According to Google there are, on average, more than six million searches for Beyoncé every month. In that time, poor old Richard Wagner gets just 110,000.
Although regarded as possibly the greatest composer of all time, could it be that Wagner’s influence has dwindled to the pages of a concert programme?
On Thursday, October 6, The West Australian Symphony Orchestra will open the 2016/17 Abu Dhabi Classics season with a Wagner Gala at Emirates Palace.
The concert will feature some of the German composer's most famous instrumental works – including preludes to Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde – along with arias from Die Walküre and Parsifal, sung by Simon O'Neill.
It goes without saying that Wagner fans will lap up the evening’s proceedings with gusto – but let us be honest, these days they are becoming a rare breed.
Because here’s the thing about Wagner: there are plenty of history books that tell us about his importance – how he single-handedly revolutionised opera in the 19th century, how his immense influence spread beyond the concert hall into fine art, literature and even politics. The question is: does that matter anymore?
How many people's lives are touched by his work or his grand concept of 'gesamtkunstwerk' (total art), in an age when we have Beyoncé making headlines with her "visual album" Lemonade, or Kanye West streaming a live event that launches his Yeezy Season 3 fashion collection and The Life of Pablo album?
Well, quite a lot, actually. Before Wagner published his famous manifesto, Opera and Drama, in 1851, opera was still largely about good tunes wrapped up in a collection of arias – big set pieces that audiences could hum on their way home.
In his book Wagner laid this formula to waste. He argued that the primary factor in a good opera was the drama. Everything else – from the music and the orchestral arrangement to the libretto and sets – should exist only to serve the drama, creating “total art”.
Lohengrin (1850) – a musical drama involving kings, pagan witches and mysterious knights which Wagner concocted himself – moves away entirely from individual numbers, or arias. Instead, as the drama develops from act to act, the music and singing flows uninterrupted.
And if you think the plot sounds a bit like Lord of the Rings, you'd be right. Wagner's influence is all over literature and Hollywood blockbusters.
Narrative and visual techniques adopted from his music dramas, such as the Ring Cycle or Parsifal, abound. I recently watched a TV rerun of Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws and was struck by the great composer's latent presence.
We all know the famous theme music written by composer John Williams. It is introduced in the opening scene as the camera moves through the murky depths of the ocean floor. Williams described the theme as “grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable”.
Watch the movie with your eyes closed and you would know instantly when the shark had appeared. The music tells us.
This technique, called a leitmotif, was developed by Wagner and can be heard all through his later musical dramas (in Lohengrin, for example, we first hear the holy grail motif during the opening prelude).
Williams also deftly employs Wagner's second big signature technique in Jaws: using the music to represent how we see and feel things.
When police chief Martin Brody (played by Roy Scheider) first notices, with horror, a shark attack taking place in the water, the camera zoom is accompanied by a sudden flourish up the register by the stringed instruments.
The effect is like nails on a blackboard – the perfect aural realisation of that moment when your eyes dilate in horror and your hair stands on end.
But Wagner’s influence doesn’t just stretch to films. You can even hear his handiwork in the pop charts.
During the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, Wagner sets up a series of unfinished cadences – phrases that don't sound as if they are resolved. Revolutionary at the time, it creates a growing feeling of suspense – it is designed to represent the unresolved love between Tristan and Isolde as the drama unfolds.
Wagner doesn’t actually get around to musically resolving this suspense until the end of the third act, when Isolde dies. (In comparison, Rossini, couldn’t have gone a few bars without neatly tying things up.)
This technique did not exist before Wagner, but now it can be heard in music everywhere – even in a Lady Gaga song.
Her 2009 single Bad Romance doesn't have Wagnerian chords, but the way the texture and expressive intensity builds to the crescendo of the chorus is more than a little indebted to the German maestro.
Wagner’s influence is so pervasive that it has become part of the creative air we breathe. We are all influenced by him without even knowing it.
So, it just goes to show – Google stats can’t always tell you everything about popularity and cultural influence.
• Richard Wagner’s Gala Night is at Emirates Palace on Thursday, October 6. Ticket prices start from Dh100 at www.abudhabiclassics.ae
artslife@thenational.ae
