Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagnerwas 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. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth22 May 1813
CityLeipzig, Germany
CountryGermany
What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.
What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music...
Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being - musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.
That even in its sharpest pangs of pain a dog can still caress its master we have learnt from the studies of vivisectors.
Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.
The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.
Music truely has to all other arts the same relation as religion to the church.
Blessed be, the genius who never knew good fortune! Genius in itself already means so much; what meaning does luck still hold for him?
I know nothing at all about music.
True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential -- will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra.
The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.
...you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never - never - never...
It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.
I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal.