Tag: Wagner
-
Carmina Burana Programme Notes
Carmina Burana is a divisive work and always has been. Its premiere at the Oper Frankfurt in 1937 took place within the complex cultural climate of 1930s Germany, and the work’s bold musical language and salaciousness quickly made it a subject of debate. Initial responses from the Nazi press were cautious. The party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, criticised the work’s syncopated bounce, drawing
-
Wagner’s use of Leitmotif in Tristan und Isolde
Despite having only learnt the skills of harmony at the age of 15, having been discouraged from studying music by his mother, Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was perhaps the greatest exponent of both mid-nineteenth-century German romanticism and mid-nineteenth-century opera. In his operas, or ‘musical drama’, as Wagner referred to it, the music was only merely secondary