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Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas" as they were later called). Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner always wrote the scenario and libretto for his works himself.
Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with specific characters, locales, or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music.
He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). Wagner even went so far as to build his own opera-house to try to stage these works as he had imagined them.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service. Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner in his later years may have suspected that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated (wrongly) that Geyer was Jewish.
Geyer's love of the theatre was shared by his step-son, and Wagner even took part in performances. In his autobiography Wagner recalled on one occasion playing the part of an angel. The boy Wagner was also hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Weber's Der Freischutz. At the end of 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher, but could not manage a proper scale and mostly preferred playing theater overtures by ear. Geyer died in 1821, when Richard was eight. Following this, Wagner was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, paid for by Geyer's brother. The young Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright, his first creative effort being a gruesome tragedy, Leubald und Adelaide begun at school in 1826, which was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner determined to set this to music and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.
By 1827, the family had moved back to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in composition were taken between 1828-31 with Christian Gottlieb Müller, but it was Beethoven who would first inspire him. In January of 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Beethoven became his muse, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony as well as piano sonatas and orchestral overtures. In 1829 he saw the dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient on stage, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera.
Wagner claimed to have seen Schröder-Devrient in the title role of Fidelio, however it seems more likely that he saw her performance as Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. He enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831. Furthermore he took compositon lessons with the cantor of Saint Thomas church, Christian Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons, and arranged for one of Wagner's piano works to be published. A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenian work which gave him his first opportunity as a conductor in 1832. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which was never completed.
In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as chorusmaster in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.
Meanwhile, Wagner held brief appointments as musical director at opera houses in Magdeburg and Königsberg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This second opera was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance, leaving the composer (not for the last time) in serious financial difficulties.
On 24 November 1836, Wagner married actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer. They moved to the city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire, where Wagner became music director of the local opera. A few weeks afterward, Minna ran off with an army officer who then abandoned her, penniless. Wagner took Minna back; however, this was but the first debâcle of a troubled marriage that would end in misery three decades later.
By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga to escape from creditors (debt would plague Wagner for most of his life). During their flight, they and their Newfoundland dog, Robber, took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). The Wagners spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. He also completed Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer during this time.
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