Hector Berlioz Richard Wagner influences and relationship
The relationship between Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner can be traced and observed both musically and personally. ... Berlioz (1803-69) was ten years older than Richard Wagner (1813-81). To generalise, Berlioz was composing between 1829 and 1863 and his peak of influence (ie. best works, most popularity etc) was around 1835 - 1846, while Wagner composed from 1841 to 1881 and his peak of influence was between 1850 - 1880. This generalisations set the background to understanding the musical place of each man during their relationship. When Wagner first came to Paris in 1839, Berlioz was at the peak of his career. It was hear that Wagner heard Berliozs Romeo and Juliet for the first time. I quote from Barzun; Aged 26, fresh from his German province, and living as yet obscurely in the French capital, Wagner experienced what he called the revelation of a new world of music . ... As the composer of two very slight operatic scores and a few overtures and songs, Wagner could reasonably feel like a child in comparison with [Berlioz]. ... Berlioz used the voice throughout the whole symphony, using the chorus as yet another colour to help bring out the drama. Wagner used the voice with a strong symphonic base in most of his operas. ... While in Paris, Wagner wrote to a German music journal, the Abendzeitung; From our Germany the spirit of Beethoven has wafted across to him, and these have certainly been times when Berlioz would dearly loved to be a German. ... While his nationalistic tendencies caused Wagner to look down of the Frenchman, he later wrote admiringly of the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony; This symphony will exact the hearts of men so long as there is a nation called France. Berlioz and Wagner met in the flesh for the first time later in 1839. ... To hear more from Wagners side, I now quote from Ronald Taylor; He respected Berlioz, the disturbing, uncompromising innovator, above all for his integrity as an artist, seeing him as the only man in the corrupt and mercenary world of Parisian music who did not pander to popular taste and compose just for money. Wagner returned to Germany in 1842, and his opera career began in earnest with Rienzi and Der fliegende Hollander, with great success. In 1844 Berlioz travelled to Dresden, where they met on friendly terms. Berlioz wrote in his Memoirs; As for the young Kapellmeister, Richard Wagner, who lived for some time in Paris without succeeding in making himself known. ... After having endured untold privations in France, and all the mortifications attendant on obscurity, Wagner, on his return to Saxony, had the boldness to undertake and the good fortune to carry out the composition of both words and music of an opera in five acts, Rienzi.