1.
Gesamtkunstwerk
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A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German word which has come to be accepted in English as a term in aesthetics, the term was first used by the German writer and philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff in an essay in 1827. The German opera composer Richard Wagner used the term in two 1849 essays, and the word has become associated with his aesthetic ideals. It is unclear whether Wagner knew of Trahndorffs essay, in the twentieth century, some writers applied the term to some forms of architecture, while others have applied it to film and mass media. Some elements of opera reform, seeking a more classical formula, had begun at the end of the 18th century and this movement, reform opera is primarily associated with Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de Calzabigi. Others who wrote on syntheses of the arts included Gottfried Lessing, Ludwig Tieck, carl Maria von Webers enthusiastic review of E. T. A. He also used in these essays many similar such as the consummate artwork of the future and the integrated drama. Such a work of art was to be the clearest and most profound expression of folk legend, Wagner felt that the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus had been the finest examples so far of total artistic synthesis, but that this synthesis had subsequently been corrupted by Euripides. Wagner felt that during the rest of history up to the present day the arts had drifted further and further apart. Wagner felt that such works celebrated bravura singing, sensational stage effects, in Art and Revolution Wagner applies the term Gesamtkunstwerk in the context of Greek tragedy. In The Art-Work of the Future he uses it to apply to his own, as yet unrealised, ideal. In his extensive book Opera and Drama he takes these ideas further, describing in detail his idea of the union of opera and drama, in which the individual arts are subordinated to a common purpose. It has been argued by historian Robert L. Delevoy that Art Nouveau represented an essentially decorative trend that thus lent itself to the idea of the architectural Gesamtkunstwerk. But it is possible it was born from social theories that arose out of a fear of the rise of industrialism. However evidence of complete interiors that typify the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk can be some time before the 1890s. There was a trend amongst architects in the 18th and 19th centuries to control every facet of an architectural commission. As well as being responsible for just the structure they tried to extend their role to include designing every aspect of the work as well. This included not only the architectural features but was extended to the design of furniture, carpets, wallpaper, fabrics
2.
Richard Wagner
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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and he described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
3.
Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld
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Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld was a German Heldentenor and the creator of the role of Tristan in Richard Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde. His career was curtailed by an illness which killed him at the age of 29. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld was born in Munich, a son of the famous painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, later, he became a pupil of Kreuzschule in Dresden, home of the Dresdner Kreuzchor. This may have influenced his decision not to follow the tradition of becoming a professional painter but to study singing instead. He made his début in 1858 at Karlsruhe, by 1860, he had also sung at the Semperoper in Dresden and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, appearing in Bellinis Norma and Webers Der Freischütz. He soon gained fame as an intelligent and dedicated singer, with a strong voice especially suited to works by Richard Wagner. In 1860, Schnorr married the Danish-born soprano Malvina Garrigues, who was ten years his senior, King Ludwig II of Bavaria heard the tenor as Lohengrin in 1861. This performance is said to have one of a series that turned the king into an ardent supporter of Wagner. In 1862, Schnorr and his wife met Wagner himself in Biebrich near Wiesbaden, Wagner asked them to sing passages from his new opera, Tristan und Isolde, apparently, the composer was impressed by the results. An attempt to stage the opera in Vienna failed after over 70 rehearsals. It was at Wagners own request that Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife were then cast as Tristan and Isolde, the premiere finally took place in Munich on June 10,1865, but the work received mixed reviews, with some critics even calling it indecent. It was given again on June 13 and 19, and by royal command on July 1, on July 9 Schnorr sang in The Flying Dutchman. This proved to be his final Wagnerian performance, as he died suddenly in Dresden on July 21 and his mysterious and early death made him a legend, and it was often attributed by medical laymen to the enormous exertions required of a Wagnerian Heldentenor. In reality, however, a followed by rheumatic complications had caused an apoplexic event to which the overweight tenor succumbed. Following her husbands death, Malvina retired from the stage, references Sources David Ewen, Encyclopedia of the Opera. Www. mild-und-leise. de, Biography of Malvine Schnorr von Carolsfeld
4.
Malvina Garrigues
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Malvina Garrigues, later Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld was a Portuguese operatic soprano who was born in Denmark and made her career in Germany. She and her husband Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld created the roles in Richard Wagners Tristan und Isolde in 1865. Her given name appears as Malwina and Malwine but Malvina is the right spelling. Eugénia Malvina Garrigues was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the daughter of the Portuguese consul there, João António Henriques Garrigues, portugals Queen Maria II assigned her father as consul to Denmark by decree of 17 November 1825. So there is no Brazilian ascendency in Malvina Garrigues, as she was christened in the Portuguese consulate as a Portuguese citizen and she studied in Paris with Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García. She was great-grand-niece of David Garrick and her first cousin was Danish-American doctor Henry Jacques Garrigues. She made her debut in Giacomo Meyerbeers Robert le diable in Breslau in 1841, from 1849 to 1853 she worked at the ducal Hoftheater at Coburg, and in Gotha and Hamburg. In 1854 she was engaged by the Karlsruhe Opera, where she met Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and they appeared there together in such operas as Les Huguenots. They became engaged in 1857 and married in April 1860, the same year they were engaged by the Dresden Court Opera. After conducting 70 rehearsals of his Tristan und Isolde in Vienna and still finding the singers wanting, Richard Wagner turned to Malvina, the premiere was set for 15 May 1865 in Munich, but had to be postponed to 10 June owing to Malvinas hoarseness. After Ludwigs sudden and untimely death at the age of 29 on 21 July 1865, only six weeks after the premiere, Malvina sank into a deep depression and never sang again. She took up spiritualism, and was influenced by one of her pupils to believe she was destined to marry Wagner. This caused her to be jealous of Cosima von Bülow, who was living openly with Wagner at Tribschen. She later taught singing at Frankfurt, her pupils included Heinrich Gudehus, Malvina Garrigues Schnorr von Carolsfeld also wrote a small number of songs dedicated to Jenny Lind, to texts by Heinrich Heine and Lord Byron. She published some poetry by herself and her husband and she died in Karlsruhe in 1904, aged 78, was cremated in Heidelberg, and her ashes are located in Dresden. She has been the subject of a stage show, O. Created by Dame Gwyneth Jones, who played her in the 1983 film Wagner. Malvina Garrigues at the bayerisches musiker lexikon online Malvina Garrigues at Find a Grave
5.
Gottfried von Strassburg
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Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfrieds work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbachs Parzival and the Nibelungenlied and he is probably also the composer of a small number of surviving lyrics. His work became a source of inspiration for Richard Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde, other than an origin in or close association with Strasbourg, nothing is known of his life. Tristan ends abruptly, and according to the testimony of Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg, references in the work suggest it was written during the first decade of the 13th century, and 1210 is taken, conventionally, as the date of Gottfrieds death. His thorough familiarity with Latin literature and rhetorical theory suggest someone who had enjoyed a level of monastic education. He also shows detailed knowledge of music and hunting, far beyond anything found in the works of his contemporaries. Gottfried draws more on the tradition of medieval humanism than on the chivalric ethos shared by his major literary contemporaries. He also appears to have influenced by the writings of contemporary Christian mystics. Although he was educated, it is almost certain that he was not a priest. Of this his occasional sneers at the clergy are perhaps a better proof than the morality of much of his work, Gottfrieds rhetorical style is very distinct among his contemporaries. It is incredibly complex, marked by the use of symmetrical structure in his organization of Tristan as a whole. Gottfried also uses detailed word and sound patterns, playing with things as rhyme, alliteration. See Batts for a detailed analysis, one of the greatest hallmarks of Gottfrieds style is his skillful use of irony, to both humorous and tragic effects. He may also have relied on irony to disguise his criticisms of society in order to avoid censure. Gottfried states that the Tristan of Thomas of Britain, an Anglo-French work of around 1160, was the source of his work, unfortunately, Thomass work, too, is fragmentary and there is little overlap with Gottfrieds poem, making it difficult to evaluate Gottfrieds originality directly. However, Thomass Tristan was the source of a number of other versions and it is clear that while Gottfrieds statement of his reliance on and debt to Thomas is correct, he both expanded on his source and refined the story psychologically. Thomass source, in turn, is a now lost Old French Tristan story, reconstructed by Joseph Bédier, the text of Tristan is 19,548 lines long, and is written, like all courtly romances, in rhyming couplets. The first section of the prologue is written in quatrains and is referred to as the prologue, while pairs of quatrains, of sententious content
6.
National Theatre Munich
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The National Theater on Max-Joseph-Platz in Munich, Germany is a historic opera house, home of the Bavarian State Opera, Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Ballet. The first theatre was commissioned in 1810 by King Maximilian I of Bavaria because the nearby Cuvilliés Theatre had too little space and it was designed by Karl von Fischer, with the 1782 Odéon in Paris as architectural precedent. Construction began on 26 October 1811 but was interrupted in 1813 by financing problems, in 1817 a fire occurred in the unfinished building. Coincidentally the Paris Odéon itself burned down in 1818, designed by Leo von Klenze, the second theater incorporated Neo-Grec features in its portico and triangular pediment and an entrance supported by Corinthian columns. In 1925 it was modified to create a stage area with updated equipment. The building was gutted in an air raid on the night of 3 October 1943, the third and present theatre recreates Karl von Fischers original neo-classical design, though on a slightly larger,2, 100-seat scale. The magnificent royal box is the center of the interior rondel, the new stage covers 2,500 square metres, and is thus the worlds third largest, after the Opéra Bastille in Paris and the Grand Theatre, Warsaw. Through the consistent use of wood as a material, the auditorium has excellent acoustics. Architect Gerhard Moritz Graubner closely preserved the look of the foyer. It opened on 21 November 1963 with a performance of Die Frau ohne Schatten under the baton of Joseph Keilberth. Two nights later came the first public performance, of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, during its early years, the National Theatre saw the premières of a significant number of operas, including many by German composers. During the latter part of the 19th century, it was Richard Strauss who would make his mark on the theatre in the city in which he was born in 1864. After accepting the position of conductor for a time, Strauss returned to the theatre to become principal conductor from 1894 to 1898. In the pre-War period, his Friedenstag and Capriccio were premièred in Munich, in the post-War period, the house has seen significant productions and many world premieres. The list refers only to those premieres of the Bavarian State Opera staged in the National Theatre, the Bavarian State Opera had additional premieres also in other theatres. The Bayerisches Staatsballett had also premieres in the National Theatre
7.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
8.
Libretto
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A libretto is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata. Libretto, from Italian, is the diminutive of the word libro, sometimes other language equivalents are used for libretti in that language, livret for French works and Textbuch for German. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. The relationship of the librettist to the composer in the creation of a work has varied over the centuries, as have the sources. In the context of a modern English language musical theatre piece, Libretti for operas, oratorios and cantatas in the 17th and 18th centuries generally were written by someone other than the composer, often a well-known poet. Metastasio was one of the most highly regarded librettists in Europe and his libretti were set many times by many different composers. Another noted 18th-century librettist was Lorenzo Da Ponte, who wrote the libretti for three of Mozarts greatest operas, as well as for other composers. Eugène Scribe was one of the most prolific librettists of the 19th century, providing the words for works by Meyerbeer, Auber, Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi. The French writers duo Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote a number of opera and operetta libretti for the likes of Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet. Arrigo Boito, who wrote libretti for, among others, Giuseppe Verdi and Amilcare Ponchielli, the libretto is not always written before the music. Some composers wrote their own libretti, Richard Wagner is perhaps most famous in this regard, with his transformations of Germanic legends and events into epic subjects for his operas and music dramas. Hector Berlioz, too, wrote the libretti for two of his works, La Damnation de Faust and Les Troyens. Alban Berg adapted Georg Büchners play Woyzeck for the libretto of Wozzeck, sometimes the libretto is written in close collaboration with the composer, this can involve adaptation, as was the case with Rimsky-Korsakov and his librettist Belsky, or an entirely original work. In the case of musicals, the music, the lyrics, thus, a musical such as Fiddler on the Roof has a composer, a lyricist and the writer of the book. In rare cases, the composer writes everything except the dance arrangements - music, lyrics and libretto, Other matters in the process of developing a libretto parallel those of spoken dramas for stage or screen. A famous case of the latter is Wagners 1861 revision of the original 1845 Dresden version of his opera Tannhäuser for Paris, since the late 19th century some opera composers have written music to prose or free verse libretti. The libretto of a musical, on the hand, is almost always written in prose
9.
Playwright
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A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes plays. The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct, hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form - someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case entirely coincidental, the term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and this view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation, the earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC, such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, the act of making and this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first play-writing manual, in this famous text, Aristotle established the principle of action or praxis as the basis for all drama. He then included a hierarchy of elements for the beginning with plot, character, thought, diction, music. The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was equated with choice as rather than psychology, so that character was determined by action, in tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the individual. Thought had more to do and the imitation of an action that is serious, thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. It provides the basis for the play, a term still held as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. The Poetics, while very brief and highly condensed, is studied today. Perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet, who embraces the idea of character as agent of the action, and emphasizes causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed-the-Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian, in that it observes the unities and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals. The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time
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Arthur Schopenhauer
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Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and his writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology would exert important influence on thinkers and artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his life, Schopenhauer has had an impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature. When Danzig became part of Prussia in 1793, Heinrich moved to Hamburg, as early as 1799, Arthur started playing the flute. In 1805, Schopenhauers father died, possibly by suicide and he dedicated himself wholly to studies at the Gotha gymnasium in Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, but left in disgust after seeing one of the masters lampooned. By that time, Johanna Schopenhauer had already opened her famous salon and he was also disgusted by the ease with which his mother had forgotten his fathers memory. He left to become a student at the University of Göttingen in 1809, there he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the author of Aenesidemus, who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant. In Berlin, from 1811 to 1812, he had attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schopenhauer had a notably strained relationship with his mother Johanna. He wrote his first book, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and his mother informed him that the book was incomprehensible and it was unlikely that anyone would ever buy a copy. In a fit of temper Arthur Schopenhauer told her that his work would be long after the rubbish she wrote would have been totally forgotten. In fact, although they considered her novels of dubious quality and we published more and more of her son Arthurs work and today nobody remembers Johanna, but her sons works are in steady demand and contribute to Brockhaus reputation. He kept large portraits of the pair in his office in Leipzig for the edification of his new editors, in 1814, Schopenhauer began his seminal work The World as Will and Representation. He finished it in 1818 and Brockhaus published it that December, in Dresden in 1819, Schopenhauer fathered, with a servant, an illegitimate daughter who was born and died the same year. In 1820, Schopenhauer became a lecturer at the University of Berlin and he scheduled his lectures to coincide with those of the famous philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whom Schopenhauer described as a clumsy charlatan. However, only five students turned up to Schopenhauers lectures, a late essay, On University Philosophy, expressed his resentment towards the work conducted in academies. While in Berlin, Schopenhauer was named as a defendant in a lawsuit initiated by a woman named Caroline Marquet and she asked for damages, alleging that Schopenhauer had pushed her. According to Schopenhauers court testimony, she annoyed him by raising her voice while standing right outside his door. Marquet alleged that the philosopher had assaulted and battered her after she refused to leave his doorway and her companion testified that she saw Marquet prostrate outside his apartment
11.
The World as Will and Representation
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The World as Will and Representation is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in 1818/19, the expanded edition in 1844. In 1948, a version was edited by Thomas Mann. In the English language, this work is known under three different titles, although English publications about Schopenhauer played a role in the recognition of his fame as a philosopher in later life and a three volume translation by R. B. Haldane and J. F. J. Payne as late as in 1958, a later English translation by Richard E. Aquila in collaboration with David Carus is titled The World as Will and Presentation. Present day translator Richard Aquila argues that the reader will not grasp the details of the philosophy of Schopenhauer properly without this new title, The World as Will and Presentation. The other aspect of the world, the Will, or thing in itself, which is not perceivable as a presentation, exists outside time, space, Aquila claims to make these distinctions as linguistically precise as possible. However, the contains a appendix entitled critique of the Kantian philosophy, in which Schopenhauer rejects most of Kants ethics and significant parts of his epistemology. He also states in his introduction that the reader will be at his best prepared to understand his theories if he has lingered in the school of Plato or he is familiar with Indian philosophy. Schopenhauer believed that Kant had ignored inner experience, as intuited through the will, Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the world behind the representation, the Kantian thing-in-itself. According to Schopenhauer, the world is the representation of a single Will. In this way, Schopenhauers metaphysics go beyond the limits that Kant had set, other important differences are Schopenhauers rejection of eleven of Kants twelve categories, arguing that only causality was important. Matter and causality were both seen as a union of time and space and thus being equal to each other, the development of Schopenhauers ideas took place very early in his career and culminated in the publication of the first volume of Will and Representation in 1819. This first volume consisted of four books – covering his epistemology, ontology, aesthetics and ethics and his views had not changed substantially. His belated fame after 1851 stimulated renewed interest in his seminal work, Schopenhauer used the word will as a humans most familiar designation for the concept that can also be signified by other words such as desire, striving, wanting, effort, and urging. Schopenhauers philosophy holds that all nature, including man, is the expression of an insatiable will to life and it is through the will that mankind finds all their suffering. Desire for more is what causes this suffering and he argues that only aesthetic pleasure creates momentary escape from the Will. Our inner-experience must be a manifestation of the realm and the will is the inner kernel of every being
12.
Mathilde Wesendonck
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Mathilde Wesendonck was a German poet and author. She is best known as the friend and possible paramour of Richard Wagner, agnes Mathilde Luckemeyer was born in Elberfeld in the Rhineland of Germany in 1828. In 1848 she married the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck, Otto was a great admirer of Wagners music, and after he and Mathilde met the composer in Zurich in 1852, he placed a cottage on his estate at Wagners disposal. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde and it is not known whether she returned his affections to the same degree, or if the affair - if there was one - was ever consummated. Nevertheless, the episode inspired Wagner to put aside his work on Der Ring des Nibelungen, in 1858, Wagner’s wife Minna intercepted a romantic letter from Wagner to Mathilde. After the resulting confrontation, Wagner left Zürich alone, for Venice, Minna went to Dresden to stay with her family. She wrote to Mathilde before departing for Dresden, I must tell you with a heart that you have succeeded in separating my husband from me after nearly twenty-two years of marriage. May this noble deed contribute to peace of mind, to your happiness. In her autobiographical reminiscences Mathilde later wrote about Wagners stay in Zürich, in 1866 Mathilde met with Johannes Brahms in Zürich and enabled him to study some of Wagners manuscripts. Mathilde Wesendonck died in Altmünster in 1902, and she is buried at the Alten Friedhof with the Wesendonck family in Bonn, gedichte, Volkslieder, Legenden, Sagen Märchen u. Märchen Spiele Natur-Mythen, Mai 1865 Genovefa, Trauerspiel in 3 Aufzügen Gudrun. Mathilde Wesendonck was portrayed by Valentina Cortese in the 1955 film Magic Fire and her legacy as assumed lover of Richard Wagner lives on with reference to her in Rhett Millers song Our Love from the album The Instigator. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, works by or about Mathilde Wesendonck in libraries
13.
Chromaticism
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Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism, chromatic elements are considered elaborations of or substitutions for diatonic scale members. Chromaticism is almost by definition an alteration of, an interpolation in or deviation from this basic diatonic organization, though these styles/methods continue to incorporate tonality or tonal elements, often the trends that led to these methods were abandoned, such as modulation. David Cope describes three forms of chromaticism, modulation, borrowed chords from secondary keys, and chromatic chords such as augmented sixth chords, the total chromatic is the collection of all twelve equally tempered pitch classes of the chromatic scale. Similarly, a chord is one which includes one or more such notes. A chromatic scale is one which proceeds entirely by semitones, so dividing the octave into twelve equal steps of one semitone each, linear chromaticism, is used in jazz, All improvised lines. will include non-harmonic, chromatic notes. In other words, at least one note of the chord is chromatically altered, any chord that is not chromatic is a diatonic chord. Examples, ♭II in first inversion is called the Neapolitan sixth chord, for example in C Major, F–A♭–D♭. The Neapolitan Sixth chord resolves to the V, the ♯IV diminished chord is the Sharpened subdominant with diminished seventh chord. The ♯IV diminished chord resolves to the V, the ♯IV can also be understood as the tonicization of V where it functions as viio7 of the V chord, written viio7/V. ♭VI, The Augmented sixth chord resolves to the V, in music theory, passus duriusculus is a Latin term which refers to chromatic line, often a bassline, whether descending or ascending. From the late 16th century onward, chromaticism has come to symbolize intense emotional expression in music, the chromatic symbolizing darkness doubt and grief and the diatonic light, affirmation and joy—this imagery has hardly changed for three centuries. Nevertheless the convention is a one and the emotional associations evoked by chromaticism have endured and indeed strengthened over the years. The rich harmonization of a chromatic scale in the Sleep Motif from Wagners opera Die Walkure. Donington speaks of this musics slow chromatic drift and its modulations as elusive as the drift into sleep itself. Chromaticism is often associated with dissonance, in the 16th century the repeated melodic semitone became associated with weeping, see, passus duriusculus, lament bass, and pianto. For instance, Catherine Clément calls the chromaticism in Wagners Isolde feminine stink, 20th-century music – Classical Passus duriusculus, Bach-Cantatas. com
14.
Nonchord tone
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A nonchord tone, nonharmonic tone, or embellishing tone is a note in a piece of music or song that is not part of the implied or expressed chord set out by the harmonic framework. Similarly, a tone is a note that is a part of the functional chord. Chord and nonchord tones are defined by their membership in a chord, The pitches which make up a chord are called chord-tones and they are also defined by the time at which they sound, Nonharmonic tones are pitches that sound along with a chord but are not chord pitches. For example, if an excerpt from a piece of music implies or uses a C major chord, then notes C, E and G are members of that chord, such tones are most obvious in homophonic music but occur at least as frequently in contrapuntal music. Most nonharmonic tones are dissonant and create intervals of a second, fourth or seventh, if the note fails to resolve until the next change of harmony, it may instead create a seventh chord or extended chord. While it is possible that for a three-note chord there are nine possible nonchord tones. Nonharmonic tones generally occur in a pattern of three pitches, of which the tone is the center, Nonchord tones are distinguished through how they are used. The most important distinction is whether they occur on a strong or weak beat and are thus accented or unaccented and they are also distinguished by their direction of approach and departure and the voice or voices in which they occur, and the number of notes they contain. Over the centuries of history, tones which were considered to be nonchord tones came to be viewed as chord tones. In 1940s-era bebop jazz, tones which were considered to be nonchord tones, such as playing an F♯ note with a C7 chord. Certainly no one doubts the need for embellishments. They are indeed indispensable and they connect notes, animate them, lend them a special effect and weight when required, make them pleasing and thus arouse a particular attentiveness. Embellishments help to clarify the content of the notes—be it sad, joyful, an anticipation occurs when this note is approached by step and then remains the same. It is basically a note of the second chord played early, the dissonant in bar 1 is approached by step and resolves when that same pitch becomes a chord tone in bar 2. However, following Heinrich Schenkers usage in Free Composition, some reserve the term neighbor note to the lower neighbor a half step below the main note. The German term Nebennote is a broader category, including all nonchord tones approached from the main note by step. A passing tone or passing note is a nonchord tone prepared by a tone a step above or below it. Where two non-chord notes are before the resolution they are double passing tones or double passing notes, as with above but on an accented beat. A neighbor tone where you step up or down from the chord tone, endeavor, moreover, to introduce suspensions now in this voice, now in that, for it is incredible how much grace the melody acquires by this means
15.
Gustav Mahler
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Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century, born in Bohemia as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the regular opposition. Late in his life he was director of New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Mahlers œuvre is relatively limited, for much of his composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Some of Mahlers immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composers life, the Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia and were of humble circumstances, the composers grandmother had been a street pedlar. Bohemia was then part of the Austrian Empire, the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, from this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, always an intruder, never welcomed. Bernhard Mahler, the son and the composers father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman. He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt, halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the center of todays Czech Republic. Bernhards wife, Marie, gave birth to the first of the couples 14 children, a son Isidor, two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born. In December 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the town of Iglau,25 km to the south-east, the family grew rapidly, but of the 12 children born to the family in Iglau only six survived infancy. All of these elements would later contribute to his musical vocabulary. When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents piano and he developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local Wunderkind and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his reports from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded. In 1871, in the hope of improving the results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague. In 1874 he suffered a personal loss when his younger brother Ernst died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music, with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he work on an opera
16.
Richard Strauss
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Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, the son of Josephine and Franz Strauss, in his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six and continued to write music almost until his death, during his boyhood Strauss attended orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, where he received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor. In 1872 he started receiving violin instruction at the Royal School of Music from Benno Walter, in 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. The influence of Wagners music on Strausss style was to be profound, but at first his musically conservative father forbade him to study it. Indeed, in the Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, in later life, Strauss said that he deeply regretted the conservative hostility to Wagners progressive works. Nevertheless, Strausss father undoubtedly had a influence on his sons developing taste. In early 1882 in Vienna he gave the first performance of his Violin Concerto in D minor, playing a piano reduction of the part himself. The same year he entered Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied philosophy and art history, Strauss learned the art of conducting by observing Bülow in rehearsal. Bülow was very fond of the man and decided that Strauss should be his successor as conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra when Bülow resigned in 1885. Strausss compositions at time were indebted to the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn. 1, Op.11, is representative of this period and is a staple of modern horn repertoire, Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on 10 September 1894. She was famous for being irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken, throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he preferred the soprano voice to all others, and all his operas contain important soprano roles. The Strausses had one son, Franz, in 1897, Franz married Alice von Grab-Hermannswörth, daughter of a Jewish industrialist, in a Roman Catholic ceremony in 1924. Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian, some of Strausss first compositions were solo instrumental and chamber works. After 1890 Strauss composed very infrequently for chamber groups, his energies being almost completely absorbed with large-scale orchestral works and operas. Four of his pieces are actually arrangements of portions of his operas, including the Daphne-Etude for solo violin and the String Sextet
17.
Karol Szymanowski
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Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Polish composer and pianist, the most celebrated Polish composer of the early 20th century. He is considered a member of the late 19th-/early 20th-century modernist movement Young Poland. The early works show the influence of the late Romantic German school as well as the works of Alexander Scriabin, as exemplified by his Étude Op.4 No.3. Later, he developed an impressionistic and partially atonal style, represented by works as the Third Symphony. His third period was influenced by the music of the Polish Górale people, including the ballet Harnasie, the Fourth Symphony. King Roger, composed between 1918-1924, remains the most popular opera by Szymanowski, Szymanowski was born into the Korwin-Szymanowski family, members of the wealthy land-owning Polish gentry class, in the village of Tymoszówka, then in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire. He studied music privately with his father before enrolling at the Gustav Neuhaus Elisavetgrad School of Music in 1892, from 1901 he attended the State Conservatory in Warsaw, of which he was later director from 1926 until retiring in 1930. Since musical opportunities in Russian-occupied Poland were quite limited, he travelled throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, being lame in one knee made him unsuitable for military service in World War I. In 1918, Szymanowski completed the manuscript of a novel, Efebos. His travels, especially those to the Mediterranean area, provided him with new experience, after his return he raved about Sicily, especially Taormina. There, he said, I saw a few young men bathing who could be models for Antinous, I couldnt take my eyes off them. Now he was a confirmed homosexual and he told me all this with burning eyes. Szymanowski settled in Warsaw in 1919, in 1926 he accepted the position of Director of the Warsaw Conservatory though he had little administrative experience. He became seriously ill in 1928 and temporarily lost his post and he was diagnosed with an acute form of tuberculosis, and in 1929 traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for medical treatment. Szymanowski resumed his position at the Conservatory in 1930, but the school was closed two years later by a ministerial decision and he moved to Villa Atma in Zakopane where he composed fervently. In 1936 Szymanowski received more treatment at a sanatorium in Grasse and he died at a sanatorium in Lausanne on 29 March 1937. His body was brought back to Poland by his sister Stanisława and laid to rest at Skałka in Kraków, Szymanowskis long correspondence with the pianist Jan Smeterlin, who was a significant champion of his piano works, was published in 1969. Szymanowski was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin and the impressionism of Claude Debussy and he also drew much influence from his countryman Frédéric Chopin and from Polish folk music
18.
Alban Berg
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Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with twelve-tone technique, Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Conrad Berg. His family lived comfortably until the death of his father in 1900 and he was more interested in literature than music as a child and did not begin to compose until he was fifteen, when he started to teach himself music. In late February or early March 1902 he fathered a child with Marie Scheuchl and his daughter, Albine, was born on December 4,1902. Berg had little formal education before he became a student of Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. With Schoenberg he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony, by 1906, he was studying music full-time, by 1907, he began composition lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for piano sonatas and he also wrote songs, including his Seven Early Songs, three of which were Bergs first publicly performed work in a concert that featured the music of Schoenbergs pupils in Vienna that year. The early sonata sketches eventually culminated in Bergs Piano Sonata, Op.1, Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911. Berg admired him as a composer and mentor, and they remained lifelong friends. Among Schoenbergs teaching was the idea that the unity of a musical composition depends upon all its aspects being derived from a basic idea. The Piano Sonata is a whole composition is derived from the works opening quartal gesture. Berg was a part of Viennas cultural elite during the fin de siècle period. His circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, the painter Gustav Klimt, the writer and satirist Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos, and the poet Peter Altenberg. In 1906, Berg met the singer Helene Nahowski, daughter of a family, despite the outward hostility of her family. In 1913, two of Bergs Five Songs on Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg were premièred in Vienna, settings of aphoristic poetic utterances, the songs are accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot, and had to be halted, the full score remained unpublished until 1966. From 1915 to 1918, Berg served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and during a period of leave in 1917 he accelerated work on his first opera, after the end of World War I, he settled again in Vienna, where he taught private pupils. Berg had a particular interest in the number 23, using it to several works
19.
Arnold Schoenberg
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Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian composer, music theorist, and painter. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, by 1938, with the rise of the Nazi Party, Schoenbergs works were labeled degenerate music, because he was Jewish. He moved to the United States in 1934, Schoenbergs approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms, later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a melodic idea. Schoenbergs archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, at Obere Donaustraße 5. His father Samuel, a native of Bratislava, was a shopkeeper and he took only counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law. In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works and he later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Strauss turned to a more conservative idiom in his own work after 1909, Mahler adopted him as a protégé and continued to support him, even after Schoenbergs style reached a point Mahler could no longer understand. Mahler worried about who would look after him after his death, Schoenberg, who had initially despised and mocked Mahlers music, was converted by the thunderbolt of Mahlers Third Symphony, which he considered a work of genius. Afterward he spoke of Mahler as a saint, in 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the Lutheran church. According to MacDonald this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions and he would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life. In October 1901, he married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and he and Mathilde had two children, Gertrud and Georg. Gertrud would marry Schoenbergs pupil Felix Greissle in 1921, during the summer of 1908, his wife Mathilde left him for several months for a young Austrian painter, Richard Gerstl. This period marked a change in Schoenbergs work. This was the first composition without any reference at all to a key, also in this year, he completed one of his most revolutionary compositions, the String Quartet No
20.
Benjamin Britten
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Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten OM CH was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes, the War Requiem, Born in Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge, Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame, over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadlers Wells and Covent Garden, he wrote operas for small forces. Among the best known of these is The Turn of the Screw, recurring themes in his operas include the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society and the corruption of innocence. Brittens other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and he took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, including the opera Noyes Fludde, a Missa Brevis, and the song collection Friday Afternoons. He often composed with particular performers in mind, Britten was a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record. He also performed and recorded works by others, such as Bachs Brandenburg concertos, Mozart symphonies, in his last year, he was the first composer to be given a life peerage. Britten was born in the port of Lowestoft in Suffolk, on the east coast of England on 22 November 1913. He was the youngest of four children of Robert Victor Britten and his wife Edith Rhoda, Robert Brittens youthful ambition to become a farmer had been thwarted by lack of capital, and he had instead trained as a dentist, a profession he practised successfully but without pleasure. While studying at Charing Cross Hospital in London he met Edith Hockey and they were married in September 1901 at St Johns, Smith Square, London. The consensus among biographers of Britten is that his father was a loving but somewhat stern, Britten, according to his sister Beth, got on well with him and shared his wry sense of humour, dedication to work and capacity for taking pains. Edith Britten was an amateur musician and secretary of the Lowestoft Musical Society. In the English provinces of the early 20th century, distinctions of class were taken very seriously. Music was the means by which Edith Britten strove to maintain the familys social standing, inviting the pillars of the local community to musical soirées at the house. When Britten was three months old he contracted pneumonia and nearly died, the illness left him with a damaged heart, and doctors warned his parents that he would probably never be able to lead a normal life
21.
Claude Debussy
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Achille-Claude Debussy, known since the 1890s as Claude-Achille Debussy or Claude Debussy, was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music and he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Debussys music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, Debussy, the oldest of five children, was born Achille-Claude Debussy on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a shop there, his mother. The family moved to Paris in 1867, but in 1870 Debussys pregnant mother fled with Claude to his aunts home in Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian War. At the age of seven, he began lessons with an Italian violinist in his early 40s named Jean Cerutti. In 1871 he drew the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence to support her claim. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire and he also became a lifelong friend of fellow student and distinguished pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussys death, many pianists sought Philipps advice on playing his works, Debussy was experimental from the outset, favouring dissonances and intervals that were not taught at the Academy. Like Georges Bizet, he was a brilliant pianist and a sight reader. However, Debussy never once won a competition, and his personal opinion on competitions are that it is rather. The rules are taught in places called Conservatories, Art Schools, the contests, preceded by strict training, take place once a year and the umpires of the game are members of the institute —Monsieur Croche. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber,2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, during the summers of 1880,1881, and 1882, he accompanied Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as she travelled with her family in Europe. Despite von Mecks closeness to Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent his Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovskys perusal, a month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, It is a pretty piece. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, Debussy did not publish the piece, and the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, it was eventually sold to B
22.
Maurice Ravel
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Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, in the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as Frances greatest living composer. After leaving the conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with form, as in his best-known work, Boléro. He made some arrangements of other composers music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, many of his works exist in two versions, a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his music, such as Gaspard de la nuit, is exceptionally difficult to play. Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public, from the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works, others were made under his supervision. Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France and his father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid, in 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was a happy one. Both Ravels parents were Roman Catholics, Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son and he was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born and he was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession. Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother, her Basque-Spanish heritage was an influence on his life. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him, the household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods. Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, in later life, Ravel recalled, Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste. There is no record that Ravel received any formal schooling in his early years
23.
Igor Stravinsky
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Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century, Stravinskys compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. His Russian phase which continued with such as Renard, The Soldiers Tale. The works from this tended to make use of traditional musical forms, drawing on earlier styles. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures, Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, the Russian imperial capital, and was brought up in Saint Petersburg. It is believed that Stravinsky’s ancestry is traceable back to the 17th and 18th centuries, to the bearers of the Soulima, ivan Sulima, was a famous Ukrainian hetman 1628–1635. Stravinskys family branch most likely came from Stravinskas, polonized Lithuanian land owners and it is still unclear to when exactly the Soulima part of the surname was dropped. Stravinsky recalled his schooldays as being lonely, later saying that I never came across anyone who had any attraction for me. Stravinsky began piano lessons as a boy, studying music theory. In 1890, he saw a performance of Tchaikovskys ballet The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre, despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to study law. Stravinsky enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1901, Stravinskys father died of cancer that year, by which time his son had already begun spending more time on his musical studies than on law. Thereafter, he concentrated on studying music, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he came to regard as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakovs death in 1908, in 1905 Stravinsky was betrothed to his cousin Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko, whom he had known since early childhood. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed by Fireworks to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations and then to compose a ballet score. The early period of Igor Stravinsky’s work would be incomplete without a research of his life while in Ukraine. From approximately 1890 till 1914 the composer was frequently visiting Ustyluh, town in Volyn Oblast and he spent most of his summers there and that’s where he met his cousin, Katherine Nosenko who he married in 1906. In 1907 Stravinsky designed and built his own house in Ustyluh where his own family stayed often during summer times until 1914 and his new Ukrainian home he called “My heavenly place”. In this house Igor Stravinsky worked on his seventeen early compositions, among which were orchestral fantasy Fireworks, ballets Firebird, Petrushka, currently, after its renovation this house is the only composers house-museum opened to the public
24.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
25.
Semperoper
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The Semperoper is the opera house of the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden and the concert hall of the Staatskapelle Dresden. It is also home to the Semperoper ballet, the building is located near the Elbe River in the historic centre of Dresden, Germany. The opera house was built by the architect Gottfried Semper in 1841. After a devastating fire in 1869, the house was rebuilt, partly again by Semper. The opera house has a history of premieres, including major works by Richard Wagner. The first opera house at the location of todays Semperoper was built by the architect Gottfried Semper and it opened on 13 April 1841 with an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. The building style itself is debated among many, as it has features that appear in three styles, Early Renaissance and Baroque, with Corinthian style pillars typical of Greek classical revival. Perhaps the most suitable label for this style would be eclecticism, where influences from many styles are used, nevertheless, the opera building, Sempers first, is regarded as one of the most beautiful European opera houses. Following a devastating fire in 1869, the citizens of Dresden immediately set about rebuilding their opera house and they demanded that Gottfried Semper do the reconstruction, even though he was then in exile because of his involvement in the May 1849 uprising in Dresden. The architect had his son, Manfred Semper, build the opera house using his plans. Completed in 1878, it was built in Neo-Renaissance style, during the construction period, performances were held at the Gewerbehaussaal, which opened in 1870. The building is considered to be an example of Dresden Baroque architecture. It is situated on the Theatre Square in central Dresden on the bank of the Elbe River, on top of the portal there is a Panther quadriga with a statue of Dionysos. The interior was created by architects of the time, such as Johannes Schilling, monuments on the portal depict artists, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Molière and Euripides. The building also features work by Ernst Rietschel and Ernst Julius Hähnel, in the pre-war years, the Semperoper premiered many of the works of Richard Strauss. In 1945, during the last months of World War II, the building was destroyed again. Exactly 40 years later, on 13 February 1985, the reconstruction was completed. It was rebuilt to be almost identical to its appearance before the war, but with the benefit of new stage machinery, the Semperoper reopened with the opera that was performed just before the buildings destruction in 1945, Carl Maria von Webers Der Freischütz
26.
May Uprising in Dresden
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The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony in 1849, it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848. In the German states, revolutions began in March 1848, starting in Berlin, to form the Assembly, near-democratic elections had taken place across the German states, the majority of the members were Saxon democrats. On 28 March 1849 the Assembly passed the first Reichsverfassung for Germany, movements sprang up across the German states to force through the new constitution but the National Assembly disintegrated. In Saxony, Frederick Augustus II had never recognised the constitution, in Württemberg the more radical elements of the National Assembly formed a rump parliament in Stuttgart, which was defeated by Prussian troops. At the same time, the people of Saxony began to react to the repression of the democratic movement — the May Uprising began, at first the Saxon town councillors attempted to persuade Frederick Augustus II to accept the constitution in public speeches. The municipal guards who should have controlled them were on their side and made an address to the King, the King was unyielding, however, and called them to order. This led to further unrest, which in turn caused the king to bring in Prussian troops, on 3 May 1849, the municipal guards were told to go home, but the town councillors organised them into defensive units to stop expected Prussian intervention. As the peoples anger grew, the government withdrew into the castle, the municipal guards were undecided whether or not to support the people, who threatened to use explosives to get the government out. In response the Saxon troops fired on the crowd, within hours the town was in chaos, with 108 barricades erected. In the early hours of 4 May 1849, the king and his ministers managed to escape, three members of the dissolved Democratic parliament now became the leaders of the revolution, Samuel Erdmann Tzschirner, Karl Gotthelf Todt and Otto Leonhard Heubner formed a provisional government. Their aim was to force the acceptance of the constitution, Tzschirner called in another member, Alexander Heinze, to organise fighting and bring in more communal guards and volunteers from outside Dresden. Reinforcements joined the revolutionaries from as far away as Chemnitz, Zwickau and Marienberg, the Saxon troops were also backed up by arriving Prussian soldiers. They planned to encircle the rebels and corner them on the Altmarkt, recent studies place the number of revolutionaries at around 3,000, compared with 5,000 government troops from Saxony and Prussia. Apart from being outnumbered, the rebels were also untrained in battle, disorganised and lacked weapons, on 9 May the majority were forced to flee. Most of the gave up, and the rest were tracked down to the Frauenkirche. The Saxon government later accused Bakunin of being the revolutionaries ringleader, Röckel also published the popular democratic newspaper Volksblätter. Richard Wagner the composer, at the time Royal Saxon Court Conductor, had been inspired by the spirit since 1848 and was befriended by Röckel. The architect Gottfried Semper was until 1849 less politically active, but had known his democratic beliefs and felt compelled to stand up for them
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Minna Planer
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Christine Wilhelmine Minna Planer was a German actress and the first wife of composer Richard Wagner, to whom she was married for 30 years, although for the last 10 years they often lived apart. At an early age, she had a daughter with a Royal Saxon Army officer. After a stormy courtship, which involved infidelities on both sides, she married Richard Wagner in 1836. In the early years Minna was the wage earner in the household. After Wagners affair with Mathilde Wesendonck in 1857, Minna mostly lived apart from him, in later years she developed a heart condition which ultimately claimed her life. Minna Planer was born on 5 September 1809 to a former Army trumpeter, Gotthelf Planer, in Oederan, Kingdom of Saxony. She was brought up in poverty and then at the age of fifteen was seduced by Ernst Rudolf von Einsiedel, a captain in the King of Saxonys Guards, who abandoned her after making her pregnant. Minna was sent to her relatives in the country to conceal the pregnancy, Minna pursued a career as an actress, specialising in female juvenile lead roles in tragedies. She was in demand by many German theatre companies, and appeared in Dessau, Altenburg, Magdeburg and Dresden before she met Richard Wagner. In a letter dated December 27,1833, Minna sets out her conditions for employment, she would not accept guest appearances and her fee was 600 thaler plus travelling expenses. While she was praised for her abilities as an actress, her physical charms also brought her admiration, One anonymous suitor wrote to her, When Nature created you, O Fair One, she broke the mold and never more may create so fair an image. Ah, I have known you long, you splendid creature, beautiful in youth, in 1834 Minna was appearing as part of Heinrich Eduard Bethmanns Magdeburg Theatre Company during a summer season at Bad Lauchstädt, a spa resort near Halle. The 21-year-old Wagner changed his mind and accepted the contract in order to pursue her, Minnas relationship with Wagner was stormy, Wagner was jealous and possessive and there were frequent loud arguments which usually ended with Minna in tears. In November 1835 Minna, dissatisfied with the Magdeburg troupe and probably with Wagner as well, Wagner was wild with despair and implored her to come back and marry him. Minna eventually agreed to return, but stayed only to the end of the season in Magdeburg before heading to Königsberg to join the theatre company. Failing in this, he joined Minna in Königsberg and accepted a position as a junior conductor. Minna married Wagner in Tragheim Church on 26 November 1836, where they argued even in front of the minister who was to marry them, Minna soon found that being Wagners wife was not the route to respectability that she craved. Wagner continued to run up debts, and she frequently had to deal with not only from Königsberg
28.
Der Ring des Nibelungen
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Der Ring des Nibelungen, WWV86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas, the composer termed the cycle a Bühnenfestspiel, structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend. It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle, Wagners Ring, Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The first performance as an opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with Das Rheingold on 13 August. Wagners title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung, the Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes Alberichs Ring, Nibelungen is occasionally mistaken as a plural, but the Ring of the Nibelungs is incorrect. The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale, the first and shortest work, Das Rheingold, typically lasts two and a half hours, while the final and longest, Götterdämmerung, takes up to five hours, excluding intervals. The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play, the Ring proper begins with Die Walküre and ends with Götterdämmerung, with Rheingold as a prelude. Wagner called Das Rheingold a Vorabend or Preliminary Evening, and Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, the scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung, the music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of Götterdämmerung and he eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers voices. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances. The plot revolves around a ring that grants the power to rule the world. Wotans schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story, Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed, details of the storylines can be found in the articles on each music drama
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Tristan and Iseult
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It has become an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with many variations. The tragic story is of the love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, there are two main traditions of the Tristan legend. The early tradition comprised the French romances of two poets from the half of the twelfth century, Thomas of Britain and Béroul. Later traditions come from the Prose Tristan, which was different from the earlier tales written by Thomas. The Prose Tristan became the medieval tale of Tristan and Iseult that would provide the background for the writings of Sir Thomas Malory, the English author. The story and character of Tristan vary from poet to poet, even the spelling of his name varies a great deal, although Tristan is the most popular spelling. Most versions of the Tristan story follow the general outline. After defeating the Irish knight Morholt, Tristan goes to Ireland to bring back the fair Iseult for his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, along the way, they ingest a love potion which causes the pair to fall madly in love. In the courtly version, the effects last a lifetime, in the common versions. In some versions, they ingest the potion accidentally, in others, the potions maker instructs Iseult to share it with Mark, although Iseult marries Mark, she and Tristan are forced by the potion to seek one another as lovers. While the typical noble Arthurian character would be shamed by such an act, the kings advisors repeatedly endeavour to have the pair tried for adultery, but the couple continually use trickery to preserve their façade of innocence. In Bérouls version, the love potion eventually wears off, as with the Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle, Tristan, King Mark, and Iseult all hold love for each other. Tristan honors, respects, and loves King Mark as his mentor and adopted father, Iseult is grateful that Mark is kind to her, but every night, each has horrible dreams about the future. Tristans uncle eventually learns of the affair and seeks to entrap his nephew, also present is the endangerment of a fragile kingdom, the cessation of war between Ireland and Cornwall. Mark acquires what seems proof of their guilt and resolves to punish them, Tristan by hanging and Iseult by burning at the stake, Tristan escapes on his way to the gallows. He makes a leap from a chapel and rescues Iseult. The lovers escape into the forest of Morrois and take shelter there until discovered by Mark and they make peace with Mark after Tristans agreement to return Iseult to Mark and leave the country
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Mediaeval
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
31.
Nibelungenlied
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The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, the Nibelungenlied is based on pre-Christian Germanic heroic motifs, which include oral traditions and reports based on historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries. Old Norse parallels of the legend survive in the Völsunga saga, the Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda, the Legend of Norna-Gest, in 2009, the three main manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied were inscribed in UNESCOs Memory of the World Register in recognition of their historical significance. The poem in its various forms was lost by the end of the 16th century. There are thirty-five known manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied and its variant versions, eleven of these manuscripts are essentially complete. The oldest version seems to be the one preserved in manuscript B, twenty-four manuscripts are in various fragmentary states of completion, including one version in Dutch. The text contains approximately 2,400 stanzas in 39 Aventiuren, the title under which the poem has been known since its discovery is derived from the final line of one of the three main versions, hie hât daz mære ein ende, daz ist der Nibelunge liet. Liet here means lay, tale or epic rather than simply song, the manuscripts sources deviate considerably from one another. This categorization derives from the signatures on the *A, *B, the Nibelungs lament, a sort of appendix to the poem proper, mentions a Meister Konrad who was charged by a bishop Pilgrim of Passau with the copying of the text. This is taken as a reference to Saint Pilgrim, bishop of Passau from 971–991, the search for the author of the Nibelungenlied in German studies has a long and intense history. Among the names suggested were Konrad von Fußesbrunnen, Bligger von Steinach, none of these hypotheses has wide acceptance, and mainstream scholarship today accepts that the authors name cannot be established. The original version began with the introduction of Kriemhild, the protagonist of the work. The second part deals with Kriemhilds marriage to Etzel, her plans for revenge, the journey of the Burgundians to the court of Etzel, the first chapter introduces the court of Burgundy. Kriemhild has a dream of a falcon that is killed by two eagles and her mother interprets this to mean that Kriemhilds future husband will die a violent death, and Kriemhild consequently resolves to remain unmarried. The second chapter tells of the background of Siegfried, crown prince of Xanten and his youth is narrated with little room for the adventures later attributed to him. In the third chapter, Siegfried arrives in Worms with the hopes of wooing Kriemhild, Siegfried leaves his treasure in the charge of a dwarf named Alberich. After killing the dragon, Siegfried then bathed in its blood, in spite of Hagens threatening stories about his youth, the Burgundians welcome him, but do not allow him to meet the princess. Disappointed, he remains in Worms and helps Gunther defeat the invading Saxons
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Wolfram von Eschenbach
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Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry, little is known of Wolframs life. There are no documents which mention him, and his works are the sole source of evidence. In Parzival he talks of wir Beier, the dialect of his works is East Franconian, the arms shown in the Manesse manuscript come from the imagination of a 14th-century artist, drawing on the figure of the Red Knight in Parzival, and have no heraldic connection with Wolfram. Wolframs work indicates a number of patrons, which suggests that he served at a number of courts during his life. In his Parzival he claims he is illiterate and recorded the work by dictation, Wolfram is best known today for his Parzival, sometimes regarded as the greatest of all German epics from that time. Based on Chrétien de Troyes Perceval, le Conte du Graal, in the poem, Wolframs narrator expresses disdain for Chrétiens version of the tale, and states that his source was a poet from Provence called Kyot. Some scholars believe Wolfram might have meant Guiot de Provins, however others believe Kyot was simply a device invented by Wolfram to explain his deviations from Chrétiens version. Wolfram is the author of two other works, the fragmentary Titurel and the unfinished Willehalm. These were both composed after Parzival, and Titurel mentions the death of Hermann I, which dates it firmly after 1217, Titurel consists of two fragments, which tell us the story of Schionatulander and Sigune. First fragment deals with the birth of love between main characters, the second one is quite different. Schionatulander and Sigune spend some time in the forest, when all of a sudden their peace is disturbed by the mysterious dog. Siguna eagers to read the story, but dog runs away from them, Schionatulander sets off to find him, but, as we already know from Parzival, he dies trying. Willehalm — the unfinished poem based on Old French chanson de geste Aliscans, Willehalm was quite a significant work, as survived 16 manuscripts in total. The plot goes like that, main character kidnaps a princess and, after turning her into christianity. Pegan king gathers an army to fight his daughter back, Wolframs nine surviving songs, five of which are dawn-songs, are regarded as masterpieces of Minnesang. Dawn-songs recount the story of a knight who spends the night with his beloved lady, mostly its the lady who wakes the knight up in the morning, but sometimes this mission is made by the watchman. The 84 surviving manuscripts of Parzival, both complete and fragmentary, indicate the popularity of Wolframs major work in the following two centuries
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Parzival
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Parzival is a medieval German romance written by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, centers on the Arthurian hero Parzival, Parzival begins with the knightly adventures of Parzivals father, Gahmuret, his marriage to Herzeloyde, and the birth of Parzival. The story continues as Parzival meets three elegant knights, decides to seek King Arthur, and continues a spiritual and physical search for the Grail. A long section is devoted to Parzivals friend Gawan and his adventures defending himself from a murder charge. Among the most striking elements of the work are its emphasis on the importance of humility, compassion, sympathy, a major theme in Parzival is love, heroic acts of chivalry are inspired by true love, which is ultimately fulfilled in marriage. The romance was the most popular vernacular verse narrative in medieval Germany, Wolfram began a prequel, Titurel, which was later continued by another writer, while two full romances were written adapting Wolframs story of Loherangrin. Richard Wagner based his famous opera Parsifal, finished in 1882, Parzival is divided into sixteen books, each composed of several thirty-line stanzas of rhyming couplets. The stanza lengths fit perfectly onto a manuscript page, for the subject matter Wolfram von Eschenbach largely adapted the Grail romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, left incomplete by Chrétien de Troyes. Book I opens with the death of King Gandin, Parzivals grandfather and his oldest son, Galoes, receives the kingdom but offers his brother Gahmuret the land of Anjou in fief. However, Gahmuret departs to gain renown and he travels to the African kingdom of Zazamanc, whose capital is besieged by two different armies. Gahmuret offers his services to the city, and his offer is accepted by Queen Belacane and he conquers the invaders, marries Queen Belacane, and becomes king of Zazamanc and Azagouc. Growing bored with peace, Gahmuret steals away on a ship, Belacane later gives birth to a son, Feirefiz. In Book II, Gahmuret returns to the West, where he meets, ever restless, however, he soon returns to fight for the Baruch in the Far East, where he is later killed by a treacherous acquaintance. His seclusion is shattered by three knights passing who tell him of King Arthurs court at Camelot, enamored, he decides to go join Arthurs court. His mother is heartbroken at the news of his decision but allows him to depart, soon after his departure she dies, utterly bereft. The first part of the takes place completely in the world of King Arthur. After becoming entangled in courtly intrigue between Duke Orilus and his wife Jeschute he meets his cousin Sigune who reveals to him his true name, Parzival also fights and kills Ither, the red knight of Kukumerlant. Putting on the red armor he rides away from the court and meets Gurnemanz, from whom he learns the duties of a knight, especially self-control
34.
German Romanticism
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German Romanticism was the dominant intellectual movement in the philosophy, the arts, and the culture of German-speaking countries in the late-18th and early 19th centuries. Late-stage German Romanticism emphasized the tension between the world and the irrational and supernatural projections of creative genius. In particular, the critic Heinrich Heine criticized the tendency of the early German romantics for looking to the medieval past for a model of unity in art, key figures of German romanticism include, Ludwig van Beethoven. In his earlier works, Beethoven was a Classicist in the traditions of Mozart and Haydn, because Beethoven wrote some of his greatest music after he became totally deaf, he embodies the Romantic ideal of the tragic artist who defies all odds to conquer his own fate. His later works portray the triumph of the spirit, most notably his Choral Symphony No. 9, the stirring Ode to Joy from this symphony has been adopted as the anthem of the European Union and his works are cast in the formal moulds of Classicism, he had a profound reverence for Beethoven. Liszt was by nationality a Hungarian, but nevertheless he spent many years in Germany, credited as the inventor of the tone poem. In his old age, Liszt adopted a more dissonant, ominous flavour, characteristic works being la Lugubre Gondola and Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth—predating Impressionism, a composer of the Early Romantic period, together with such figures as Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. One of the responsible for reviving interest in the almost-forgotten music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His body of work consists mainly of song cycles and German Lieder set to poems by his contemporaries and his works recall the nostalgia of lost childhood innocence, first love, and the magnificence of the German countryside. As an influential critic, he played a role in discovering new talents, among them Chopin. The greatest composer of German opera, was an exponent of Leitmotif, one of the main figures in the so-called War of the Romantics. The emotional intensity and supernatural, folklore-based themes in his operas presented a break from the Neoclassical traditions of that time. The Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy, translated by Blair R. Reynolds, caspar David Friedrich, translated by Sarah Twohig. Introduction, A Revolution in Culture, in European Romanticism, A Brief History with Documents, “Making of a Romantic Icon, The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck’s ‘Italia und Germania. ’” American Philosophical Society,2007. “Orpheus Philologus, Bachofen versus Mommsen on the Study of Antiquity. ”Painting the Sacred in the Age of German Romanticism, baltic Light, Early Open-Air Painting in Denmark and North Germany. New Haven and London, Yale University Press,1999, caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism. New Haven and London, Yale University Press,1980, ISBN 3-8228-2293-0 ONeill, J, ed. German masters of the nineteenth century, paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany
35.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
36.
Autobiography
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An autobiography is a self-written account of the life of a person. The word autobiography was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, however, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Autobiography thus takes stock of the life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a variety of documents and viewpoints. The memoir form is associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self. See also, List of autobiographies and Category, Autobiographies for examples, in a classic essay on American autobiography James M. Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information, some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history. Spiritual autobiography is an account of a struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious conversion. The author re-frames his or her life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine, the spiritual autobiography works as an endorsement of his or her religion. A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography, while an autobiography typically focuses on the life and times of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record. One early example is that of Julius Caesars Commentarii de Bello Gallico, in the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili is an account of the events took place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate. Leonor López de Córdoba wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish, the English Civil War provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz. Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders is an early example, charles Dickens David Copperfield is another such classic, and J. D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre is yet another example of fictional autobiography, the term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e. g. Robert Nyes Memoirs of Lord Byron
37.
Franz Liszt
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Franz Liszt was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author, nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School and he left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated many 20th-century ideas and trends. Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt and Adam Liszt on October 22,1811, in the village of Doborján in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary, Liszts father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, at age six, Franz began listening attentively to his fathers piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight and he appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franzs musical education in Vienna, There Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, then director of the Viennese court. Liszts public debut in Vienna on December 1,1822, at a concert at the Landständischer Saal, was a great success and he was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert. In spring 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Princes services. At the end of April 1823, the returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again, towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszts first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Liszts inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher, Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology. After his fathers death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris, to earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking, the following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles Xs minister of commerce, Pierre de Saint-Cricq. Her father, however, insisted that the affair be broken off, Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother and he had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists
38.
Siegfried (opera)
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Siegfried, WWV 86C, is the third of the four music dramas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen, by Richard Wagner. It premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring cycle, the musical composition was commenced in 1856, but not finally completed until 1871. Having grappled with his text for Siegfrieds Tod, and indeed having undertaken some musical sketches for it during 1851, at this point he conceived that the prefatory opera, Der junge Siegfried, could act as a comic foil to the tragedy of Siegfrieds Tod. Its all growing out of the ground as if it were wild, shortly afterwards he wrote to Uhlig that he was now planning to tell the Siegfried story in the form of three dramas, plus a prologue in three acts—a clear prefiguring of the Ring cycle. The composition of Acts 1 and 2 was completed by August 1857, Wagner then left off work on Siegfried to write the operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. He did not resume work on Siegfried until 1869, when he composed the third act, the final revision of the score was undertaken in February 1871. Performance was withheld until the first complete production of the Ring cycle, elements of the plot of Siegfried come from a variety of sources. In a letter to Uhlig, Wagner recounted The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was and it concerns a boy so stupid he had never learned to be afraid. Wagner wrote that the boy and Siegfried are the same character, the boy is taught to fear by his wife, and Siegfried learns it when he discovers the sleeping Brünnhilde. Siegfrieds ability in Act Two to see through Mimes deceitful words seems to have derived from a 19th-century street theatre version of the story of Faust. Some elements of the story are derived from legends of Sigurd, notably the Völsunga saga, scene 1 of Act 3 has a parallel in the Eddic poem Baldrs draumar, in which Odin questions a völva about the future of the gods. A cave in rocks in the forest, as the curtain rises, Alberichs brother, the dwarf Mime, is forging a sword. Mime is plotting to obtain the ring of power created by his brother Alberich. Mime needs a sword for Siegfried to use, but the youth has contemptuously broken every sword Mime has made, Siegfried returns from his wanderings in the forest with a wild bear in tow, and immediately breaks the new sword. Mime is forced to explain how he took in Siegfrieds mother, Sieglinde and he shows Siegfried the broken pieces of the sword Nothung, which Mime had obtained from her. Siegfried orders him to reforge the sword, Mime, however, is unable to accomplish this, Siegfried departs, leaving Mime in despair. An old man arrives at the door and introduces himself as the Wanderer, in return for the hospitality due a guest, he wagers his head on answering any three questions of Mime. The dwarf asks the Wanderer to name the races that live beneath the ground, on the earth and these are the Nibelung, the Giants, and the Gods, as the Wanderer answers correctly
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Platonic love
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Platonic love is a type of love that is non-sexual. Platonic love in this sense of the term is examined in Platos dialogue, the Symposium. It explains the possibilities of how the feeling of love began, of particular importance is the speech of Socrates, relating the idea of platonic love as attributed to the prophetess Diotima, which presents it as a means of ascent to contemplation of the divine. For Diotima, and for Plato generally, the most correct use of love of human beings is to ones mind to love of divinity. In short, with genuine platonic love, the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind, Socrates, in Platos Symposium, explained two types of love or Eros—Vulgar Eros or earthly love and Divine Eros or divine love. Vulgar Eros is nothing but mere material attraction towards a body for physical pleasure. Divine Eros begins the journey from physical attraction i. e. attraction towards beautiful form or body and this concept of Divine Eros is later transformed into the term Platonic love. In Middle Ages arose a new interest in Plato, his philosophy and this was caused by Georgios Gemistos Plethon during the Councils of Ferrara and Firenze in 1438-1439. The English term dates back to William Davenants The Platonic Lovers and it is derived from the concept in Platos Symposium of the love of the idea of good which lies at the root of all virtue and truth. For a brief period, Platonic love was a subject at the English royal court, especially in the circle around Queen Henrietta Maria. Platonic love was the theme of some of the courtly masques performed in the Caroline era—though the fashion soon waned under pressures of social and political change, childhood sweetheart Greek love Infatuation Puppy love Bromance DallOrto, Giovanni. Socratic Love as a Disguise for Same-Sex Love in the Italian Renaissance, the Pursuit of Sodomy, Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe. K. Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment, ch.2, T. Reeser, Setting Plato Straight, Translating Platonic Sexuality in the Renaissance Plato on Friendship and Eros – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
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Mistress (lover)
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A mistress is a relatively long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner, especially when her partner is married. Generally, the relationship is stable and at least semi-permanent, but the couple does not live together openly and the relationship is usually, but not always, secret. There is often also the implication that the mistress is kept – i. e. that her lover is paying for some of her living expenses, the term mistress was originally used as a neutral feminine counterpart to mister or master. Historically the term has denoted a kept woman, who was maintained in a lifestyle by a wealthy man so that she would be available for his sexual pleasure. Such a woman could move between the roles of a mistress and a courtesan depending on her situation and environment, historically, a man kept a mistress. As the term implies, he was responsible for her debts and provided for her in much the way as he did his wife. In more recent times, it is likely that the mistress has a job of her own. There is usually an emotional and possibly social relationship between a man and his mistress, whereas the relationship to a prostitute is predominantly sexual. The keeping of a mistress in Europe was not confined to royalty and nobility, any man who could afford a mistress could have one, regardless of social position. A wealthy merchant or a noble might have a kept woman. Being a mistress was typically an occupation for a woman who, if she were fortunate. The ballad The Three Ravens extolls the loyal mistress of a slain knight and it is noteworthy that the ballad-maker assigned this role to the knights mistress rather than to his wife. In the courts of Europe, particularly Versailles and Whitehall in the 17th and 18th centuries, a king might have numerous mistresses, but have a single favourite mistress or official mistress, as with Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. The mistresses of both Louis XV and Charles II were often considered to exert influence over their lovers. Other than wealthy merchants and kings, Alexander VI is but one example of a Pope who kept mistresses, while the extremely wealthy might keep a mistress for life, such was not the case for most kept women. Occasionally the mistress is in a position both financially and socially to her lover. In literature, D. H. Lawrences work Lady Chatterleys Lover portrays a situation where a woman becomes the mistress of her husbands gamekeeper, until recently, a womans taking a socially inferior lover was considered much more shocking than the reverse situation. As divorce became more acceptable, it was easier for men to divorce their wives and marry the women who, in earlier years
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Cosima Wagner
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Cosima Wagner was the illegitimate daughter of the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt and Marie dAgoult. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the inspiration for Wagners later works. In 1857, after a childhood largely spent under the care of her grandmother and with governesses, although the marriage produced two children, it was largely a loveless union, and in 1863 Cosima began a relationship with Wagner, who was 24 years her senior. She shared Wagners convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, and under her influence and this was a defining feature of Bayreuth for decades, into the Nazi era which closely followed her death in 1930. Thus, although she is perceived as the saviour of the festival. In January 1833 the 21-year-old Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt met Marie dAgoult, maries antecedents were mixed, her German mother, from a prominent Frankfurt banking family, had married a French nobleman, the Comte de Flavigny. Marie had been married since 1827 to Charles, Comte dAgoult, drawn together by their mutual intellectual interests, Marie and Liszt embarked on a passionate relationship. In March 1835 the couple fled Paris for Switzerland, ignoring the scandal they left in their wake, they settled in Geneva where, on 18 December, Marie gave birth to a daughter, Blandine-Rachel. In the following two years Liszt and Marie travelled widely in pursuit of his career as a concert pianist, late in 1837, when Marie was heavily pregnant with their second child, the couple were at Como in Italy. Here, on 24 December in a hotel in Bellagio. They named her Francesca Gaetana Cosima, the third name being derived from St Cosmas. With her sister she was left in the care of wet nurses, while Liszt and their third child and only son, Daniel, was born on 9 May 1839 in Venice. In 1839, while Liszt continued his travels, Marie took the risk of returning to Paris with her daughters. Liszts solution was to remove the girls from Marie and place them with his mother, Anna Liszt, by this means, both Marie and Liszt could continue their independent lives. Relations between the couple cooled, and by 1841 they were seeing little of other, it is likely that both engaged in other affairs. By 1845 the breach between them was such that they were communicating only through third parties, Liszt forbade contact between mother and daughters, Marie accused him of attempting to steal the fruits of a mothers womb, while Liszt insisted on his sole right to decide the childrens future. Marie threatened to fight him like a lioness, but soon gave up the struggle, though they were living in the same city, she did not see either of her daughters for five years, until 1850. Cosima and Blandine remained with Anna Liszt until 1850, joined eventually by Daniel, Cosimas biographer George Marek describes Anna as a simple, uneducated, unworldly but warmhearted woman
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Wesendonck Lieder
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Wesendonck Lieder, WWV91, is the common name of a set of five songs for female voice and piano by Richard Wagner, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme. He set five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, with titles translating as The Angel, in the Greenhouse, Sorrows and Dreams, while he was working on his opera Tristan und Isolde. The songs, together with the Siegfried Idyll, are the two works by Wagner most regularly performed. The songs are settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Richard Wagners patrons, Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zurich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. For a time Wagner and his wife Minna lived together in the Asyl and it is sometimes claimed that Wagner and Mathilde had a love affair, in any case, the situation and mutual infatuation certainly contributed to the intensity in the conception of Tristan und Isolde. Wagner sold the settings to the publisher Schott in 1860 for 1000 francs, no name was given for the author of the texts at the first publication, it was not publicly revealed until after Mathildes death. Der Engel, composed November 1857 Stehe still, in Träume can be heard the roots of the love duet in Act 2, while Im Treibhaus uses music later developed extensively for the prelude to Act 3. A few have attempted the whole cycle in performance, the orchestration of all five songs was completed for large orchestra by Felix Mottl, the Wagner conductor. In 1972 the Italian composer Vieri Tosatti entirely re-orchestrated the songs, in 1976 the German composer Hans Werner Henze produced a chamber version for the songs. Each of the players has a part, with some very unusual wind registration. French composer Christophe Looten wrote a transcription for voice and string quartet, in 2013 the French composer Alain Bonardi released a new version for voice, piano, clarinet and cello, including instrumental interludes with oriental resonant percussions. In the same year, the Chinese-British composer Jeffrey Ching premiered his Wesendonck Sonata, based on the music of the songs, for voice, cello or viola, and piano. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. websiteportal. de The whole cycle re-orchestrated by the Italian composer Vieri Tosatti Video on YouTube of Wesendonck Sonata of Jeffrey Ching
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Spa
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A spa is a location where mineral-rich spring water is used to give medicinal baths. Spa towns or spa resorts offer various health treatments, which are also known as balneotherapy. The belief in the powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been worldwide, but are especially widespread in Europe. Day spas are also popular, and offer various personal care treatments. The word spa itself denotes fountain, some experts also suggest that the word spa originated from the name of the Belgian town named Spa where a curative natural spring was discovered in the 14th century. Since medieval times, illnesses caused by iron deficiency were treated by drinking chalybeate spring water and it is commonly claimed, in a commercial context, that the word is an acronym of various Latin phrases such as Salus Per Aquam or Sanitas Per Aquam meaning health through water. Spa therapies have existed since the times when taking bath with water was considered as a popular means to treat illnesses. The practice of traveling to hot or cold springs in hopes of effecting a cure of some ailment dates back to pre-historic times, archaeological investigations near hot springs in France and Czech Republic revealed Bronze Age weapons and offerings. In Great Britain, ancient legend credited early Celtic kings with the discovery of the hot springs in Bath, many people around the world believed that bathing in a particular spring, well, or river resulted in physical and spiritual purification. Forms of ritual purification existed among the Native Americans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, today, ritual purification through water can be found in the religious ceremonies of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. These ceremonies reflect the ancient belief in the healing and purifying properties of water, complex bathing rituals were also practiced in ancient Egypt, in pre-historic cities of the Indus Valley, and in Aegean civilizations. Most often these ancient people did little building construction around the water, some of the earliest descriptions of western bathing practices came from Greece. The Greeks began bathing regimens that formed the foundation for modern spa procedures and these Aegean people utilized small bathtubs, wash basins, and foot baths for personal cleanliness. The earliest such findings are the baths in the complex at Knossos, Crete. They established public baths and showers within their gymnasium complexes for relaxation, Greek mythology specified that certain natural springs or tidal pools were blessed by the gods to cure disease. Around these sacred pools, Greeks established bathing facilities for those desiring healing, supplicants left offerings to the gods for healing at these sites and bathed themselves in hopes of a cure. The Spartans developed a primitive vapor bath, at Serangeum, an early Greek balneum, bathing chambers were cut into the hillside from which the hot springs issued
