Since the 1840s, critics have lambasted Wagner for lacking the ability to compose melody. But for him, melody was fundamental – 'music's only form'. This incongruity testifies to the surprising difficulties during the nineteenth century of conceptualizing melody. Despite its indispensable place in opera, contemporary theorists were unable even to agree on a definition for it. In Wagner's Melodies, David Trippett re-examines Wagner's central aesthetic claims, placing the composer's ideas about melody in the context of the scientific discourse of his age: from the emergence of the natural sciences and historical linguistics to sources about music's stimulation of the body and inventions for 'automatic' composition. Interweaving a rich variety of material from the history of science, music theory, music criticism, private correspondence and court reports, Trippett uncovers a new and controversial discourse that placed melody at the apex of artistic self-consciousness and generated problems of urgent dimensions for German music aesthetics.
• The first study to link the emergence of the Natural Sciences and technological thinking to Wagner's aesthetics of expression • Interweaves a wide variety of source material from the history of science, music theory, music criticism and aesthetics, including material from private correspondence, newspapers and court reports, as well as published books • Translates a great many sources into English for the first time and uncovers a new, controversial discourse on melody within nineteenth-century German aesthetics
Contents
Introduction; 1. German melody; 2. Melodielehre?; 3. Wagner in the melodic workshop; 4. Hearing voices: Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient and the Lohengrin 'Recitatives'; 5. Vowels, voices, and 'original truth'; 6. Wagner's material expression; Excursus: Bellini's Sinnlichkeit and Wagner's Italy.
Reviews
Advance praise: 'Trippett's work dispels the myth that there is nothing new to be written about Richard Wagner. He delves into uncanny underworlds of nineteenth-century thought, and shows how they underpin Wagner's compositional ideas. Nascent technologies, speculation on melody and meaning, the acoustic reality of theatrical sound - all this is woven into an account of Wagner's evolution that is both startling and illuminating. A tremendous achievement.' Carolyn Abbate, Professor of Music, Harvard University
Advance praise: 'Wagner sits at the centre of a veritable spider's web in this book, where the disparate threads of a practical and theoretical discourse about melody in the nineteenth century meet. Artistic creativity and the scientific spirit are spun together in a convincing image surprisingly close to discourses about music in the twenty-first century … Among recent studies about Wagner and his world, David Trippett's is one of the few with something genuinely original to say and should be read by anybody with a serious interest in the subject.' John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music, King's College London
Advance praise: 'Melody is famously elusive and resistant to analysis. Nineteenth-century theorists, more comfortable with the quantifiable parameters of harmony and meter, shied away from it. Trippett does not. He demonstrates that melody was a matter of vital importance and critical contention for musicians in the German cultural orbit, who sought to forge a distinct musical 'voice' with melodic virtues different from those of French and Italian music. Trippett impressively guides us through a discourse of melody that was dispersed across several different kinds of writing … The book offers a much needed intellectual and cultural context for Wagner's familiar obsessions with melody, text-music relationships, and the role of the singer-actor. But it goes beyond this: through close analysis of Wagner's compositions and writings, it provides fresh insights that challenge the composer's own narrative of how he arrived at his melodic ideals.' Dana Gooley, Associate Professor of Music, Brown University
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