A classical music composer, known for many great operas (which hecalled "music dramas"). According to the great English poet W.H. Auden, Wagner was "perhapsthe greatest geniu
…s who ever lived". He revolutionised opera, making each act a continuous whole.Hitherto acts had been composed of self-contained scenes or numbersstrung together. He also revolutionised music, pushing harmony to the bounds of whatwas possible according to conventional treatment, so that accordingto some accounts Schoenberg's so-called "atonality" (a termSchoenberg himself hated) had to follow. The prelude to Tristan , and especially its famous first chord, is seen as acrucial step along this road, and continues to generate discussion(and elude analysis) today. He vastly expanded the orchestra, inventing an instrument (the twosizes of Wagner tuba, intended to have the sombreness of thetrombone but with a less incisive tone, like the French horn) forthe Ring cycle, which exponentially increased the possiblenumber of instrumental combinations. He used these so sensitivelyand brilliantly that, according to many, he is the greatestorchestrator who ever lived. (He himself awarded that accolade toMozart.) By writing virtuosic music for all the orchestralinstruments, he forced the orchestra as a whole to becomevirtuosic. His last four works, the Ring cycle, Tristan undIsolde , Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg (the longestopera in the whole operatic repertoire) and Parsifal ,continue to yield profound philosophical, psychological andmetaphysical insights. Unlike most other composers, his worksresonate far outside their ostensibly musical sphere. The Ring cycle of four operas (or, as he preferred, threeoperas with a preliminary evening) is Western music's equivalent ofMichelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, St Peter's Basilica in Romeor Tolstoy's War and Peace: it's a gigantic conception that tooktwo-and-a-half decades to fulfil, and which remains among themightiest, most aspirational, most comprehensive works of Westernart. (MORE) 
