Dreaming: Wagner's Songs

Unlike most other composers who wrote for the voice, there are few instances of Wagner's writing available for the concert stage; if you want to hear just a single item for a tenor, for instance, you have to hear what is delightfully termed a bleeding chunk from one of the operas. (One of the opera, we should say; opera is the plural, after all.)

There are a few notable exceptions, such as The Prize Song from Die Meistersinger, sung here by the celebrated Canadian tenor, Ben Heppner. (This is the song of a youth, smitten with love. In his defense, we must note that Ben Heppner has been singing this role since he was a young man, with great success.) Here is another rendition by Peter Anders, in which the orchestra has been captured better than in Heppner's live version.

Because Wagner wrote his operas in a seamless style, not wanting it broken down into "musical numbers", as are Broadway musicals, for instance, and certainly Italian Opera, it is hard to slice out a "song" from the continuously evolving melodic texture of the opera. He found the choppy style of recitative, aria, bridge too artificial. In fact, Wagner wanted to create a single art-form that encompassed art, music, poetry and drama seamlessly all in one. In a Wagner opera, the protagonists declaim their heroic utterances as if they were instruments in the orchestra, in contrast to earlier styles of opera, where the orchestra backs down to the role of an accompaniment when an aria takes place. (Note that Wagner's artistic ideas have the potential to be realized in Cinema. My Fair Lady, for instance, despite its sectional structure, comes close to this almost seamless unity of visuals, text and music.) As a result, the vocal music of possibly one of the greatest composers for voice is unavailable for enjoyment in the concert hall. Almost.

It so happened that Wagner had an affair with one Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker. She was a poet, and she gave him a number of her poems, to set to music. Wagner did this, and there is a set of five songs --Lieder, as they are called in German-- and they are beautiful. [A portrait of Madame Wesendonck is at above right.] The songs were originally for voice and piano, but were later orchestrated in Wagnerian style by Felix Mottl, and were recorded by such famous Wagnerian mezzo sopranos as Kirsten Flagstadt, and clips are available on YouTube. Much later, a light scoring of the Lieder was undertaken by Hans Werner Henze, for chamber orchestra and voice. A beautiful example is by Marjana Lipovsek. (I'll try to upload a clip one of these days.) A videoclip of Der Engel (The Angel) sung by Silvana Dussmann is available on YouTube.

[Added later: Der Engel sung by Waltraud Meier.]

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[P.S. : None of the links work, because of an "upgrade" to the blogging software!  Gotta love it.]