QUOTE OF THE DAY – FEBRUARY 13, 2017: “FLESH AND BLOOD”: REMEMBERING RICHARD WAGNER (22 MAY, 1813 - 13 FEBRUARY, 1883)

Postcard depicting a creative likeness of Herr Wagner
c. 1905

Today’s Quote of the Day comes to us from 19th century Romantic composer Richard Wagner, and is extracted from a private exchange with the music critic Eduard Hanslick (dated January I, 1847 at Dresden); and is selected in honor of the 134th observance of the death of the composer by heart attack at the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi (Ca' Vendramin Calergi palace) in Venice in 1883:

 

“As I create with ever heightened artistic consciousness I am more and more impelled to make a whole man. I want to create flesh and blood and limbs, a being who freely and truly lives and moves…”

It is hard to imagine, for any fellow ‘Wagnerian,’ a composer more adept at rushing the blood through the limbs, suffusing the flesh with goosebumps, or moving the very soul in such an exquisite and effortless fashion than Richard Wagner.

Herr Wagner remains to this day an Unraveling Musical Myths’ composer favorite – and, like fellow composer favorite Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is featured extensively on this blog.

Visit the Wagner Archives below to learn more about this fascinating – and often misunderstood – composer:

• WAGNER ARCHIVES

Enjoy an incomparable rendition of Wagner’s “Im Treibhaus” (In the Greenhouse) from the composers’ gorgeous Wesendonck Lieder (WWV 91). The sensational ‘Wagnerian Soprano’ Kirsten Flagstad performs:



-Rose.

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