Wagner's Musical Influence

[Thropplenoggin]

For a long time, I couldn't place Mahler's soundworld in the context of the chronology of classical music; he always sounded sui generis to me, a unique harmonic palette. And then recently I heard Tristan und Isolde, a wonderfu involving and transfiguring experience. And I finally seemed to have found the missing link for that Mahler sonic palette: Wagner. (Indeed, there is a little motif near the end of the Parsifal Prelude that I swear Mahler either copies or quotes (around the 11' mark on the Solti version)).

I now hear the influence everywhere in late Romanticism - Webern's In Sommerwind, Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, many of Strauss's tone poems. He seems to have opened up a new harmonic language, something we just don't hear before in Brahms, Beethoven, etc. Am I right in hearing this?

I am looking forward to next week's Wagner-fest on R3, especially the various documentaries. I wonder if they'll comment on this aspect of his music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I now hear the influence everywhere in late Romanticism - Webern's In Sommerwind, Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, many of Strauss's tone poems. He seems to have opened up a new harmonic language, something we just don't hear before in Brahms, Beethoven, etc. Am I right in hearing this?

Not quite; twenty years before Tristan, there appeared this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpT-k8qS5mw

... and chromatic harmonies appear (on a much smaller scale) in some of Schubert's later songs. It's interesting to compare the opening of Tristan with that of Brahms' First Symphony - the Brahms is quite as chromatic as the Wagner, but underpinned by the Timps and Basses repeated Cs, which keep the chromatics grounded in the key of the work. Wagner lets go of this safety line, and doesn't truly reach a Tonic until the end of the Opera.

But you're absolutely right that Wagner's influence on the next generation was far greater than Berlioz or Schubert's, and it was as worshippers of both Wagner and Brahms that Mahler, Strauss, Pfitzner, Wolf, Schoenberg etc etc began their composing careers.