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RICHARD WAGNER : The Emperor of European Music

The book also influenced Wagner and was planning to work on Buddhist opera called (Die Sieger) The Victors but unfortunately he could not complete it due to ill health…writes Dilip Roy

Nineteenth century Germany saw the emergence of intellectuals both in Arts and Sciences and among them was a Renaissance man called Richard Wagner who was born in one of Germany’s cultural city of Leipzig on 22nd May 1813. Leipzig’s university is also known forits study of Indology like several other major univercities of Germany. It is important to note that Wagner’s brother In law Prof. Herman Brockhaus was the head of Sanskrit faculty under whom many well known Indologists studied among them was a French student called Eugene Burnouf who later published a six hundred page volume called “History of Indian Buddhism.” The book also influenced Wagner and was planning to work on Buddhist opera called (Die Sieger) The Victors but unfortunately he could not complete it due to ill health.

Richard Wagner was a genius who combined all the faculty of Arts. Besides being a composer of operas, he was an architect who supervised the building of his opera house in Bayreuth. He was a dramatist who also wrote libretto for his music drama operas, an essayist, a philosopher in his own right and a prolific writer of prose works and has written on subjects such as “Artwork of the future,” “Pilgrimage to Beethoven,” “Opera and Drama,” “Religion and Art” are recognized as some of his important works. Wagner also invented a brass musical instrument called TUBA which came to be known as “Wagner Tuba” which he commissioned specifically to be used for his four part sixteen hour epic opera called the “Ring of the Nibelung.” In one of Wagner’s major prose works, (Die Wibelungen) World History as Told in Saga written in 1848 in which he clearly states that the entire European race including that of the “Nibelungs” originates from India. This belief was further established by scholars of Indology in 19th century Germany such as Humboldt, Novalis, Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel that Germany’s cultural origins actually stems from India.

Wagner influenced whole generation of composers who came after him such as Bruckner, Holst, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stenhammar, Strauss and Zemlinsky and also went on to influence intellectuals such as Nobel laurates Thomas Mann, G.B. Shaw, W.B. Yeats. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche described Wagner as a “volcanic eruption of the total undivided artistic capacity of nature itself,” while Thomas Mann hailed him as “probably the greatest talent in the entire history of European art.” The Russian philosopher and an intellectual writer Leo Tolstoy well known for his writing “War and Peace,” a panoramic epic of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, was one among the great admirers of Wagner. The 19th century French impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir did the oil portrait of Wagner on canvas at Palermo in 1882 a year before Wagner’s death in 1883 the painting which now hangs in the famous Louvre museum in Paris. Such was the admiration by Renoir for Wagner.

PHILOSOPHY IN RICHARD WAGNER OPERAS:

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in 19th century Germany who revolutionized the concept of philosophical thinking throughout Western Europe and beyond through his epic writing “The World as Will and Interpretation.” The Latin book Oupnekhat (Upanishad) published in 1802 by the French Indologist Anquetil-Duperron was the greatest influence on Schopenhauer’s philosophical thought. He called the opening up of Sanskrit literature “the greatest gift of our century,” and envisaged that the philosophy and knowledge of Upanishad would become the cherished faith of the West. Most noticeable, in the case of Schopenhauer’s work, was the significance of Chandogya Upanishad and Mandukya Upanishad whichare mentioned throughout The World as Will and Interpretation. The composition of Upanishads dates back to 1800 BCE. Schopenhauer also went on to influence philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein scientists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger writers Leo Tolstoy and Hermann Hesse and composers such as Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg and above all Richard Wagner.In India too there were admirers like Shri Aurobindo, Tagore and Vivekananda who were inspired by Schopenhauer’s philosophy.

Although Wagner was familiar with India’s classical literature like Ramayana, Mahabharata and the works of KALIDASA but the major turning point In Wagner’s creative life was in the mid 1850’s when he embraced both the philosophical writings Arthur Schopenhauer and religious insights of ancient India. Wagner writes in his autobiography (Maine Libe) My life he discovered the philosophy of Artur Schopenhauer by reading his epic work “World as Will and Interpretation” in 1854 he read the book four times and that he was so much elevated, that in the following year he wrote to his composer friend Franz Liszt in 1855 praising “the most oldest and most sacred religion known to mankind” for Wagner, Schopenhauer’s philosophy came to him as a gift from heaven. Schopenhauer’s aesthetics also influenced Wagner’s thinking that music was the ultimate soul of expression which is clearly evident in four of Wagner’s major operas such as Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, The Ring of the Nibelungs and Parsifal are clearly consistent with Indian thought. In the Ring Cycle his epic opera to date in it he made use of comparative mythologies that of India, Greece and Germany (Norse) the opera Ring Cycle which is made up of four parts is an allegory, and tells of the struggle for power between the Nibelung dwarfs, the Giants and the Gods.

The first Richard Wagner society was founded in Mannheim, Germany in 1871 since then The International Association of Wagner Societies has more than 26,000 members in 147 societies, belong to International Association of Wagner Societies around the world. The number of groups under the organization’s auspices has expanded considerably in the last fifty years. Today Wagner Societies can be found in all parts of the world including South East Asia in cities like Bangkok, Shanghai and Tokyo also Cape Town in South Africa besides American and European countries. Most of my (D. Roy) articles on Wagner has been published by Australia, New Zealand, London and Scotland Wagner Societies respectively.

Wagner’s opera house in Bayreuth has become a pilgrimage for the Wagner devotees and they congregate from all over the world as the annual festival takes place in the months of July and August and the tickets are sold out months in advance. Bayreuth is also the place where Wagner’s family lived in a house called Wahnfried it also has a library and a museum.

“There are three different types of people who take interest in me, if I am correct: those who know my music, (and they are rare), those who do not know it but love it and those who hate it without knowing it.”

(About the author: Dilip Roy is a researcher on cultural subjects and is a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society of UK. Mr Roy is an avid collector of non fiction books and classical records among his proud possession is a three CD sets of Upanishads with an introduction by Prof. Julius Lipner and slokas rendered in a classical style by veteran vocalist Pandit Jasraj.)

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HERMANNHESSE: “Siddhartha” and quest for Spiritual Identity

Although it was many years before the publication of Hesse’s Siddhartha (1922) this masterpiece was to be derived from these new influences…writes Dilip Roy (A Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society UK, Dilip K Roy is a researcher on cultural subjects)

It is a well known fact that in the last two centuries Germany’s contribution stands far greater in the field of Arts, Literature and Science than the whole of Europe combined. Germany has been the hub of literary tradition for centuries, whether it was Romanticism or Expressionism whilst remaining at the forefront of intellectual activity. The number of Nobel laurates produced also rank high. Among the few German names such as Goethe, Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner whose influence was felt on the whole generation of artists, musical composers and literary writers of the modern world.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German poet and a novelist who won the Nobel prize in literature in 1946 for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style (Nobel Citation 1946) Hesse pursued an existentialist course in his writings, frequently alluding to psychoanalysis and Buddhist philosophy. His characters are often outsiders in search of purpose and spiritual depth and are trapped in societies filled with misunderstanding and ruin. Although he won the Nobel prize in literature, most of his novels failed to make impact on the readers until SIDDHARTHA appeared in 1922 which catapulted Hesse to international fame for in Siddhartha, Hesse captured the truth of the spiritual journey in a way his self awakening. The book Hesse’s ninth novel was written in German, in a simple lyrical and poetic style.

Gaienhofen was the place in Germany where Hesse’s interest in Buddhism was re-sparked. Following a letter to Kapff in 1895 entitled NIRVANA, Hesse had ceased alluding to Buddhist references in his work. In 1904, however, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and his philosophical ideas started receiving attention in Europe and Hesse discovered theosophy and Schopenhauer’s philosophy renewed his interest in India. Although it was many years before the publication of Hesse’s Siddhartha (1922) this masterpiece was to be derived from these new influences.

At the time Hesse was composing his famous Novella “Siddhartha” around 1920 he wrote the following words:

We are seeing a religious wave rising in almost all of Europe, a wave of religious despair and many are speaking of new religion to come. Europe is beginning to sense that the overblown one sidedness of intellectual culture is in need of correction, a revitalization coming from the opposite pole. This widespread yearning is not for new ethics or a new way of thinking, but for a culture of the spiritual that our intellectual approach to life has not been able to provide. This is a general yearning not so much for Buddha but for a yogic capability. We have learned that humanity can cultivate its intellect to an astonishing level of accomplishment without becoming master of its soul.

Despite Hesse’s wider interest in the world’s religions, no other spiritual discipline apart from Christianity influenced his life and work more than BUDDHISM. Many of his novels his characters became centered through developing an awareness of themselves and their own behavior with a kind of mindfulness that transcended the intellectual content of Buddhist philosophy. Hesse was struck by Buddha’s life a spiritual training of the highest order. It is in this discipline that we see reflected in Hesse’s writings and his own psychological struggles. His most influential work “Siddhartha” is arguably also his most optimistic work. Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists who had preceded him, Hesse was not interested in conveying the traditions that inspired him. Hesse’s use of invented term “Yogaveda” and went on to create his own exotic blend of Eastern spirituality a synthesis of Hinduism and Buddhism. As Hesse grew more familiar with Buddhist doctrine he began to understand the subtleties that moved him out of his acute depression. For him the speeches of Buddha were “a source and mine of quite unparalleled richness and depth.” He wrote in his diary:

“As soon as we cease to regard Buddha’s teaching simply intellectually and accept with certain sympathy in the age-old Eastern concept of unity, if we allow Buddha to speak to us vision, as image, as the awakened one, the perfect one, we find in him, almost independently of the philosophic content and dogmatic kernel in his teaching, a great prototype of mankind. Whoever attentively reads a small number of countless speeches of Buddha is soon aware of a harmony in them, a quietude of soul, a smiling transcendence, a totally unshakable firmness, but also invariable kindness, endless patience.”

A very notable German composer of operas and tone poems, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) set three of Hesse’s poems to music in his Song Cycle “Four Last Songs” for Soprano and Orchestra was composed in 1948 a year before the composer’s death, the songs were rendered in a Wagnerian style has become very popular among the lovers of classical music.

Richard Strauss

The word SIDDHARTHA is made up two words in Sanskrit. Siddha (achived) Artha (what was searched for) which together means “he who has found meaning of existence.” The ultimate goal or Moksha. Siddhartha is also Buddha’s original name.

Siddhartha has been published in almost all major European and Indian languages also Hermann Hesse Society of India was established in 2005 under the auspices of the Government of India at Tellicherry in South India birth place of Hesse’s mother which in many ways contributed for attracting Hesse to Eastern thought and culture.

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