THE ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTING PRACTICE OF RICHARD WAGNER (GERMANY).
Item
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Title
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THE ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTING PRACTICE OF RICHARD WAGNER (GERMANY).
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Identifier
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AAI8409381
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identifier
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8409381
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Creator
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BEBBINGTON, WARREN ARTHUR.
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Contributor
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L. Michael Griffel
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Date
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1984
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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Although best known for his compositions, Wagner was a professional conductor until his middle years and undertook many conducting engagements in later life. His influence on such conductors as Hans von Bulow, Hans Richter, Felix Mottl, and Arthur Nikisch was enormous.;Wagner lacked the practical skills expected of a Kapellmeister in the 1830s. He developed his approach to conducting by observing the dramatic delivery of the diva Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, the performances of Gasparo Spontini, and the rehearsals of Francois-Antoine Habeneck. His principles of orchestral organization, which are set out in Die Konigliche Kapelle betreffend (1846), are particularly indebted to Habeneck and Spontini, while his theory of interpretation involved an application to the orchestra of soloistic practices exemplified by Schroder-Devrient. A reconstruction of his style of gesture from critical accounts and visual evidence shows him holding the baton high away from his body, gesturing from the wrist, and concentrating on expressing phrase and nuance rather than keeping a pulse. A survey of sources for nineteenth-century performance practice reveals that the modifications of tempo and dynamic nuance recommended in Wagner's major essay on conducting, (')Uber das Dirigieren (1869), had been fashionable among solo singers and instrumentalists since before Wagner's conducting career began. Wagner's most important achievement was to apply these practices, which were thought proper only for soloists, to orchestral performance.;Wagner's own works were not as prominent in his conducting repertoire as might be expected; as was typical among conductors at the time, he concentrated on popular operas by Italian and French composers and instrumental works by Beethoven. Although he frequently conducted excerpts from his works at concerts, with the exception of a single Lohengrin in 1876 he conducted no complete performance of any of his operas after Tannhauser. By collating the evidence of his writings with first-hand accounts of his conducting, tables of his authentic performance instructions are presented for fourteen major works, including Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 3, 5, and 9, the Overtures to Tannhauser and Die Meistersinger, and the complete Ring. In treating the orchestral conductor as a fully-developed performing artist, Wagner became one of the most important pioneers of modern interpretative conducting.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Music
