Richard Wagner at 200+

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Today’s date marks the anniversary Richard Wagner’s birth. During Wagner’s lifetime, his most famous — and perhaps most perceptive — critic was Prague-born Viennese writer on music Eduard Hanslick.

Hanslick knew Wagner personally, and described him as follows: “A stranger would have seen in his face not so much an artistic genius as a dry Leipzig professor or lawyer. He spoke incredibly much — and fast — in a monotonous sing-song Saxon dialect and always of himself, his works, his reforms, his plans. If he mentioned the name of another composer it was always in a tone of disparagement.”

For Wagnerians, Hanslick was a crusty old conservative who preferred Brahms and was too thick-headed to appreciate the Music of the Future epitomized by Wagner’s operas. But if one actually reads Hanslick’s writings on Wagner, a more nuanced and balanced picture emerges.

“I know very well that Wagner is the greatest living opera composer and the only one in Germany worth talking about in a historical sense,” Hanslick wrote. “But between this admission and the repulsive idolatry which has grown up in connection with Wagner and which he has encouraged, there is an infinite chasm.”

Upon learning of Wagner’s death in 1883, Hanslick wrote: “Wagner stands at the head of the moving forces of modern art. He shook opera and all its associated theoretical and practical issues from a comfortable state of repose bordering on stagnation.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Transformation Music from Parsifal