WAGNER, RICHARD. - Musician, Protestant, b. in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, d. in Venice on Feb. 13, 1883.
Having devoted himself since childhood to the study of the ancient tragedies and of Shakespeare's dramas, at the age of 12 he wrote a poem, at 16 a pastoral for which he also composed the music, a field in which he soon tried his hand, completing his musical studies at the University of Leipzig and beginning at the age of 19 to compose for the theater. He had a very eventful and restless life; after various stays in many European cities, in 1872 he settled in Bayreuth, where the model theater he had conceived and built at the expense of Louis II of Bavaria for the performance of his dramas had arisen. From 1879 he used to come to spend the winter in Italy, where he died.
Of all his rich artistic production, among the twelve dramas, of which 4 form the immortal tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (Rheingold-Walhäre-Siegfried-Götterdämmerung), the one that has a particular interest for inspiration on a religious subject is Parsifal, which seems almost to crown, with a mystical soaring toward heaven, the stormy journey of his tormented soul. The drama is centered on the figure of the pure fool, who philosophically can be brought back near to the pure monad, symbol of the imperishable kingdom of innocence, which triumphs, with the return of the ring, in the Rheingold, closing with heaven the unity-multiplicity-unity of German idealist thought. Here, more than the Christian hero, there shines through the spirit of the Germanic pagan myth which, symbolized in the young knight, modeled on the figure of Christ, seems almost to represent the triumph of the Germanic pagan myth over the Latin tradition and over the Catholic spirit of Christianity (portrayed in the wounded and dying Amfortas), which had broken the primitive unity of the Germanic epic.
Besides the musical production, one must recall of W. the very rich harvest of prose writings, among which important theoretical, critical and philosophical works, in which his dramatic ideal is illustrated and in which his aesthetic thought is set forth, such as Oper und Drama (1851), Die Musik der Zukunft (1860), Beethoven (1870), etc.
With regard to sacred music it will be interesting to note that W. did not disdain to draw on the liturgical repertoire, as for the theme of the Grail, in the 1st act of Parsifal, from the responsory Amen by Joh. Gottlieb Naumann (1741-80), in use in the cathedral of Dresden, and had a profound admiration for Palestrinian polyphony, which he considered the artistic apex of church music.
Bibliography11 works
Luisa Cervelli