WAGNER, RICHARD ( 1S13-S3 ) . The origina tor of the music-drama, and one of the greatest of all musical geniuses. He was horn at Leipzig, May 22, 1813, the ninth child of Karl Fried solin Wagner and Johanna Rosina Hertz \Vaguer. The father, who was a clerk in the police court, and during the French oc eupation of Leipzig was chief of police, died five months after Richard's birth. His widow, left in straitened circumstances, married in 1815 Ludwig Geyer, an actor, playwright. and portrait painter in Dresden, whither the family removed.
Wagner's own father had been fond of poetry and the drama, and devoted to amateur acting. From him Richard inherited, and in the sur roundings of his stepfather's home absorbed• that love of the theatre which later directed his musical gifts toward the stage. At the Kreuz sehule he wrote, in competition with his class mates, verses on the death of a schoolmate, which received the distinction of being printed. He aimed at the colossal even as a boy; his admira tion for Shakespeare led him at fourteen years of age to begin a tragedy, which lie described as a jumble of Hamlet and Lear. So many poeple died in the course of the first four acts that their ghosts had to return to keep the fifth act going. He was deeply impressed by \Vebe•'s music, and so moved by Beethoven, several of whose sym phonies and whose Egmont music he heard at the Gewandhans, in Leipzig—the family having returned there after Geye•'s death in 1520—that he decided to write music for his tragedy. First he tried to teach himself ; then he took lessons of Gottlieb Muller, who was too pedantic, however, for Wagngi•'s assertive individuality. An over ture composed by him at this time was played_ between the acts at the theatre where his eldest sister had an engagement. Ile had written the score in three different inks—the strings in red, the reeds in green, and the brasses in black. Every four bars a loud beat was required of the drum-player. At first the listeners were puzzled, then they became impatient, finally they laughed. In 1830 he entered the University of Leipzig. At this time he began studying music with Theodor Weinlig, to whom as late as 1877 he paid a high tribute. A sonata and a polonaise (piano duet), without Wagnerian characteristics, date from this period, and a .1/o/or Symphony, which was performed at Leipzig indannary, 1833, has an interesting history. Wagner gave it to Mendelssohn, hoping for another performance.
Nothing came of it. We know it was Moinlels sohn who played the Tonehd user overture at the Gewandhaus "as a warning example." After Mendelssolm's death :ill svarelt for the manu script proved fruitless. But in 187•' in an old trunk which Wagner had left in Dresden \viten he Iled during the Ilevolution of 1849, an almost complete set of the parts was found. A score was compiled from these, and Christmas Eve, 1882, nearly half a century after its composition and within a few weeks of his death, Wagner conducted this early work at a private per formance in Venice.
In 1833, at the age of twenty, he became a pro fessional musician, a crept ing the post of chorus master at Wiirzburg, where his brother Allcut Was a tenor, actor, and chorus master. He bc came suecessivaly for brief periods conductor at Magdeburg, Kilnigsberg, and Riga, composed the operas Oic Peen and Das LIcbcsvi•sbot (based on Shakespeare's Ileasurc for 3Icasun•), and the overtures Columbus and Pule Britannia; wrote a libretto sketch hie holic Braid, which he sent. to Scribe, who took no notice of it; and added to his financial burdens, already critically heavy, by marrying, in 1836, Minna Planer, an actress in Kilnigsberg.
As Kapelltneister at Riga (1837-39) Wagner completed the libretto and the first two acts of Rienzi. With his wife he took passage in a sailing vessel from Pillau to London. and during the tempestuous voyage gained his first inspira tion for Der flicycnde1/iitter. After pass ing eight days in London and four weeks in Boulogne, he arrived in Septemla 839, at Paris, where he remained until 1812, passing through sonic of the bitterest ex periences of his career. At one time he was so impoverished that he offered himself as a chorus singer at a small Boulevard theatre, but was refused for his lack of voice. The first version of A Faust Overture was finished in 1840 (re modeled in 1855), and, through A1c•perbeer's in fluence, he sold to fillet, director of the Opera, his Flying Dutchman sketches, for which, bo W ever, Toucher and Revolt were commissioned to write the libretto and Pierre Louis Philippe Dietsche the music. The result, the Vaissean fantine, soon disappeared from the stage, but, by an irony of fate, Dietsehe conducted nearly twenty years later the Tannhauser performances which made such a colossal and famous fiasco at the Op6ra.