Richard Wagner; Wunderkind Or Monster Essays - Operas,

Richard Wagner; Wunderkind Or Monster Diana Glazer European History AP Research Paper Richard Wagner; Wunderkind or Monster? Richard Wagner remains the most controversial genius in music, perhaps in all the arts. The controversy began during his life - over ten thousand books about him were published before Wagner's death in 1883 - and continues still. The musical world is divided in Wagnerians (sometimes called Wagnerites) and anti-Wagnerians. Many have switched positions as the discover more about their genius, or their monster. In the case of most artists, knowledge of their private lives is not essential to an understanding of the nature of their work. Although Wagner's life doesn't explain his work, it cannot be ignored in an analysis of his work, because it is often the direct antithesis of his creative spirit. Furthermore, bad people are generally more interesting than good ones. Wagner is fascinating: an incredible music-dramatic genius who was an undiluted monster. Wagner is that enigmatic blend of good and evil, great and cruel that sporadically appears in Germany, the country of Kant and Himmler, of Bach and Walter Ulbricht, of Goethe and Goebbels. Wagner's conceit was almost pathological. He read everything aloud to his relatives and friends. He didn't expect criticism, only applause. In Of Mice and Music, Deems Taylor writes Wagner had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts he would rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom...He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. He was convinced that the world owed him a living...He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend, from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a wealthy woman, whom he could marry for her money...He had a genius for making enemies. He would insult a man who disagreed with him about the weather... But h e also concludes that this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time..What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? There is a greatness about his worst mistakes. The miracle is that what he did in the space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius, is it any wonder that he had not time to be a man? He was a complex monster. Financially, he cheated his best friends. For example, Otto Wesendock (the man whose wife Wagner stole away) who bought the publishing rights to Rheingold and Walk?re in 1859, had wide experience with Wagner's character, and was perhaps not too startled to learn that Rheingold was sold again to Schott of Mainz without any intention on Wagner's part of repaying the original advance. As a requital Otto was granted the rights to G?tterd?mmerung - an unwritten work! But in 1865 Wagner demanded that Otto without reimbursement give up all claims to Ring (he had also paid for the incomplete Siegfried) and even surrender - amiably and generously - the orchestral score of Rheingold, his only remaining asset of these transactions, to the Ring's newest proprietor, the Bavarian King. The climax of double dealings came, when King Ludwig's ownership rights, for which he had paid untold thousands of marks, were ignored by Wagner, who proceeded to sell the Ring to individual theater for his own prof it. Obviously, Wagner was a crook on a scale befitting his musical genius. His duplicity extends to almost everything else he did. He extolled the virtue of chastity in his early operas while having numerous affairs. Working in his study in Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth on the first act of his Buhnenweihfestspiel ( a stage-consecrating festival play) Parsifal allegedly a religious work, he wrote to his douce amie, Judith, to send him amber and powdered scents which he spread in his bathroom, located underneath the study so that he could breathe in the ;aromatic fumes rising from below and with them memories of Judith's glowing embraces, while working on the pious admonitions of good, old Gurnemanz. Yet he had the audacity to refer contemptuously to Rossini as Italia's voluptuous son, smiling away in luxury's most luxurious lap. Wagner's pathological hatred of the