ExclusiveWagner: Ride of the Valkyries, WWV 86B

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Richard Wagner: Wagner Ride of the Valkyries, WWV 86B. This beautiful piece was played by United States Marine Band. It has Creative Commons license (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal) and is provided through www.musopen.org.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a 19th Century musician and composer.

Back home in 1862, he continued to work on his greatest project: The Ring Cycle - a set of four operas or 'music dramas' (he hated the word 'opera' because it reminded him of stuffy, boring people and pretty tunes sung in Italian by warbling sopranos). Wagner wanted his music dramas to be total works of art, combining the worlds of theatre, literature and music. Wagner's approach was a revolution in opera and a turning point in the history of music.

The Ride of the Valkyries is placed at the beginning of the second act of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas that make up Der Ring des Nibelungen or the Ring Cycle. The whole drama took 27 years to compose and over 15 hours to perform.

His compositions, especially those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures and rich harmonies and orchestration.

Was there anything that Richard Wagner couldn't do? He wrote huge operas (story, lyrics and music), conducted them and designed the sets. He even invented instruments and developed many of the theatrical conventions we still use today. The orchestra sits under the stage in a 'pit' because Wagner decided it would sound better. We dim the lights in the audience because Wagner thought it would concentrate us more on the action. Wagner was a true theatrical genius who controlled every aspect of his work.

At the beginning of his career, Wagner would write an opera and go into enormous debt in order to get it ready for the stage.

His greatest success came with his "Ring cycle", a set of four operas of over four hours' duration, presented on four successive evenings. The Bayreuth Festival continues to this day and is still run by members of Wagner's family.

The video was captured by Simone Schlegel and was edited by Wenjing Ma.



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