dqmcodebase = "/javascript/" Subject Collections Business Computers Education ... Music History 102 This collection All of the IPL Advanced The Romantic Era Richard Wagner Born: Leipzig, May 22, 1813 Died: Venice, February 13, 1883 From an early age, Wagner had been interested in theater, drama, verse, and acting. While in his teens he became interested in music, and began studying and composing. His greatest inspiration came from the operatic reforms and ideas of Gluck , and from the German operas of Carl Maria von Weber . By the age of twenty-two, he had finished his first opera and had begun to make notes for his autobiography. Convinced of his greatness, he continued composing and conducting, but meeting with little success. Eventually he became involved with the Dresden revolutionary uprising of 1849, the outcome of which made him a wanted political criminal, and he fled to Switzerland. During this time Wagner was continually composing operas and finding his mature style. He envisioned the creation of the "total art work": a conception of a music drama based on classic Greek prinicples, in which there would be a unity of music, drama, text, design, and movement. The subject matter of these works were to be the indigenous myths and legends of the German people, such as the famous | |
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