stone's throw from the twin steeples of the frauenkirche the edifice in which the future composer of salome electra and der rosenkavalier was born forms part of a complex of buildings in which a number of larger and smaller beer halls and restaurants separated by cobbled courtyards housed the brewery of georg schorr senior whose son georg schorr junior enlarged the establishment Furthermore, he improved the quality of its products till Shorebrow beer became, it seemed to many, including the writer of these pages, the most incomparable refreshment this side of heaven, despite the close proximity of the Hofbräuhaus, the Löwenbräu, the Augustinerbräu, and the unnumbered other Munich breweries and affiliated Bierstuben.

at this point the writer ought logically to confess that he bases his present recollections on what he remembers from his wanderings in the bavarian capital prior to the second world war since which time changes without number may well have changed the picture but one thing is reasonably certain if the old house at alzheimer eck number two still stands it continues to have affixed to its wall the decorative inscription on eleventh june eighteen sixty four were here richard strauss geboren on june eleventh eighteen sixty four richard strauss was born here the shores apart from being excellent brewers were excellent musicians one of the four daughters josephine later ricard's mother a fairly accomplished pianist taught her son piano in his fifth year A noted harpist, Auguste Trombeau, continued the lessons, and by the time the boy was seven he was administered violin instruction.

Nevertheless, Wilhelm II remarked to Hülsen, I am sorry that Strauss composed this Salome.

I like him, but he is going to do himself terrible harm with it.

at the dress rehearsal the famous high b flat of the double basses so filled count seebeck with the fear of an outbreak of hilarity that he prevailed upon the player of the english horn to mitigate the effect somewhat by means of a sustained b flat on that instrument strauss's own father hearing his son play a portion of the opera on the piano exclaimed a short time before his death my god this nervous music it is as if beetles were crawling about in one's clothing and Cosima Wagner declared after listening to the closing scene, This is madness! The clergy, too, was up in arms, and the first performance at the Vienna State Opera in October 1918 took place only after an agitated exchange of letters with Archbishop Piffel.

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity until death tramples it to fragments.

What an unspeakable gain, says Richard Wagner.

We should bring to those who are terrified by the threats of the church and, on the other hand, to those who are reduced to despair by our physicists.

If we could quicken the noble edifice of love, faith, and hope with a clear consciousness of the ideality of the world, conditioned by the laws of space and time, which form the sole basis of our perceptive capacity, in that case all anxious inquiries as to a where and when of the other world would be understood to be only answerable by a blissful smile.

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Before Richard Wagner's leitmotifs, there was Carl Maria von Weber, experimenting with recurring musical motives related to things and ideas in his opera Der Freischütz.

Although rarely performed today, it remains a historical masterpiece of a work.

We'll hear the overture to Der Freischütz and many more works this hour on Anytime Classical.

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Next, some music of Karl Maria von Weber, an early Romantic German composer, who began experimenting with recurring musical motives related to things and ideas in his opera Der Freischütz, well before Wagner established the leitmotif as we know it.

This is the Overture to Der Freischütz, performed by Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Gustav Kuhn.

And one of those is the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Paul Dukas, which is featured in Fantasia, which revived Mickey Mouse's career after Pluto and Goofy and Donald Duck came on board and made him a little bit uncool.

Another one is the Ride of the Valkyries, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, which was featured in Apocalypse Now.

Such a great scene.

Blaring out of the helicopters

This is called Parsifal for the Course.

Back to the Royal Opera House for a mammoth undertaking, a Wagner opera.

Completing the sort of research that compels writers of historical fiction to go on fact-finding missions to ancient Italian and Greek ruins, rather than looking up stuff in Wikipedia as everyone else does, I knew that the Royal Opera House would provide a booster cushion should I need one.

The seat I chose was the second cheapest, below that price point you don't even get one, and was described as a bench seat, so I thought I'd ask the old boy at the cloakroom if he recommended a cushion.

He looked at me with the tired eyes of someone who has presumably sat through this sort of stuff before and said, it's Wagner, whatever you do is hard on the rear.

His advice was to borrow one from behind the place that sells ice creams, and if they tell you you're too young, set for your elderly mother.

krishan inquired i decided i needed to have something to eat i had already seen and rejected the main restaurant for two reasons i couldn't understand the menu and the price of the starters was just above the price i would normally pay for a main course therefore i made my way trepidatiously to the level five bar from where i had bought my wine on thursday here i saw an exotic display of artisan filled rolls that looked as if they belonged in a sunday newspaper glossy supplement once again i struggled with the language barrier but fortunately the barman knew what i meant when i asked for one of those posh ham roll things I think in terms of description, this is up there with un loiseau de la mer, which was how I described a seagull to a French shopkeeper.

I'm not sure.

Thank you.

Richard Wagner has no shortage of famous works to his name, although arguably the most famous is The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Valkyrie, the second work in his four-music drama cycle Der Ring der Nibelungen.

Although Wagner at first resisted ongoing requests to create a separate concert version of the piece, it has been a popular concert piece since he caved and conducted the first non-operatic performance of the work in 1877.

Since then, filmmakers, in appreciation of the melodramatic nature of the work, have used it in no less than 25 different films.

You're listening to Anytime Classical.

I'm your host, Denise Finnegan-Hill, and you're listening to Anytime Classical.

Even if you're new to classical music, you've most likely heard this next piece.

This is Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner.