great German composer whose OPERAS, written to his own librettos, radically transformed the concept of stage music; b. Leipzig, May 22, 1813; d. Venice, Feb. 13, 1883. The antecedents of Wagner's family, and his own origin, are open to controversy. His father was a police registrar in Leipzig who died when Wagner was only six months old. His mother, Johanna (Rosine), née Pätz, was the daughter of a baker in Weissenfels. It is possible that she was an illegitimate offspring of Prince Friedrich Ferdinand Constantin of Weimar.

Eight months after her husband's death, Johanna Wagner married the actor Ludwig Geyer in 1814. This hasty marriage generated speculation that Geyer may have been Wagner's real father. Wagner himself entertained this possibility, pointing out the similarity of his and Geyers prominent noses.

The problem of Wagner's origin arose with renewed force after the triumph of the Nazi party in Germany. Hitler's adoration of Wagner was put in jeopardy by suspicions that Geyer might have been Jewish. If Wagner was indeed Geyer's natural son, then he himself was "tainted" by Semitic blood. To answer this question, Nazi biologists and archivists delved anxiously into Geyer's own ancestry. Much to their relief, it was found that Geyer, like Wagner's nominal father, was the purest of Aryans.

Geyer was a member of the Court Theater in Dresden, and the family moved there in 1814. Seven years later Geyer died, and in 1822 Wagner entered the Dresden Kreuzschule, where he remained a pupil until 1827. CARL MARIA VON WEBER often visited the Geyer home, and these visits nurtured Wagner's interest in music. In 1825 he began to take piano lessons from a local musician, and also studied violin.

Wagner showed strong literary inclinations, and, under the spell of Shakespeare, wrote a tragedy, Leubald. In 1827 he moved with his mother back to Leipzig, where his uncle Adolf Wagner gave him guidance in classical reading. In 1828 he was enrolled in the Nikolaischule. While in school he had lessons in harmony with Christian Gottlieb Müller, a violinist in the theater orchestra.

In 1830 Wagner entered the Thomasschule, where he began to compose. He wrote a string quartet and some piano music. That same year, his overture in B-flat major was performed at the Leipzig Theater, under the direction of Heinrich Dorn. Determined to dedicate himself entirely to music, he became a student of Theodor Weinlig, cantor of the Thomaskirche, from whom he received thorough training in COUNTERPOINT and composition.

The year 1832 was a productive one for Wagner. His first published work, a piano sonata in B-flat major, to which he assigned the opus number 1, was brought out by the prestigious publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel. Later that year, he wrote an overture to König Enzio, performed at the Leipzig Theater, followed by another overture in C major, which was presented at a Gewandhaus concert. Wagner's first major orchestral work, a symphony in C major, was performed at a Prague Conservatory concert that year; a year later, it was played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, when Wagner was just 19 years old. Finally, he also wrote an opera in 1832, Die Hochzeit. An introduction, a septet, and a chorus from this work have survived.

Early in 1833, Wagner began work on a second opera, Die Feen, to a LIBRETTO after Carlo Gozzi's La Donna serpente. Upon its completion in early 1834 he offered the score to the Leipzig Theater, but it was rejected. In the summer of 1834 he began to sketch out a new opera, Das Liebesverbot, after Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure. That summer he obtained the position of music director with Heinrich Bethmann's theater company, based in Magdeburg. He made his debut in Bad Lauschstadt, conducting WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTS DON GIOVANNI.

In 1836 Wagner led the premiere of his opera Das Liebesverbot, presented under the title Die Novize von Palermo, in Magdeburg. Bethmann's company soon went out of business. Wagner, who was by that time deeply involved with Christine Wilhelmine (Minna) Palner, an actress with the company, followed her to Königsberg, where they were married later that year. In Königsberg he composed the overture Rule Britannia, and in 1837 he was appointed music director of the Königsberg town theater. His marital affairs suffered a setback when Minna left him for a rich businessman by the name of Dietrich.

In 1837 Wagner went to Riga as music director of the theater there. Coincidentally, Minna's sister was engaged as a singer at the same theater. Minna soon joined her and reconciled with Wagner. In Riga Wagner worked on his new opera, RIENZI, der letzte der Tribunen, based on a popular novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

In 1839 Wagner lost his position in Riga. He and Minna, burdened by debts, left town to seek their fortune elsewhere. Along the way, their ship encountered a fierce storm and was forced to drop anchor in the Norwegian fjord of Sandwike. They made their way to London, then set out for Boulogne. There Wagner met GIACOMO MEYERBEER, who gave him a letter of recommendation to the director of the Paris Opéra.

Wagner and Minna arrived in Paris in 1839 and remained there until 1842. He was forced to eke out a meager subsistence by making piano arrangements of operas and writing occasional articles for the Gazette Musicale. In 1840 he completed his overture to Faust (later revised as Eine FaustOuvertüre).

Soon Wagner found himself in dire financial straits. He owed money that he could not repay, and later that year was confined for three weeks in debtors' prison. In the meantime he had completed the libretto for DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER. He submitted it to the director of the Paris Opéra, but the director had already asked Paul Foucher to prepare a libretto on the same subject. The director was willing, however, to buy Wagner's scenario for 500 francs, which Wagner accepted in 1841. Louis Dietsch brought out his treatment of the subject in his opera Le Vaisseau fantôme at the Paris Opéra a year later.

In 1842 Wagner received the welcome news from Dresden that his opera Rienzi had been accepted for production. It was staged there in 1842, with considerable success. Der fliegende Holländer was also accepted by Dresden, and Wagner conducted its first performance there in 1843. Later that year, he was named Second Hofkapellmeister in Dresden, where he conducted a large repertoire of classic operas, among them DON GIOVANNI, LE NOZZE DI DIGARO, DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE, FIDELIO, and DER FREISCHÜTZ. In 1846 he conducted a memorable performance there of LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S Ninth Symphony.

Wagner also led the prestigious choral society Liedertafel in Dresden. He wrote several works for this group, including the "biblical scene" Das Liebesmahl der Apostel. He was also preoccupied during those years on the score for TANNHÄUSER, completing it in 1845 and conducting its first performance in Dresden that same year. He subsequently revised the score, which was staged to better advantage there in 1847. Concurrently, he began work on LOHENGRIN, which he completed in 1848.

Wagner's efforts to have his works published failed, leaving him again in debt. Without waiting for further performances of his operas already publicly presented, he drew up the first prose outline of Der Nibelungen-Mythus als Entwurf zu einem Drama, the prototype of the epic Ring cycle. In 1848 he began work on the poem for Siegfrieds Tod. At that time he joined the revolutionary Vaterlandsverein and was drawn into active participation in the movement, culminating in an open uprising against the Saxon government in May 1849. An order was issued for his arrest, and he had to leave Dresden.

Wagner made his way to Weimar, where he was cordially received by Franz Liszt. He then proceeded to Vienna, where a Professor Widmann lent him his own passport so that Wagner could cross the border of Saxony on his way to Zurich. There he made his home in July 1849, with Minna joining him a few months later.

Shortly before leaving Dresden Wagner had sketched two dramas, Jesus von Nazareth and Achilleus, both of which remained unfinished. In Zurich he wrote a number of essays expounding his philosophy of art. One of his theories was that all elements of a musical production—music, story, scenery, orchestration, and so on—should contribute equally to expressing the production's theme.

In 1850 Wagner was again in Paris. There he fell in love with Jessie Laussot, the wife of a wine merchant. However, she eventually left Wagner, and he returned to Minna in Zurich. In 1850 Liszt conducted the successful premiere of Lohengrin in Weimar. In 1851 Wagner wrote the verse text of Der junge Siegfried and prose sketches for DAS RHEINGOLD and DIE WALKÜRE. In 1852 he finished the text of Die Walküre and of Das Rheingold. He completed the entire libretto of DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN in 1852, and it was privately printed in 1853.

In 1853 Wagner began composition of the music for Das Rheingold, completing the full score in 1854. In 1854 he commenced work on the music of Die Walküre, which he finished in 1856. In 1854 he became friendly with a wealthy Zurich merchant, Otto Wesendonck (1815-96), and his wife, Mathilde (Luckemeyer) Wesendonck (b. Elberfeld, Dec. 23, 1828; d. Traunblick, near Altmünster on the Traunsee, Austria, Aug. 31, 1902). Otto was willing to give Wagner a substantial loan, to be repaid out of his performance rights. The situation became complicated when Wagner developed an affection for Mathilde, which in all probability remained platonic. She wrote the famous Fünf Gedichte (Der Engel, Stehe still, Träume, Schmerzen, Im Treibhaus), which Wagner set to music as studies for Tristan und Isolde. The album was published as the Wesendonck-Lieder in 1857.

In 1855 Wagner conducted a series of eight concerts with the Philharmonic Society of London. His performances were greatly praised by English musicians. He had the honor of meeting Queen Victoria, who invited him to her loge at the intermission of his seventh concert.

In 1856 Wagner made substantial revisions in the last dramas of Der Ring des Nibelungen, changing their titles to SIEGFRIED and GOTTERDÄMMERUNG. Throughout these years he was preoccupied with writing a new opera, Tristan und Isolde, permeated with the dual feelings of love and death. In 1857 he prepared the first sketch of Parzival (later PARSIFAL).

In 1858 Wagner moved to Venice, where he completed the full score of the second act of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. The Dresden authorities, acting through their Austrian confederates and still determined to bring Wagner to trial as a revolutionary, pressured Venice to expel him from its territory. Once more Wagner took refuge in Switzerland. He stayed in Lucerne, where he completed the score of Tristan und Isolde in 1859.

That autumn Wagner moved to Paris, where Minna joined him. In I860 he conducted three concerts of his music at the Théàatre-Italien. Napoleon III became interested in his work and in 1860 ordered the director of the Paris Opéra to produce Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. After considerable work, revisions, and a translation into French, it was given at the Opéra a year later. It proved a fiasco, however, and Wagner withdrew it after three performances. For some reason the Jockey Club of Paris led a vehement protest against him. The critics also joined in this opposition, mainly because the French audiences were not accustomed to mystically RO-MANTIC, heavily Germanic operatic music.

The insults hurled against him by the Paris press make extraordinary reading. The comparison of Wagner's music with the sound produced by a domestic cat walking down the keyboard of the piano was a favorite critical device. The French caricaturists exercised their wit by picturing him in the act of hammering a poor listener's ear.

In an amazing turnabout, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a worshipful admirer of Wagner, published a venomous denunciation of his idol in Der Fall Wagner in1888. Wagner made music itself sick, he proclaimed. But at the time Nietzsche himself was already on the borderline of madness.

Politically Wagner's prospects began to improve. In 1860 he was informed of a partial amnesty by the Saxon authorities. That year he visited Baden-Baden, his first visit to Germany in 11 years. Finally, in 1862 he was granted total amnesty, which allowed him access to Saxony. In 1861 Otto Wesendonck had invited Wagner to Venice. Free from political persecution, he could now go there without fear. While in Venice he returned to a scenario he had prepared in Marienbad in 1845 for a comic opera, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG. In 1862 he moved to Biebrich, where he began composing its score. Minna, after a brief period of reconciliation with Wagner, left him, settling in Dresden, where she died in 1866.

In order to repair his financial situation, Wagner accepted a number of concert appearances, traveling as an orchestral conductor to Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities in 1862-63. In 1862 he gave in Vienna a private reading of Die Meistersinger.

In 1864 Wagner's fortunes changed spectacularly when King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-86) ascended the throne and invited him to Munich with the promise of unlimited help in carrying out his various projects. In return, Wagner composed the Huldigungsmarsch, which he dedicated to his royal patron. The published correspondence between Wagner and the king is extraordinary in its display of mutual admiration, gratitude, and affection. Still, difficulties soon developed when the Bavarian Cabinet told Ludwig that his lavish support of Wagners projects threatened the state's economy. Ludwig was forced to advise him to leave Munich. Wagner took this advice as an order, and late in 1865 he went to Switzerland.

A very serious difficulty arose in Wagner's emotional life, when he became intimately involved with Liszt's daughter Cosima, then the wife of the conductor HANS VON BÜLOW. Von Bülow was an impassioned supporter of Wagner's music. In 1865 Cosima von Bülow gave birth to Wagner's daughter, whom he named Isolde after the heroine of his opera that Bülow was preparing for performance in Munich. Its premiere took place with great acclaim, two months later, with von Bülow conducting.

That summer, Wagner prepared the prose sketch of Parzival and began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben, to Cosima. In 1866 he resumed the composition of Die Meistersinger. He settled in a villa in Triebschen, on Lake Lucerne, where Cosima joined him permanently in 1868. He completed the full score of Die Meistersinger in 1867. In 1868 von Bülow conducted its premiere in Munich in the presence of King Ludwig, who sat in the royal box with Wagner.

In 1869 Das Rheingold was produced in Munich. In 1870 Die Walküre was staged there. In 1870 Cosima and von Bülow were divorced, and shortly thereafter Wagner and Cosima were married in Lucerne. Late in 1870 Wagner wrote SIEGFRIED IDYLL, based on the themes from his opera. It was performed in their villa in Bayreuth on Christmas morning, the day after Cosima's birthday, as a surprise for her. In 1871 he wrote the Kaisermarsch to mark the victorious conclusion of the Franco-German War. He conducted it in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm I at a concert in the Royal Opera House in Berlin in 1871.

Later that year in Leipzig Wagner made public his plans for realizing his cherished dream of building his own theater in Bayreuth for the production of the entire cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen. In late 1871 the Bayreuth town council offered him a site for a proposed Festspielhaus (festival house), and in 1872 the cornerstone was laid. Wagner commemorated the event by conducting a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (this was his 59th birthday). In 1873 Wagner began to build his own home in Bayreuth, which he called Wahnfried (free from delusion). In order to complete the building of the Festspielhaus, he appealed to King Ludwig for additional funds. Ludwig gave him 100,000 talers for this purpose.

Now the dream of Wagner's life was realized. During the summer of 1876 Der Ring des Nibelungen went through rehearsals. King Ludwig attended the final dress rehearsals, and the official premiere of the cycle took place in August 1876, under the direction of Hans Richter. In all, three complete productions of the Ring cycle were given that month.

King Ludwig was faithful to the end to Wagner, whom he called "my divine friend." In his castle Neuschwanstein he installed architectural representations of scenes from Wagner's operas. Soon Ludwigs mental deterioration became obvious to everyone, and he was committed to an asylum. There, in 1886, he overpowered the psychiatrist escorting him on a walk and dragged him to his death in the Starnberg Lake, drowning himself as well.

The spectacles in Bayreuth attracted music lovers and notables from all over the world. Even those who were not partial to Wagner's ideas or appreciative of his music went to Bayreuth out of curiosity, PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY among them. Despite world success and fame, Wagner still labored under financial difficulties. He even addressed a letter to an American dentist practicing in Dresden (who had treated Wagner) in which he tried to interest him in arranging Wagner's permanent transfer to the U.S. He voiced disillusionment in his future prospects in Germany. Wagner said he would be willing to settle in the U.S. provided a sum of $1 million would be guaranteed by American bankers and a comfortable estate for him and his family could be found in a warm part of the country. Nothing came of this particular proposal. Wagner did establish an American connection when he wrote, for a fee of $5,000, a Grosser Festmarsch for the observance of the U.S. centennial in 1876, dedicated to the "beautiful young ladies of America."

In the middle of all this, Wagner became infatuated with Judith Gautier. Their affair lasted for about two years from 1876 to 1878. He completed the full score of Parsifal (as it was now called) in 1882, in Palermo. It was performed for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival that year, followed by 15 subsequent performances. At the final performance, in 1882, Wagner stepped to the podium in the last act and conducted the work to its close. This was his last appearance as a conductor. He went to Venice in the fall of 1882 for a period of rest (he suffered from angina). Early in 1883 he suffered a massive heart attack and died in Cosima's presence. His body was interred in a vault in the garden of his Wahnfried villa in Bayreuth.

Wagner's role in music history is immense. Not only did he create works of great beauty and brilliance, but he generated an entirely new concept of the art of music, exercising influence on generations of composers all over the globe. RICHARD STRAUSS extended Wagner's grand vision to symphonic music, fashioning the form of a TONE POEM that uses leading motifs and vivid programmatic description of the scenes portrayed in his music. Even NIKOLAI RIMSKYKORSAKOV—as far as he stood from Wagner—reflected the spirit of Parsifal in his own religious opera, The Legend of the City of Kitezh. ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S first significant work, Verklärte Nacht, is Wagnerian in its color.

Wagner's reform of opera was incomparably more farreaching in aim, import, and effect than that of CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK. Glucks main purpose was to counteract the predominance of the singers. This goal Wagner accomplished through insistence upon the dramatic truth of his music. When he rejected traditional opera, he did so in the conviction that such an artificial form could not serve as a basis for true dramatic expression. In its place he gave the world a new form and new techniques. So revolutionary was Wagner's art that conductors and singers had to undergo special training in the new style of interpretation in order to perform his works. Thus he became the founder of interpretative conducting and of a new school of dramatic singing, so that such terms as "Wagnerian tenor" and "Wagnerian soprano" became a part of musical vocabulary.

Wagner condemned the illogical plan of Italian opera and French grand opera. To quote him, "The mistake in the art-form of the opera consists in this, that a means of expression (music) was made the end, and the end to be expressed (the drama) was made a means." Wagner's new artwork creates its own form. Continuous thematic development of basic motifs (melodic themes) becomes a fundamental procedure for the logical cohesion of the drama. These highly individualized generating motifs, appearing singly, in bold relief, or subtly varied and intertwined with other motifs, present the ever-changing soul states of the characters of the drama. They also form the connecting links for the dramatic situations of the total artwork, in a form of musical declamation that Wagner described as Sprechsingen.

In the domain of melody, harmony, and orchestration, Wagner's art was as revolutionary as was his total artwork on the stage. He introduced the idea of ENDLESS MELODY, a continuous flow of DIATONIC and CHROMATIC TONES. The TONALITY became fluid and uncertain, producing an impression of unattainability, so that the listener accustomed to CLASSIC MODULATORY schemes could not easily feel the direction toward the TONIC.

The prelude to Tristan und Isolde is a classic example of such fluidity of harmonic elements. The use of long unresolved DOMINANT NINTH CHORDS and the dramatic TREMOLOS of DIMINISHED SEVENTH CHORDS contributed to this state of musical uncertainty, which disturbed critics and audiences alike. But Wagnerian harmony also became the foundation of the new method of composition that adopted a free flow of modulatory progressions. Without Wagner the chromatic idioms of the 20th century could not exist.

In orchestration, too, Wagner introduced great innovations. He created new instruments, such as the so-called WAGNER TUBA, and he increased his demands on the virtuosity of individual orchestral players. The demanding flight of the BASSOON to the high E in the overture to Tannhäuser could not have been attempted before the advent of Wagner.

Wagner became the target of political contention during World War I when audiences in the Allied countries associated his sonorous works with German imperialism. An even greater obstacle to further performances of Wagner's music arose with the rise of Hitler. Hitler ordered the mass slaughter of the Jews. Hitler was also an enthusiastic admirer of Wagner, who himself entertained anti-Semitic notions (see his essay ). Ergo, Wagner was guilty by association of mass murder. Can art be separated from politics, particularly when politics become murderous? Jewish musicians in Tel Aviv refused to play the prelude to Tristan und Isolde when it was put on the program of a symphony concert under ZUBIN MEHTA and booed him for his intention to inflict Wagner on Wagner's philosophical victims.

Several periodicals dealing with Wagner were published in Germany and elsewhere. Wagner himself began issuing Bayreuther Blätter in 1878 as an aid to understanding his operas. This journal continued publication until 1938. Remarkably, a French periodical, Revue Wagnerienne, began appearing in 1885, at a time when French composers realized the tremendous power of Wagnerian aesthetics. It was published sporadically for a number of years. A Wagner Society in London published, from 1888 to 1895, a quarterly journal entitled, significantly, The Meister.

A lesser-known aspect of Wagner's musical output was several arrangements and adaptations he made of various composers' works. He also devoted a large amount of his enormous productive activity to writing. Besides the dramatic works he set to music, he wrote several plays, librettos, scenarios, and novellas. He also expounded his theories on music, politics, philosophy, and religion in numerous essays. Notable among them are Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849, Art and Revolution), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunst (1849, The Artwork of the Future), and Oper und Drama (1851; revised 1868, Opera and Drama). His lengthy autobiography appeared in an abridged edition in Munich in 1911 (English translation as My Life, London and N.Y.).