Wagner's Influence(s)

Responding to Richard Wagner's "Judaism in Music" from 1850, scholars and critics have long debated the extent to which the composer's racism could be located within his musical dramas. In the last quarter century, David Levin, and others, have redirected the analytic focus and proposed, instead, "to seek out the traces of antisemitism in the aesthetic register rather than the political or biographical." (Levin 1996 pp. 128-29). In this paper, I build on Levin's methods, but rather than focus on readings of Wagner's operas, I use Wagner's "Judaism in Music" as a lens through which to read Wagner's celebrated pamphlet from 1869, _On Conducting_. 


Wagner's treatise has received most of its attention from conductors, who aspire to imitate (or reject for its paradigmatic representation of Romanticism) the interpretive aspirations and techniques espoused by the author. Additionally, historians have turned to the work as a way to understand the reception history of certain compositions (especially Beethoven's Ninth Symphony) or the changing styles of interpretation over the 19th century. Little attention, however, has been paid to how Wagner's writings about performance and interpretation conflate aesthetics and German nationalism in ways that resonate with the philosophical values espoused in his antisemitic essay. 


Ever the self-promoting egotist, Wagner, in _On Conducting_, takes aim at multiple performers for failing to live up to his musical standards. But his commentary on the "Jewish" Felix Mendelssohn's conducting extends beyond the criticism of the individual (as does his critique of other Jewish musicians). Read through the lens of "Judaism in Music," Wagner's appraisal of Mendelssohn clearly applies an aesthetic of antisemitism to tempo and all methods of interpretation. The Jew, Wagner writes in 1850, no matter how assimilated, speaks German as a foreigner; the Jewish musician is inexpressive, superficial, imitates without understanding, and is more concerned with commercial successes than with true artistic creation. 
Mendelssohn, the conductor, Wagner writes in 1869, is similarly cast, his performances indifferent to musical substance and superficial, his preference for fast tempi a reflection of his greater attention to societal fashions and financial concerns ("time is money "). Yet Wagner is dependent on Mendelssohn as a foil, the negative other, against whom to frame the ideals of a true German performing artist. Wagner needs Mendelssohn, whose presence dominates Wagner's book on conducting, in order to dispense with him, a Beckmesser to his Walther, a Mime to his Siegfried. 


Building upon the work of Nina Eidsheim and others, I suggest that most conversations around the aesthetics of performance, as manifest in the criteria used to evaluate performers or shape new performances, fail to recognize the latent, or in the case of Wagner, unsubtle racism, that undergirds many dominant aesthetic claims. Instead we often presume that aesthetic reactions are either individually subjective or abstract, and thus separate from the topic of identity politics. Only by exploring the foundations and myriad manifestations of this bigotry might we begin the process of examining more critically the way we read and write about performance aesthetics.

Takarazuka, an all-female musical revue troupe based near Osaka, Japan, appeared on the entertainment scene in the 1910s amidst a wave of popular entertainment from abroad that included cabaret, silent cinema, musicals, and opera. As Arthur Groos (1989; 2016) illuminated in his studies of Takarazuka's interpretations of Madama Butterfly, the creative teams of the Japanese troupe sought to mitigate Puccini's exoticism. The troupe has produced adaptations of other operas that deftly interrogate existing norms of gender performance and tropes about romance. For example, the Takarazuka troupe's interpretations of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, produced in the tumultuous decades following the end of WWII, tackle issues of romantic love, gender roles, and androgyny. These issues are at the heart not only of various Takarazuka productions but also, as Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1993) has pointed out, Wagner's operas.  


Takarazuka's first adaptation of Tristan appeared in 1951, but it was not until the next decade that the story found a true foothold within the troupe's repertory. Part of this had to do with the Bayreuth Festspiele's visit to Osaka in 1967. Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen sang the title roles and Pierre Boulez took the podium, performing Wieland Wagner's production of Tristan und Isolde. Japanese critics lauded the production. Riding on the coattails of this tour, Takarazuka premiered a new adaptation of Tristan the following summer. In the case of Takarazuka's 1968 Torisutan to Izorude, the famously sensual tale, which starred two actresses in the eponymous roles, provided a way for the predominantly female audience members to imagine, and by extension, desire romantic relationships on their own terms. Despite the fact that it was written and directed by men, the show's musical nuances complicated traditional gender hierarchies. An analysis of the recurring numbers "Kogane Kami no Izorude" (Golden Haired Isolde) and "Kimi yue ni" (Because of You) reveals the ways Takarazuka's Torisutan functioned at the nexus of gender performance, popular music, and opera in Japan. Ultimately, Takarazuka's adaptations of canonical Western operas such as Wagner's Tristan und Isolde provide a valuable insight into the global flow of music culture and adaptation.

My paper focuses on François Delsarte's (1811-1871) "Course in Applied Aesthetics" as an unacknowledged source of Richard Wagner's aesthetic writings. I argue that much of what Wagner wrote about the interconnectedness of dance, music, and poetry as the "three primeval sisters" is derived from Delsarte's aesthetic theory, whereby gesture, vocal inflection, and articulate speech correspond to a concept of the Holy Trinity that is itself based on the spiritualist philosophy of Victor Cousin (1792-1867) and the theological writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Delsarte began teaching his course in May 1839 in Paris, a few months prior to Wagner's first arrival in the city later that September.


A professor of singing and declamation for more than forty years, Delsarte was also celebrated as one of the greatest tenors of his generation, second only to Duprez. Camille Saint-Saëns, in _Musical Memories_, wrote of him: "Delsarte, a singer without a voice, an imperfect musician, a doubtful scholar, guided by an intuition which approached genius, in spite of his numerous faults played an important role in the evolution of French music in the Nineteenth Century" (186-187).


Known in his own time as "The Great Delsarte," "The Master of Masters," and "The Newton of Aesthetics," Delsarte is remembered today mainly by theatre and dance historians for the gestural "system of expression" he created, which still bears his name. First and foremost, however, Delsarte was a musician, but because he failed to publish his work prior to his death in 1871, which was hastened by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, his influence on nineteenth-century musical aesthetics remains unknown.


Wagner, of course, never credited Delsarte as a source for his aesthetic writings. Nevertheless, an analysis of historical documents, along with a comparison of manuscript drawings by both artists – unpublished in their own lifetimes – will show an undeniable connection between Delsarte's aesthetic theory and Wagner's writings.

The successful reception of Tristan und Isolde in Madrid after its 1911 premiere asserted a pressure to include Wagnerian elements into Spanish opera, which prior to this historical moment revolved around three tendencies: first, considering the genre of Zarzuela as the only legitimate Spanish lyric theater; second, following the Italian opera tradition but using the alternate Latinate language of Spanish; and finally, introducing Spanish folk music into an international operatic style, the so-called «Nationalism of the Essences». Regarding the latter, Wagnerism was assumed to be the best global language for creating an attractive hybrid idiom that would play well on the international stage.
This paper studies the first opera of Conrado del Campo (1878-1953), El final de don Álvaro (1910-1911), which epitomizes the value of using Wagnerian elements in Spanish opera. Del Campo was, together with Manuel de Falla, one of the most important composers of the time, not only because of the quality of his output, but also due to his pedagogical influence as a professor of composition at the Conservatory of Madrid. He also absorbed many of the best features of the Wagnerian idiom but avoided the excesses that mar many other Wagner-influenced works. To demonstrate my claim, I start with examples of the operatic structure to show that the way he develops small- and large-scale harmonic and tonal relations is consistently engaging. Next, by analyzing some sections devoted to the important character of Leonor, I argue that Del Campo's employment of leitmotivs is dramatically and expressively effective. Finally, I emphasize how he uses hexatonic poles to represent the uncanny and to create a stark contrast with the Spanish folk music.
History was unfair to this opera, since the outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought to Spain an animosity against all things German. Subsequently, this side of Spanish identity was muted, and Falla, highly influenced by French music, became the symbol of Spanish nationalism. Hence, this study is a part of an ongoing project which aims to revive El final de don Álvaro at the Royal Theater of Madrid in order to support the broader academic movement that seeks to reclaim this unfairly muted side of early twentieth-century Spanish culture.