In Celebration of the Human Voice - The Essential Musical Instrument

Richard Wagner

Born: 1813. Died: 1883. Lived in: Germany
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

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Richard Wagner : Wagner on Conducting

Widely regarded as the most significant conductor of the 19th century, Wagner was probably most responsible for launching the cult of the conductor as an omnipotent, omniscient, near-divine leader of musicians. His performances on the podium and his writings on conducting helped shape a generation of conductors, just as his music shaped a generation of composers. This volume contains his most important essay on conducting.