The Art Work Of The Future And Other Works

Poor, frustrated, and angered by the ?fashion-mongers and mode-purveyors? of art, Richard Wagner published The Art-Work of the Future in 1849. It marked a turning point in his life: an appraisal of the revolutionary passions of mid-century Europe, his farewell to symphonic music, and his vision of the music to come. ø Beethoven?s Ninth Symphony was unsurpassable, he wrote. Henceforth "The Folk must of necessity be the Artist of the Future," and only artists who were in harmony with the Folk could know what harmony was for. The essay became a touchstone for Wagner, his family, friends, and followers, as he sought to produce works that thoroughly combined music, dance, drama, and national saga. ø In addition to Wagner?s epoch-defining essay, this volume includes his "Autobiographical Sketch," "Art and Climate"; his libretto for an opera, "Wieland the Smith"; and his notorious "Art and Revolution." The concluding piece, "A Communication to My Friends (1851), explains his views on his first successes?The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin, and TannhÜuser?and defines his agenda for later works. ø As spokesman for the future, Wagner spoke most of himself. In these works he set forth his ambitions, identified his enemies, and began a campaign for public attention that made him a legend in his own time and in ours.

The Artwork of the Future is one of a series which Wagner produced in a period of intensive writing following his exile after the Dresden May uprising of 1849. It follows "Art and Revolution" and precedes "Jewishness in Music," developing the ideas of the one and prefiguring some of the issues of the other. Wagner wrote the whole essay over about two months in Zurich. He wrote to his friend Uhlig on November 1849, 'This will be the last of my literary works'. On this, as on many other matters in his life, Wagner was to change his mind. The essay is dedicated to the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, whose works (perhaps particularly Principles of the Philosophy of the Future), inspired some of its ideas. In September and October 1849, Wagner had read both Feuerbach's Reflections on Death and Immortality and his The Essence of Christianity. Wagner's biographer Ernest Newman opined that Wagner's prose style in this essay and others was also heavily influenced by Feuerbach, who was 'constitutionally prone to the antithetical'; whilst noting that within a few years Wagner rejected Feuerbach's philosophy for that of Schopenhauer. The title of the essay was to haunt Wagner; thereafter his opponents were to taunt him as a self-appointed prophet of 'the music of the future'. Wagner begins, 'As Man stands to Nature, so stands Art to Man.' Man, or more particularly the Volk (the community of 'men who feel a common and collective want') creates Art to fill that want. Those who feel no want are outsiders to the Volk and crave only pointless luxury - true Art thus comes only from the atavistic needs of the Volk. When luxury (by which Wagner implies base entertainment posing as true art - i.e. Grand Opera and its like) has been abolished by the Volk they will be able to join to create the Artwork of the Future. Wagner goes on to talk of the three basic elements of art, which he lists as 'Dance, Tone [i.e. music] and Poetry' which were originally united in ancient Greek drama (as extolled by Wagner in Art and Revolution). Modern attempts to unite these give rise to the 'unnatural abortion, the Oratorio', and to the 'shameless insolence' of contemporary opera Only when these and other tawdry entertainments are swept aside will the Artwork of the Future arise.

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