WAGNER, PETER. — Musicologist and Gregorian scholar, b. at Kürzenz (Trevi) on 19 Aug. 1865, d. at Fribourg in Switzerland on 17 Oct. 1931.
A singer in the cathedral choir, he studied at Trevi, Strasbourg, and Berlin; from 1897 he taught music and music history at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), of which he was rector in 1920–21. There, in 1901, he founded the *Gregorianische Akademie*, which became a vital center for practical studies and theoretical research on Gregorian chant. In 1907 he became the first president of the *Internationale Gesellschaft für Musikwissenschaft* (International Society for Musicology). He was a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican Edition of the Roman Gradual, of the German Academy of Berlin, and of the Swedish Academy of Stockholm.
His principal studies concerned Gregorian chant, including its historical and palaeographic problems; Mozarabic chant was also the subject of his passionate research and scholarly dissertations. Among his many works, all of the highest historical interest, are: *Das Madrigale und Palestrina* (Leipzig 1892); *Francesco Petrarca «Vergini» in der Komposition des Cipriano de Rore* (ibid. 1893); *Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien*, 3 vols. (ibid. 1901–21); *Über traditionellen Choral und traditionell. Choralvortrag* (ibid. 1905); *Der Kampf gegen die «Editio Vaticana»* (ibid. 1907); *Elemente des gregorianischen Gesangs* (ibid. 1909); *Geschichte der Messe* (ibid. 1914; only vol. I appeared); *Einführung in die katholische Kirchenmusik* (ibid. 1919). Other valuable monographs were printed in miscellanies and journals; he also published organ accompaniments to the Gregorian Gradual and Vesperal.
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WAGNER, RICHARD. — Musician, Protestant, b. at Leipzig on 22 May 1813, d. at Venice on 13 Feb. 1883.
From childhood he devoted himself to the study of ancient tragedies and Shakespeare’s dramas; at twelve he wrote a poem, and at sixteen a pastoral for which he also composed the music, a field in which he soon distinguished himself, completing his musical studies at the University of Leipzig and beginning to compose for the theatre at nineteen. His life was highly eventful and restless; after various sojourns in many European cities, in 1872 he settled in Bayreuth, where the model theatre he had designed and built at the expense of King Ludwig II of Bavaria for the performance of his dramas had been erected. From 1879 he came to winter in Italy, where he died.
Of his rich artistic output, among the twelve dramas—four of which form the immortal tetralogy *Der Ring des Nibelungen* (*Rheingold–Walküre–Siegfried–Götterdämmerung*)—the one that holds particular interest for its religious inspiration is *Parsifal*, which seems almost to crown, with a mystical ascent toward heaven, the tempestuous journey of his tormented soul. The drama centers on the figure of the pure fool, who philosophically may be likened to the pure monad, symbol of the realm of innocence, which triumphs with the return of the ring in *Rheingold*, closing the cycle of unity–multiplicity–unity in German Idealist thought. Here, more than the Christian hero, there shines through the spirit of the Germanic pagan myth, symbolized in the young knight, modeled on the figure of Christ, which almost seems to represent the triumph of the Germanic pagan myth over the Latin tradition and the Catholic spirit of Christianity (depicted in the wounded and dying Amfortas), which had shattered the primitive unity of the German epic.
Besides his musical production, Wagner’s vast prose writings must be remembered, including important theoretical, critical, and philosophical works in which his dramatic ideal is illustrated and his aesthetic thought expounded, such as *Oper und Drama* (1851), *Die Musik der Zukunft* (1860), *Beethoven* (1870), etc.
With regard to sacred music, it is worth noting that Wagner did not disdain to draw from the liturgical repertoire, as for the Grail theme in the 1st act of *Parsifal*, from the responsory *Amen* by Joh. Gottlieb Naumann (1741–80), in use at the cathedral of Dresden, and he had a profound admiration for Palestrinian polyphony, which he considered the artistic apex of church music.