Symphony in C major (Wagner)

Symphony no.1 in C major, WWV29.

Premiere.

"Father Friedrich Wieck went to the Euterpe hall on Saturday. Listen! You have been outstripped by Herr Wagner. They performed a symphony of his which seems to have been the spitting image of Beethoven's Symphony in A major."

This is how Clara Wieck described the first major performance of Wagner's symphony in C major in a letter to Robert Schumann dated 17 December 1832. As suggested by the fact that she begins her letter with a warning to Robert that Wagner has got the better of him, it was the performance of the Symphony, rather that of piano or vocal works, which signified a young composer's fully fledged debut in the musical world.

Perhaps Clara Wieck was deliberately chiding Robert Schumann by bringing up the name of his rival; Schumann was still shillyshallying about composing a symphony. It was through the performance of this work that Wagner came to the attention of the musical world, and later Wagner scholars without exception came to position the work together with the Piano Sonata in A Major as one of the representative instrumental works of Wagner's youth.

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Composition.

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As pointed out by Friedrich Wieck, who noted the strong resemblance between this work and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the symphony is in fact a derict product product of Wagner studies of Beethoven. It is astonishing that a youth of only nineteen could have attained such a thorough grasp of Beethovenian style, but even more remarkable are aspects such as the skillful exercise of contrapuntal technique and above all the grandness of the musical conception:the first movement runs to 475, the second to 208 bars, the third to 447 bars, and the fourth to 442 bars. Moreover, if one is to believe the remarks Wagner makes in a letter to a friend, he composed the symphony in the brief space of six weeks at the beginning of the summer 1832.

The work was performed again at Christmas 1882 in Venice, two months before Wagner's death, and wagner made several revisions to the full score for that performance. Several days after the performance, he wrote an "Essay On The revival of Youthfull Works" in which he described the merits of this symphony which he had left on one side for half a century as follows: "If there is anything at all in this work which shows the mark of Richard Wagner it is the fact that it is not polluted by the hypocritical stance which was to appear later and which Germans find very difficult to get the better of, and the fact that, from the outset, he remained true to himself and was unwilling to be deflected from his proper course." This is the assessment which Wagner in his final years put on this work.

Instrumentation

The symphony is scored for strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in A, E and D, 2 trumpets in D, and timpani.

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The Form.

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The Symphony in C Major is in four movements.

I. Sostenuto e maestoso - Allegro con brio
II. Andante ma non troppo
III.Allegro assai
IV. Allegro molto e vivace

Performance time lasts approximately 37 minutes.

The first movement is marked "Sostenuto e maestoso", moving later into "Allegro con brio", and is a sonata form movement prefaced by a prelude. The movement is structured in classical form, but the thorough use in the development section of various motives which have been appeared earlier in the movement provides evidence of Wagner's indebtedness to Beethoven. Put differently, one might say that all aspects of the music can be traced back to a basic motif, this being a technique which Wagner exploited to obvious effect later on in the Prelude to "Das Rheingold"

The second movement is marked "Andante ma non troppo", "un pocco maestoso" and is in the key of A minor. Although the form is not as clearly structured as in the third movement, the overal shape is A + B + B+ A + coda, a strong contrast existing between the lyrical A and the signal-like B ideas. It is worth observing that the movements begins with a motif fronm the coda of the first movement, indicating that Wagner is here attempting to establish an organic relationship between the movements.

The third movement is marked "Allegro assai" and is a scherzo with the clear formal structure A + B + A + B + A (coda). A is characterised by a dynamic rhythm appropriate to a scherzo movement, while B ( "un poco meno allegro") feature a smooth and supple melodic line, thereby establishing a strong contrast between the musical conceptions of the scherzo A and the trio B. the climatic effect of the coda at the end of the movement is quite worthy of Beethoven.

The fourth movement is marke "Allegro molto e vivace" and is structured in the same classical sonata form as the opening movement. but Wagner does not shrink from boldness: the idea which follows the presentation of the first theme is extremely unstable in tonality, and the second theme is presented in three equally treated voices. Moreover, Wagner accelerates the tempo (piu allegro) half way through the coda to generate increased exitement as the music moves towards its close. We see here Wagner driving home at breakneck speed.