Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Richard Wagner: Symphony in C Major

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1. Sostenuto e maestoso - Allegro con brio
2. Andante ma non troppo, un poco maestoso
3. Allegro assai
4. Allegro molto e vivace

Note: The YouTube user Michael Canales wrote an interesting comment on this Symphony:

Proof that Wagner was a great composer at a very young age, who just kept getting better and better as time went on. BTW for those making a big deal out of Wagner's article "Judaism in Music" it should be kept in this context. When Wagner sent this score to Mendelssohn it was carelessly ignored by the latter and the full original score is lost forever. The parts themselves were discovered late in Wagner's life and the world premiere was Christmas 1882 conducted by the composer, his very last effort on the podium. He was pissed off at Mendelssohn for losing the score and never forgave him. Hence the ugly comments about Mendelssohn in that article.The jabs at Meyerbeer are much easier to explain. Meyerbeer was basically the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the 19th century and controlled the entire Parisian operatic scene. His idea of "helping" the young Wagner, the youthful genius who wrote this work, was to get him jobs as a hack copyist and arranger for composers we now have forgotten. Later Meyerbeer did actually help Wagner by recommending Rienzi to the theater in Dresden, far away from Paris of course, where the young genius would not be a threat to Meyerbeer and the Parisian establishment. Meyerbeer also played a sinister hand in the "Jockey Club" protests against Tannhauser in the Paris production of 1861. Meyerbeer's reputation has been sanitized by the horrors of WWII just as Wagner's has been stained, but the truth is that Meyerbeer kept Wagner down in Paris, and Wagner never forgave him for it. Hence, yet again the insults in the article. There is more to that article than just crude antisemitism. 


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