self with Liszt. He dwells alone upon a
solitary height."

RICHARD WAGNER

By FRANKLIN PETERSON, Mus. Bac.

(1813-1883)

[Illustration: Wagner.]

Richard Wagner's personality has been so overshadowed by and almost
merged in the great controversy which his schemes of reform in opera
raised, that his life and character are often now sorely
misjudged--just as his music long was--by those who have not the time,
the inclination, or the ability to understand the facts and the
issues. Before briefly stating then the theories he propounded and
their development, as shown in successive music dramas, it will be
well to summarize the story of a life (1813-83) during which he was
called to endure so much vicissitude, trial and temptation, suffering
and defeat.

Born in Leipsic, on May 22, 1813, the youngest of nine children,
Wilhelm Richard was only five months old when his father died. His
mother's second marriage entailed a removal to Dresden, where, at the
Kreuzschule, young Wagner received an excellent liberal education. At
the age of thirteen the bent of his taste, as well as his diligence,
was shown by his translation (out of school hours) of the first twelve
books of the "Odyssey." In the following year his passion for poetry
found expression in a grand tragedy. "It was a mixture," he says, "of
Hamlet and Lear. Forty-two persons died in the course of the play,
and, for want of more characters, I had to make some of them reappear
as ghosts in the last act." Weber, who was then conductor of the
Dresden opera, seems to have attracted the boy both by his personality
and by his music; but it was Beethoven's music which gave him his real
inspiration. From 1830 to 1833 many compositions after standard models
are evidence of hard and systematic work and in 1833 he began his long
career as an operatic composer with "Die Feen" which, however, never
reached the dignity of performance till 1888--five years after
Wagner's death. After some time spent in very unremunerative routine
work in Heidelberg, Koenigsberg, and Riga (where in 1836 he married),
he resolved, in 1839, to try his fortune in Paris with "Rienzi," a new
opera, written on the lines of the Paris Grand Opera and with all its
great resources in view. From the month's terrific storm in the North
Sea, through which the vessel struggled to its haven, till the spring
of 1842, when Wagner left Paris with "Rienzi" unperformed, heartsick
with hope deferred, his lot