Counterpoint with Weinlig

Finally, Richard’s mother brought him to the musical director of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, Christopher Theodor Weinlig, in the hope that Weinlig would take him on as a pupil. Weinlig at first refused, but gave in eventually after perusing a fugue written by Richard and realising just how flawed was the youth’s musical knowledge to date. He made Wagner promise not to compose anything for six months while he worked on establishing the groundwork of musical knowledge necessary.

The relationship was not without its difficulties – at one point Weinlig had given up on Wagner in disgust, but the boy begged him for another chance, and finally gave his complete attention to the fugues and counterpoint required of him. Eventually he mastered the techniques, and managed to satisfy Weinlig. As a reward for Wagner’s abstemiousness, Weinlig induced the publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel to publish a sonata composed by Wagner under Weinlig’s guidance.

Weinlig now gave Wagner a much freer hand, and permitted him to compose various works. These included a Fantasie, a Grosse Sonata for piano, an overture with incidental music to König Enzio by Ernst Raupach, his second Concert Overture, and a Symphony.

(Wagner was not the only one of Weinlig’s pupils who was destined for fame – another of his pupils was Clara Schumann née Wieck.)

The Concert Overture was performed at the Gewandhaus, more successfully than the previous unsettling attempt.

Wagner’s first foray as conductor was in March 1832, when he was no more than nineteen – the work was his own Concert Overture Nr 2. He would throughout his life feel convinced that he was the ideal and almost necessary conductor of his own work, and he conducted other composers’ compositions with less burning desire. They were, in a sense, the duties he had to perform in order to secure the performances of his own works. He received some favourable notices with performances of his Symphony in Leipzig (at the Gewandhaus) and Prague (at the Ständisches Konservatorium), but it would be years before Wagner could count on any real recognition. Too, at this stage he had not developed as a composer – perhaps of all composers, Wagner was the one who most needed time and experience in order to mature.

Wagner as librettist

It was inevitable, with his early love of drama and literature, that Richard Wagner would compose operas. Perhaps also inevitably, he was unusual among opera composers in that he wrote his own libretti. It is a feature of Wagner’s libretti that they drew upon myths, legends and folklore – not only German, but from European and Indian sources as well. How good the libretti are is a matter of opinion, but it can scarcely be denied that the Romantic and melodramatic aspects that were part of his early writing are present in his mature writing as well. The music… well, Wagner’s music has been able to touch great heights, and its wildness and use of leitmotifs, its deliberate turning away from the formal structures often expected, and even the Romantic and mythology-based themes of transfiguration, a flawed male hero, and the redemptive power of pure female love were part of what made Wagner the composer become Wagner the Great Influence. He did sell at least two libretti (for other composers to set) during the period between his early local success and his later international success, so it is clear that they had appeal. But all of that was to come later…