Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

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– h That's 'Passion for Beethoven x knowledge of Beethoven + love of Mozart opera, all over lack of height = Wagner operas'. Obviously. Now open your text books at page 182 and work quiedy through chapters 7 and 8, while I go off to the staff common room.

Wagner wanted to make a new form - not just music, not just opera, but a real living, breathing, organic new form. In Wagner's new form, the music and the plot would be inextricably linked - one couldn't move independentiy of the other, both were of equal importance. He called it 'music drama', a harking back to the dramma per musica of the Renaissance. They weren't just operas, though, to him - they were different. The music had to grow out of the drama - and the drama could advance only with the help of the music. So, no, you couldn't simply stop, every now and again, and 'stand and deliver' a pretty aria, for the sake of having an 'extractable' song which people could sing in recitals. His music would build and build, taking its cue from the story - and, as we know, he could write his own librettos too. Well, who else would know how to write librettos exactly how he wanted them? Who else would get it, as it were? But, if the music was going to be more or less continuous, how would he keep the audiences involved? He did want them to be able to at least keep up, but if the music was all just constantly new and unheard, page after page, how could they? How would they get what was going on, if there was no stopping, and everything flowed from what had come before? And more importantly, WHERE WOULD THEY COUGH?