Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...
Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...
Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...
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30<br />
<strong>Cambridge</strong> <strong>Pre</strong>-U Teacher <strong>Guide</strong><br />
of the stage. It was constructed mainly of wood, partly <strong>for</strong> financial reasons but also to give the<br />
acoustics a particular kind of resonance. The orchestra pit was built largely underneath the stage,<br />
with only a relatively small opening into the auditorium; in addition, there was a curved screen that<br />
hid the orchestra from view and allowed the sound to emerge indirectly; this had two effects that<br />
Wagner considered important: the movements of conductor and orchestra were concealed from the<br />
audience, so that they could not distract them; and the somewhat muted effect that resulted meant<br />
that even a very large orchestra would not drown the voices on stage.<br />
King Ludwig, throughout this time, had tried to distance himself from the entire project, still wishing<br />
that Wagner’s festival would somehow find its home in Munich. Nevertheless, in 1874 he agreed to<br />
lend Wagner the necessary funds to complete both the Festspielhaus and the nearby Villa Wahnfried,<br />
into which the Wagner family moved in April. Wagner had been working steadily on the completion<br />
of Siegfried and the composition of Götterdämmerung ever since he had returned to the Ring in<br />
1869. He finished Siegfried in February 1871, but did not make this fact public in case King Ludwig<br />
insisted on having it per<strong>for</strong>med in Munich. The whole tetralogy was completed in November 1874,<br />
a little more than twenty years since the first music had been written. Wagner spent the next two<br />
years travelling across Germany to find singers, <strong>teaching</strong> them the particular style of singing he<br />
demanded <strong>for</strong> each role and supervising the production rehearsals. The first complete per<strong>for</strong>mance<br />
of the Ring took place in August 1876, conducted by Hans Richter. There were three complete cycles<br />
and the audience was a glittering array of monarchs (including Kaiser Wilhelm I, King Ludwig II and<br />
even the Emperor of Brazil), musicians (including Liszt, Bruckner, Grieg, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky),<br />
philosophers (including Nietzsche) and critics (including Hanslick).<br />
In terms of its sheer length and complexity, the Ring is a unique achievement in European art. The<br />
length of time it took to complete (and in particular the twelve-year break in its composition) is<br />
evident in a marked change of style between the second and third acts of Siegfried. Not only did<br />
Wagner radically change his views about the relationship between words and music between 1857<br />
and 1869, but his style and technique were also vastly enriched through the experience of composing<br />
Tristan and Die Meistersinger. Whereas the earlier parts of the Ring are often somewhat terse in<br />
their vocal lines and in the use of leitmotifs, Act III of Siegfried and the whole of Götterdämmerung<br />
are more lyrically expansive and altogether richer in texture. The end of the cycle also underwent<br />
significant changes. In the original conception, consistent with Wagner’s utopian ideals of the 1840s,<br />
the final scene showed Wotan purified but remaining alive to spread a new message of hope to the<br />
world. In its final version, consistent with the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the gods are destroyed<br />
along with everyone and everything else: only through death can the evils of life be conquered.<br />
The central themes of the Ring concern power, corruption, jealousy, love, betrayal, renunciation<br />
and death. The opening scene of Das Rheingold represents the beginning of the world and the<br />
final scene of Götterdämmerung its end. It has often been said that between these two scenes the<br />
Ring encompasses all human experience, both good and evil. It has been interpreted in terms of a<br />
Marxist allegory or of a struggle between a master race and those it seeks to dominate; proponents<br />
of extreme political systems, whether of the left or right, have found in it support <strong>for</strong> their theories. It<br />
has been viewed (notably by Robert Donington) as an artistic prototype of the psychological theories<br />
of Carl Jung, in which various elements of the story act as archetypes and the characters represent<br />
different aspects of a single psyche. One of the great strengths of the Ring (or its main weakness,<br />
depending on one’s point of view) is that it contains enough ambiguities to be open to a very wide<br />
range of different, and often opposing, interpretations.<br />
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