Richard Wagner

From Anthroposophy

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a German composer that revolutionised opera through his concept of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk' ("total work of art"), a synthesis of the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts (as described in a series of essays he wrote in the period 1849-52).

He is most known for his unique four-opera cycle 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' (The Ring of the Nibelung), written over a period of 26 years between 1848 to 1874. Performance is about 15 hours over four nights at the opera. His final work Parsifal is considered his masterpiece.

Aspects

Most important opera works

The works in Italics make up The Ring of the Nibelung. For music excerpts of (*) see Discussion area below Note [1] - Introductory music fragments

  • Tannhauser (1843-45) (*) - written at age 30
  • Lohengrin (1846-48)
  • Das Rheingold (1853-54) - The Rhinegold (*)
  • Die Walküre (1854-56) - The Valkyrie
  • Tristan und Isolde (1857-59)
  • Meisersinger von Nürnberg (1861-67)
  • Siegfried (1856-71)
  • Gotterdämmerung (1871-74) - Twilight of the Gods (*)
  • Parsifal (1877-82) (*)
Other

Inspirational quotes

1906-07-29-GA097

Wagner's music .. is of such a unique character that those who listen to it receive in their ether body quite special vibrations.

Therein lies the secret of Wagner's music. One does not need to understand it — not in the least! One receives in one's ether body the benign and healthful effect of the music. And man's ether body is intimately connected with all the movements and throbbings of the blood.

Wagner understood the mystery of the purified blood. In his melodies are rhythms and vibrations that must needs beat in the ether body of Man if he is to be cleansed and purified so as to be ready to receive the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.

Illustrations

Lecture coverage and references

1853-02-11 - Wagner

in a letter to Liszt

Mark well my new poem - it contains the world's beginning and its end

1905-03-28-GA092

Lohengrin and the Ring of the Nibelungs, and the three stages of the Siegfried legend

1905-05-05-GA092

Ring of the Nibelungs

1905-05-12-GA092

Valkyrie, Siegfried, Twilight of the Gods

1905-05-19-GA092

Parsifal and the Holy Grail

1905-12-10-GA90B - Q&A

Richard Wagner intuitively grasped great realities and expressed them in his great opera works. The spiritual streams made various attempts to bring these realities and messages to humanity. Wagner was inspired as an artist to do so, and similarly also Nietzsche was choosen as a vehicle to express the reality of the consciousness soul, however his physiology and brain did not withstand it and he had to pay for this attempt with his death.

1905-12-03-GA092

Parsifal and Lohengrin

1906-02-03-GA097

Q&A: question on Holy Grail

1906-07-29-GA097

is called 'The secret of the grail in the works of Richard Wagner'

[Music as etheric medium for 19th century]

In the nineteenth century it was not possible to make clear to Man the deep meaning of that great process of initiation in a drama. There is, however, a medium through which Man's understanding can be reached, even without words, without concepts or ideas. This medium is music.

Wagner's music holds within it all the truths that are contained in the Parsifal story. His music is of such a unique character that those who listen to it receive in their ether body quite special vibrations. Therein lies the secret of Wagner's music.

One does not need to understand it - not in the least. One receives in one's ether body the benign and healthful effect of the music. And Man's ether body is intimately connected with all the movements and throbbings of the blood.

Wagner understood the mystery of the purified blood. In his melodies are rhythms and vibrations that must needs beat in the ether body of Man if he is to be cleansed and purified so as to be ready to receive the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.

1906-12-04-GA068B
1907-01-16-GA097

is called 'The supersensible brought to expression in the music of Parsifal'

1907-03-28-GA055
1907-09-15-GA244 - Q&A 137.5

asks for a spiritual scientific perspective or comment on Wagner's Siegfried

The music of Richard Wagner is expression to the deepest mysticism. This does not imply that Wagner consciously had this mysticism in mind, this is not required.

...

He deeply experienced and felt what appeared to him as in the Germanic myths as an expression of the great spiritual science.

[summary sketch of Atlantis upto development of the I]

...

Siegfried is the ancient primal germanic initiate who still has the ancient wisdom and has not been caught on the by the human I. He is the hero, that will be superseded by a higher one, by Christ carrying his cross.

...

Wagner expressed in his music the impact of the human I. In the long prelude to Rheingold one can hear this first. One who can experience this, experiences the mysticism in Wagner's music.

1907-12-02-GA092

is called 'Richard Wagner and Mysticism'

and covers: Ring of the Nibelungs, legends and myths

1908-02-25-GA068B
1908-04-13-GA102

The subject of the three public lectures in Stockholm was Wagner's “Ring of the Nibelungs,” and, walking along the streets, the announcements of the last performance at the Opera of Wagner's Ragnarök, the “Götterdämmerung” (Twilight of the Gods), were to be seen on the kiosks. These things are really symptomatic, interweaving in a most remarkable way. Underlying the old Nordic sagas there is a note of deep tragedy, indicating that the Nordic Gods and Divinities would be superseded by One yet to come. This motif and trend of the Nordic sagas reappears in a medieval form in Wagner's. Siegfried is killed by a thrust between his shoulder-blades, his only vulnerable part. This is a prophetic intimation that here, at this place in his body, something is lacking, and that through One yet to come it will be covered by the arms of the Cross. This is no mere poetic image, but something that has been drawn from the inspiration belonging to the world of saga and legend. For this same note of tragic destiny was implicit in the Nordic sagas, in the Mystery-truth underlying them, that the Nordic Gods would be replaced by the later, Christian Principle. In the Northern Mysteries the significance of this ‘Twilight’ of the Gods was everywhere made plain.

It is also significant — and here again I mean something more than a poetic image — that in the very hearts of these people to-day the remembrance of those ancient Gods lives on in peaceful reconciliation with all that has been brought there or made its way thither from Christianity. The presence of the Gothic Bible amid the memories of ancient times is verily a symptom. One can also feel it as a symptom, as a foreshadowing of the future, that in lands where more intensely than anywhere else the ancient Gods are felt as living realities, these Gods should be presented again in their Wagnerian form, outside the narrow bounds of ordinary religion.

Anyone in the slightest degree capable of interpreting the signs of the times will perceive in the art of Richard Wagner the first rays of Christianity emerging from the narrow framework of the religious life into the wider horizons of modern spiritual culture. One can discern quite unmistakably how in the soul of Richard Wagner himself the central idea of Christianity comes to birth, how it bursts the bonds of religion and becomes universal. When on Good Friday, in the year 1857, he looks out of the Villa Wesendonck by the Lake of Zürich at the budding flowers of early spring, and the first seed of “Parsifal” quickens to life within him, this is a transformation, on a wider scale, of what already lives in Christianity, as a religious idea. And after he had reached the heights of that prophetic foreshadowing of Christianity to which he gave such magnificent expression in the “Ring of the Nibelungs,” this central Idea of Christianity found still wider horizons in “Parsifal,” becoming the seed of that future time when Christianity will embrace, not only the religious life, but the life of knowledge, of art, of beauty, in the widest sense of the words.

This is the theme that will be presented to you today, in order to kindle the feeling of what Christianity can be for mankind in times to come.

Discussion

Note 1 - Introductory music fragments

Introduction

For people not familiar with Wagner's music, below are five short pieces of orchestral music (so without the vocals from the opera), all fragments between 2' and 4' (so the time of a pop song). Advised to listen fully focused and immersed for a conscious soul experience.

The first three excerpts offer a 9' introduction to the music to start with (2'+4'+3')

  • [1] Parsifal (ouverture)- the first two minutes
  • [2] Rheingold (ouverture) - first four minutes
  • [3] Götterdämmerung - Siegfried's death and funeral march - < 10' listen eg from 4' to 7'
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXh5JprKqiU
    • note: example of online comments on this excerpt:

      "4:03 - 4:40 - no matter how many times I hear that, I still can't quite believe what I'm hearing. " ... indeed a key passage with this spiralling .. may be about a deep cosmic impulse that comes to Man .. the sensitive reflective 3’35-4’03 preceeding it .. this new un-earthly sounding impulse comes from very deep (the basses) but has these unstoppable whirling forward moving waves that bring something totally new .. which erupts out of it .. this deep cosmic current gives birth 4’40-5’15 to something totally new .. like the christ impulse that transforms death into resurrection .. and then, as the grim death sounds resurface again 5’35 this theme manifests again so as to transform and lead into sounds of glorious victory 6’00 onwards .. life forces over death

If you want some more, here's two more excerpts for another 8'

and last but not least, in a special category for many people - like [1]

.

But it's not just music, it's opera, a few very short movies for an impression:

Extended versions

Related pages

References and further reading

  • Edouard Schuré: 'Le drame musical. Richard Wagner, son œuvre et son idée' (1875, 2 volumes)
  • Ernst Uehli:
    • 'Die Geburt der Individualität aus dem Mythos : als künstlerisches Erlebnis Richard Wagners' (1920)
    • 'Richard Wagners mystisches Lebensbild' (1953)
  • Hermann Beckh:
    • 'Richard Wagner und das Christentum' (1936)
    • 'Die Sprache der Tonart in der Musik von Bach bis Bruckner : mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Wagner'schen Musikdramas' (1936)
  • Johannes Bertram: 'Mythos, Symbol, Idee in Richard Wagners Musikdramen' (1957)
  • Otto Julius Hartmann:
    • 'Die Esoterik im Werk Richard Wagners' (1960)
    • Die geistigen Hintergründe der Musikdramen Richard Wagners (1976)
  • Friedrich Oberkogler
    • Richard Wagner und das Christentum (1967)
    • Parsifal : eine Bühnenweihfestspiel von Richard Wagner ; eine musikalisch-geisteswissenschaftliche Einführung und Werkbesprechung (1969)
    • Merlin - Richard Wagner : Versuch einer geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtung über die karmischen Hintergründe der Biographie Richard Wagners (1974)
    • Richard Wagner vom Ring zum Gral : Wiedergewinnung seines Werkes aus Musik und Mythos (1978) (note: 730 pages)
    • Der Fliegende Holländer von Richard Wagner : eine musikalisch-geisteswissenschaftliche Werkbesprechung (1983)
    • Parsifal : der Zukunftsweg des Menschen in Richard Wagners Musikdrama (1983)
    • Lohengrin von Richard Wagner : eine musikalisch-geisteswissenschaftliche Werkbesprechung (1984)
  • Franz E. Winkler
    • The mythology in Richard Wagner's 'The ring of the Nibelung' (1966)
    • The mythology in Wagner's 'Parsifal' (1967-68)
    • The mythology in Wagner's 'The Rhinegold' (1964)
    • The mythology in Wagner's 'The twilight of the Gods' (1968)
    • For freedom destined : mysteries of man's evolution in the mythology of Wagner's Ring Operas and Parsifal (1974)
    • Richard Wagner : Der Ring des Nibelungen ; verbunden mit einer Betrachtung über Parsifal - das Mysterium des Grals ; Versuch zu einem tieferen Verstehen (1981)
  • Oskar Andree:
    • Ein Geistesruf für unsere Zeit in Richard Wagners 'Meistersingern' (1974)
    • Richard Wagners 'Ring der Nibelungen' (1976)
  • Carl Albert Friedenreich: 'Richard Wagner : Eine geisteswissenschaftliche Studie ueber Wesen und Aufgabe seiner Musik' (1967)
  • Camille Schneider: 'Edouard Schuré : seine Lebensbegegnungen mit Rudolf Steiner und Richard Wagner' (1971)
  • J. Vanvinckenroye: 'Parsifal van Richard Wagner' (1979)
  • Ewald Koepke: Richard Wagners Gralsimpuls : ein Vortrag (1983)
  • Walter Beck: 'Richard Wagner : neue Dokumente zur Biographie : die Spiritualität im Drama seines Lebens' (1988)
  • Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington: 'Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung: a companion' (1993, edition 2010)
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