Richard Wagner: The Godfather of Film Music?

[Dunge_Onmaster 12]

Hello there,

 

some time ago I made a little piano arrangement of the powerful orchestral conclusion to Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold" (1869), the first of his four Ring operas. Here, several of the most important leitmotifs are musically interwoven in a sweeping triumphal march: the Valhalla motif in it's full glory, followed by the Ring motif in a somber interlude and finally a climactic coda over the motif for the Rainbow Bridge, which leads up to Valhalla itself, the mythical Castle of the Gods. Wagner is considered one if not THE the most influential precursors of Hollywood Golden and Silver Age film music. Not only because of his well-known leitmotif technique and choice of mythological sujets, but also because of the often very expansive harmonic structures with distant-third relationships all over the place and, of course, his modern-sounding, very brass-heavy instrumentation.  

 

Maybe here are some fellow "Wagnerians" who will enjoy this little hommage:  

 

 

 

For reasons not entirely unironic I like to play this every year at the welcoming ceremony for the new 5th graders at our school... 

Best regards,

 

Dustin

[Dunge_Onmaster 12]

If I should ever release a tribute album, this would be the cover... 

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

Nice arrangement!

 

You might like this thread:

 

 

[bollemanneke 3,352]

If godfather means writing a ton of dull music that might have inspired someone else down the line to do a better job for film, yes.

[Dunge_Onmaster 12]

Quote

Nice arrangement!

 

You might like this thread:

 

Thank you. I'm glad you like my arrangement and thanks for the link. As you can imagine, I'm an ardent Wagner disciple myself. I visited Bayreuth for the first time this summer and was thrilled!
Nice to learn there are obviously other Wagnerians here. However, Matthews' transcribed ultra-short version of the Ring doesn't work for me. The motifs have absolutely no time to unfold in any way let alone form a meaningful musical phrase and structure. If you really want to condense the Ring's most important motifs in a reasonable and artistic manner, you need at least a duration of 50-60 minutes, as in the Maazel version.

[Edmilson 7,473]

I really liked the use of Wagner's music on Terrence Malick's The New World.

 

17 minutes ago, Dunge_Onmaster said:

Nice to learn there are obviously other Wagnerians here.

You'll love to talk with @Chen G., he also really enjoys Wagner.

[Schilkeman 964]

2 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

If godfather means writing a ton of dull music that might have inspired someone else down the line to do a better job for film, yes.

His influence on Williams is suspect, however, Shore clearly worships at the alter of Wagner. In that regard, I prefer Shore’s LotR, but I could really leave them both.

[bollemanneke 3,352]

I vastly prefer Shore's ring. I don't care how intellectual Wagner was/thought he was, it takes hours to get through his stuff and the joy I get out of it is almost none.

[TolkienSS 407]

I don't know how someone can listen to Parsifal and think that's intellectual.

 

The purpose of meaningful works of music is 98% not to get "joy" out of them, but to experience a spirit journey with a whole spectrum of emotions, while being told a story.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

2 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

I vastly prefer Shore's ring. I don't care how intellectual Wagner was/thought he was, it takes hours to get through his stuff

 

Quite unlike Shore's Ring…

[Chen G. 3,950]

4 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

His influence on Williams is suspect, however, Shore clearly worships at the alter of Wagner. In that regard, I prefer Shore’s LotR, but I could really leave them both.

 

Both composers don't really take from Wagner in the sense of their melodic and harmonic language in the least. They both, however, take from Wagner structurally. They just go a different way about doing so.

 

Really, I've heard the point made that Wagner was far more influential on other artists than on other composers. And, both in the other arts and in music, The Ring was by far the least influential of his works.

 

And, really, since each of Wagner's works is so radically different, I think we're missing something when, in speaking of the works of Williams, Shore or whomever else as Wagnerian, we immediately look to The Ring and not to any of Wagner's other works.

 

In my mind, Williams' work - at least on his more fantastical scores - is closer to Lohengrin and Tannhauser than to The Ring. Even if you take Williams' enormous Star Wars corpus, its ultimately more like a version of Tannhauser on an enormous scale, than like The Ring.

 

In Tannhauser, there's the music of the Venusberg, and the music of the Pilgrims, and at the end of the piece, the Pilgrims' music triumphs. In Star Wars, we have the music of the Jedi and the music of the Sith, and the music of the Jedi triumphs. That is the model, structurally speaking, of quite a few Williams scores, and it IS a Wagnerian model. But its not, on the whole, the model of The Ring.

 

In The Ring, Wotan's music doesn't triumph over Alberich's (as such), and the Walsung's music doesn't triumph either. The Ring, rather, takes these musical "worlds" (of which there are more than two) and fuses them together, which is not a characteristic of Williams' music (although it is of Shore's).

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

19 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Both composers don't really take from Wagner in the sense of their melodic and harmonic language in the least.

 

Harmonically, probably almost every 20th century composer owes a lot to Wagner. He was a huge hagmonic influence on virtually everyone from Bruckner, Strauss, and Mahler to Debussy and Schönberg and beyond.

[Chen G. 3,950]

17 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Harmonically, probably almost every 20th century composer owes a lot to Wagner.

 

Right, and both Williams and Shore do use (quite prominently, actually) the "Tarnhelm progression", which we call after the helmet from The Ring, but which first crops-up in Lohengrin and runs all through Wagner's ouevre.

 

Wagner's other harmonic innovation, the Tristan progression, is not a noted influence on either composer, it seems to me.

 

Wagner's main influence on both is ultimately structural. Except Williams is more influenced (and indirectly, at that) by the models of Tannhauser and Lohengrin, Shore more by The Ring itself.

[karelm 2,915]

On 16/09/2023 at 2:01 PM, Dunge_Onmaster said:

Hello there,

 

some time ago I made a little piano arrangement of the powerful orchestral conclusion to Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold" (1869), the first of his four Ring operas. Here, several of the most important leitmotifs are musically interwoven in a sweeping triumphal march: the Valhalla motif in it's full glory, followed by the Ring motif in a somber interlude and finally a climactic coda over the motif for the Rainbow Bridge, which leads up to Valhalla itself, the mythical Castle of the Gods. Wagner is considered one if not THE the most influential precursors of Hollywood Golden and Silver Age film music. Not only because of his well-known leitmotif technique and choice of mythological sujets, but also because of the often very expansive harmonic structures with distant-third relationships all over the place and, of course, his modern-sounding, very brass-heavy instrumentation.  

 

Maybe here are some fellow "Wagnerians" who will enjoy this little hommage:  

 

 

 

For reasons not entirely unironic I like to play this every year at the welcoming ceremony for the new 5th graders at our school... 

Best regards,

 

Dustin

Nice job!  As a low brass player (bass trombone), I always appreciate this moment.  I saw the 14 hour opera once and it was incredibly moving.  The sheer spectacle and sense of occasion is hard to describe.  It rewards the tremendous patience necessary to experience it in all its glory.  

[Schilkeman 964]

To have been influenced by Wagner, Williams would first have to be familiar with Wagner, which, by his own admission, he is not. He is influenced by way of Waxman and Steiner and other golden age composers, to achieve a "classic Hollywood" sound. His harmonic language is much more influenced by Copland, Debussy, Ives, Russian composers in general, Schoenberg, and Bill Evans, with a not insignificant amount of Holst and Vaughan-Williams thrown in.

 

HIs other compositional techniques, of counterpoint, orchestration, complex rhythm, etc, are wildly different from Wagner. The comparison just doesn't hold water with me. 

[Chen G. 3,950]

You're right on all accounts.

 

But you forgot another element: structure.

 

That many Williams' scores are constructed off of many themes that are related to elements of on the onscreen action, and that these themes are arranged into opposing forces - those are patently Wagnerian techniques.

 

Williams may not have derived them directly from Wagner but rather from Wagnerian film composers like Korngold, but the technique is patently Wagnerian (and Williams knows and acknowledges this, by the way).

 

There's even another Wagnerian technique: the reluctance to cadence some of these ideas. Look at the "Force theme." In the original Star Wars, in which its present from the very beginning, it never ever cadences until the very end. Immediately brings to mind Tristan.

[Schilkeman 964]

On 20/09/2023 at 6:59 PM, Chen G. said:

You're right on all accounts.

 

But you forgot another element: structure.

 

That many Williams' scores are constructed off of many themes that are related to elements of on the onscreen action, and that these themes are arranged into opposing forces - those are patently Wagnerian techniques.

 

Williams may not have derived them directly from Wagner but rather from Wagnerian film composers like Korngold, but the technique is patently Wagnerian (and Williams knows and acknowledges this, by the way).

 

There's even another Wagnerian technique: the reluctance to cadence some of these ideas. Look at the "Force theme." In the original Star Wars, in which its present from the very beginning, it never ever cadences until the very end. Immediately brings to mind Tristan.

What? The force theme is a standard 8 bar melody with a half-cadence in the middle and perfect cadence at the end. It is hardly unique in structure. Ode to Joy is written the same way. 

 

Williams acknowledges that he came by Wagner by way of Korngold and co., true. I just make a distinction between technical compositional techniques and the forms used to employ them. I would hardly call the symphonies of Copland and Mozart similar, though they use similar structures. 

[Chen G. 3,950]

16 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

I would hardly call the symphonies of Copland and Mozart similar, though they use similar structures. 

 

Classical symphonies had much more standardised in form, though. Whereas programmatic works like Lohengrin or the Star Wars scores, not so much. So in this case, I do think the model is Wagnerian (albeit via Korngold). It has some antecedents in the works of Carl Maria von Weber, true. But still.

 

16 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

What? The force theme is a standard 8 bar melody with a half-cadence in the middle and perfect cadence at the end.

 

Watch the original film again: the theme is either not stated fully, or its final cadence is tainted by disonance all throughout the film EXCEPT the march-like version at the very end. That's a very Wagnerian technique (although you can find an antecedent to it in Weber's Euryanthe).

[Schilkeman 964]

On 22/09/2023 at 7:41 AM, Chen G. said:

Watch the original film again: the theme is either not stated fully, or its final cadence is tainted by disonance all throughout the film EXCEPT the march-like version at the very end. That's a very Wagnerian technique (although you can find an antecedent to it in Weber's Euryanthe).

It resolves, belatedly, but still, during the binary sunset. The statements during the Battle of Yavin transition to different keys and other themes and action music. I can't recall any others from that film. There's a big one at the start of Sith that resolves fully, and in a way agrees with you, by putting more fuel on my belief that George was not the only one utilizing ring composition ideas in the prequels.

[Chen G. 3,950]

9 minutes ago, Schilkeman said:

There's a big one at the start of Sith that resolves fully

 

Also I think the big statement when Anakin blows up the command ship in Episode I.

 

But within the confines of the original film there is this sense of something looking for resolution and not actually finding it until the very end. That's an extremly Wagnerian idea.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

Have I posted this yet?

 

(Not a good performance, unfortunately, but the original OST version doesn't seem to be on YouTube)

[Chen G. 3,950]

Wow, the Bayreuth fanfares sound funky this year! 

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

Actually, that was supposed to go into the The Hunt thread… apparently I got my links mixed up.

[Chen G. 3,950]

So I assumed. 

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

I'm thinking of getting this.

 

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]

All I want for Christmas is this.

 

[Chen G. 3,950]

Is that... Klaus Florian Vogt?

 

I'd much rather a figurine of Annette Dasch's stunning, splendid Elsa, myself...

 

 

Great cast (with Dasch, either Vogt or Kaufmann, Zeppenfeld, etc...) but a wee bit fast on the tempi, and bizarre production as usual...

 

EDIT: You can tell this forum isn't a Wagnerian hub, because in places where people are passionate about their Wagner, the mere mention of Florian-Vogt would spark considerable debate. 

[Jurassic Shark 12,091]