Wagner: The Great Composers
iun. 2024 · Icon Books Ltd
Carte electronică
32
Pagini
family_home
Eligibilă
info
reportEvaluările și recenziile nu sunt verificate Află mai multe
Despre această carte electronică
Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.
Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.
No other composer is at once so revered or so reviled as Richard Wagner. Yet his contribution to opera is immense. His reputation rests on ten epic operas which are constantly performed worldwide, without speaking of the annual festival of his music at Bayreuth, the opera house which he designed and built to stage his works. Four of these operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, make up the monumental 15-hour Ring cycle, based on old Norse-Germanic sagas. Many of the others hark back to medieval and Arthurian legends, often dramatising the conflict between the sacred and profane, the sensual and spiritual. Using leitmotifs – themes which symbolise characters and elements in his opera – Wagner introduced a new musical vocabulary.
Endless affairs, twice married, constantly on the run for either political or financial reasons, a prolific writer, an indefatigable composer, Wagner was also, as Michael Steen's narrative shows, a monster of egoism. A revolutionary in his youth, Wagner escaped to Zurich, only to be forced to move on when the businessman bankrolling him was about to uncover Wagner's affair with his wife. He was then lavishly supported in Munich by the 'Mad King' Ludwig II of Bavaria, until the king's ministers objected. Once in Switzerland, Wagner was joined by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt's daughter and the wife of a conductor, who became his second wife and helped him realise his dream at Bayreuth.
Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.
No other composer is at once so revered or so reviled as Richard Wagner. Yet his contribution to opera is immense. His reputation rests on ten epic operas which are constantly performed worldwide, without speaking of the annual festival of his music at Bayreuth, the opera house which he designed and built to stage his works. Four of these operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, make up the monumental 15-hour Ring cycle, based on old Norse-Germanic sagas. Many of the others hark back to medieval and Arthurian legends, often dramatising the conflict between the sacred and profane, the sensual and spiritual. Using leitmotifs – themes which symbolise characters and elements in his opera – Wagner introduced a new musical vocabulary.
Endless affairs, twice married, constantly on the run for either political or financial reasons, a prolific writer, an indefatigable composer, Wagner was also, as Michael Steen's narrative shows, a monster of egoism. A revolutionary in his youth, Wagner escaped to Zurich, only to be forced to move on when the businessman bankrolling him was about to uncover Wagner's affair with his wife. He was then lavishly supported in Munich by the 'Mad King' Ludwig II of Bavaria, until the king's ministers objected. Once in Switzerland, Wagner was joined by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt's daughter and the wife of a conductor, who became his second wife and helped him realise his dream at Bayreuth.
Despre autor
Michael Steen OBE was born in Dublin. He studied at the Royal College of Music, was the organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, and has been the chairman of the RCM Society and of the Friends of the V&A Museum, the Treasurer of The Open University, and a trustee of Anvil Arts and of The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation. He is also the author of Short Guides to Great Operas, a series of concise, entertaining and easy to read ebooks about the world's best-known operas.
Evaluează cartea electronică
Spune-ne ce crezi.
Informații despre lectură
Smartphone-uri și tablete
Instalează aplicația Cărți Google Play pentru Android și iPad/iPhone. Se sincronizează automat cu contul tău și poți să citești online sau offline de oriunde te afli.
Laptopuri și computere
Poți să asculți cărțile audio achiziționate pe Google Play folosind browserul web al computerului.
Dispozitive eReader și alte dispozitive
Ca să citești pe dispozitive pentru citit cărți electronice, cum ar fi eReaderul Kobo, trebuie să descarci un fișier și să îl transferi pe dispozitiv. Urmează instrucțiunile detaliate din Centrul de ajutor pentru a transfera fișiere pe dispozitivele eReader compatibile.
