Beyond Romanticism

3. A brief Wagner moment

The immensely complicated and controversial figure of Richard Wagner (1813-1883) loomed large for all modernist composers, and his death is often taken as marking the point at which musical modernism began to take shape. Though Wagner himself had only used the term "modern" as an epithet directed against contemporary opera's tendency to cater to popular tastes, more historically-specific usages were gradually adopted in the 1890s. Then "modern" music became associated with experimentation with form, tonality, and orchestration in a fashion associated with the more radical aspects of modern culture itself. I cannot resist including here a brief passage from the Prelude to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which premiered in 1860:

The opening chord that links the two musical motifs x and y (see image) has often been celebrated as the earliest instance of modernism in music, with each motif relying on chromatic harmonies, and the chord itself sounding quite dissonant in isolation. Insofar as Wagner deliberately put music in service to dramatic theater (rather than have musical forms run in parallel with dramatic forms in a fixed set of associations), he did open up extended tonal possibilities not sanctioned by standard sonata or orchestral genres.

(Image taken from The New Grove Dictionary of Music)