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Dramatic Time and Operatic Form in Wagner's Tannhäuser

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1977

Reinhard Strohm
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Extract

Everybody can imagine the following kind of operatic scene: many characters are on the stage, all singing, pronouncing different words, and expressing contrasted emotions simultaneously – but nothing happens. Action is suspended, the music goes on. The music does not need to be carried forward by action or even text; it has its own formal logic and extension. The last section of Mozart's second finale of Le nozze di Figaro, for instance, takes no less than fourteen pages in the vocal score. Its text consists of only two quatrains of four lines each, which are pronounced and repeated by one group of actors each. The piece comes at the end of a long finale that is full of action; but after the ‘colpo di scena’ provided by the entry of Marcellina, Dottor Bartolo, Don Basilio, with their marriage contract, nobody is able to act or even to speak coherently any longer, nobody causes the other to react to his words, nobody seems to hear the other – and they are all singing loudly and clearly. Not only does the surprise justify the standstill of actions and reactions on the stage: it is typical that in such operatic ensembles the characters behave as if they were not listening to each other.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 104 , 1977 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 For an interesting approach to this problem see Hammerstein, Reinhold, ‘Über das gleichzeitige Erklingen mehrerer Texte’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, xxvii (1974), 257–286. (Mozart and opera are mentioned only on pp. 283–5.)Google Scholar

2 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama. Part II: The Play and Dramatic Poetry, in Richard Wagner's Prose Works, trans. W. A. Ellis, ii (London, 1893, R/1972), 133.Google Scholar

3 Leo Karl Gerhartz, Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Verdi not dem literarischen Drama, Berliner Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, xv (Berlin, 1968).Google Scholar

4 Carl Dahlhaus, Wagners Konzeption des musikalischen Dramas, 100 Jahre Bayreuther Festspiele, v (Regensburg, 1971), 15–24.Google Scholar

5 Dahlhaus, Wagners Konzeption, 29.Google Scholar

6 See Dahlhaus, Carl, Richard Wagners Musikdramen (Velber, 1971), 12–94. An English translation of this book by Mary Whittall is to be published.Google Scholar

7 Of all places! One would rather imagine that a play on this subject originating in Holland would have been called, for example. The Flying Scotsman, etc.Google Scholar

8 Letter of 5 June, 1845. See Letters of Richard Wagner. The Burrell Collection, ed. with notes by John Burk (London, 1951), 108–10.Google Scholar

9 Dahlhaus, Richard Wagners Musikdramen, 28f.Google Scholar

10 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, 232, 255, and passim.Google Scholar

11 For this scene, see also Reinhold Brinkmann, ‘Tannhäusers Lied’, Das Drama Richard Wagners als musikalisches Kunstwerk, ed. C. Dahlhaus (Regensburg, 1970), 199–211.Google Scholar

12 See also Dahlhaus, Wagners Konzeption, 35.Google Scholar

13 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, 254.Google Scholar

14 Dahlhaus, Wagners Konzeption, 50–61.Google Scholar