Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger

Richard Wagner drafted his first ideas for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Master Singers of Nuremberg) as early as 1845, while still living in Dresden. But the work that later came to fruition as his only mature comic opera served as a necessary tonic to the anguished drama of its immediate predecessor, Tristan und Isolde. For Meistersinger, Wagner put aside the unmoored, futuristic harmonic language of Tristan’s world, instead grounding himself in the musical past, finding new vigor in J.S. Bach–inspired counterpoint and even further back, in the traditions of medieval music guilds.

Like Tristan, Wagner first imagined Die Meistersinger as a brief interlude in his creative work. In this case, it was to be a quick comic romp inspired by an actual historical figure, the working-class hero and poet Hans Sachs. The exhaustive effort of Tristan notwithstanding, Wagner rallied — while still keeping the not-yet-completed Ring cycle on the back burner — and found his initially modest concept ballooning to gigantic proportions. One inspiration was the example of the “old masters” and the topic itself of artistic renewal and creativity, which lies at the heart of Meistersinger.

In his autobiography, Wagner reports that he’d been perked up by an art-viewing expedition in Venice, where he sought relief from his post-Tristan depression. The paintings of the great Renaissance artist Titian made such an impression that Wagner resolved to turn his attention to Meistersinger. Wagner’s telling of this inspiration points to the sense of nostalgia that Meistersinger stirs for an imaginary Renaissance utopia of a society in which artistic genius has integral value.

Wagner recalled that, while taking the train from Venice back to Vienna in 1862, a portion of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger came to him spontaneously, “with the greatest clarity,” and composed it quickly. Ironically, the opera as a whole proved much more effortful — Wagner spent another five years finishing the work.

Die Meistersinger calls for a very large cast and features several plot lines that intertwine with the contrapuntal finesse that we hear in the Prelude itself. Wagner scales back his orchestral forces somewhat from what he had used in Tristan, but the musical tapestry he weaves from his material is magnificently rich.

The Prelude is designed in the old-fashioned mode of an overture-style “synopsis” of main themes to come (even if the opera itself had yet to be written). At the same time, it can be heard as a miniature symphony that is “about” itself, whether we know that the proud, pompous opening represents the self-important attitude of the Mastersingers or that the sweetly cadenced, lyrical music that comes next stands for the love between Eva and Walther. A young upstart of an artist, Walther will win Eva in marriage through his success at the climactic song contest, with the final thread of his winning song woven into the musical mix.

Wagner even includes a miniature scherzo of chattering woodwinds — a figure for the most annoying pedantic of the Mastersingers, the rule-bound Beckmesser — that spin mock counterpoint from the opening theme. He then pulls out all the stops for a grandly symphonic climax. Combining these materials together in a thrilling, majestically paced synthesis, Wagner ends the Prelude with a sunlit blaze of C major.

— Thomas May 

Thomas May is a writer, critic, educator, and translator. A regular contributor to The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Gramophone, and Strings magazine, he is the English-language editor for the Lucerne Festival.