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Type of Submission
Podium Presentation
Keywords
Wagner, Ring Cycle, Gesamtkunstwerk, leitmotif, total artwork, music drama, opera
Proposal
Richard Wagner is renowned for his progressive and unprecedented approach to composition. He disapproved of how opera was composed in the past and sought to introduce a new approach that tied multiple art forms together. He believed that music and drama were insufficient performing forces on their own, so he linked the two in a way that had never been seen previously in music history in producing the Ring Cycle. This remains one of the most groundbreaking works in the permanent musical repertoire. Wagner was heavily inspired by the philosophical beliefs of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and formed his own conclusions based off of Schopenhauer's writings. Through the consideration of both Wagner's philosophies and his opinions on what art and music should be, this paper explores the ways in which these sources of inspiration can be directly traced into the compositional techniques Wagner uses in the Ring.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Total Artwork: Wagner's Philosophies on Art and Music in the Ring Cycle
Richard Wagner is renowned for his progressive and unprecedented approach to composition. He disapproved of how opera was composed in the past and sought to introduce a new approach that tied multiple art forms together. He believed that music and drama were insufficient performing forces on their own, so he linked the two in a way that had never been seen previously in music history in producing the Ring Cycle. This remains one of the most groundbreaking works in the permanent musical repertoire. Wagner was heavily inspired by the philosophical beliefs of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and formed his own conclusions based off of Schopenhauer's writings. Through the consideration of both Wagner's philosophies and his opinions on what art and music should be, this paper explores the ways in which these sources of inspiration can be directly traced into the compositional techniques Wagner uses in the Ring.
