- Date: 1857 -1858
- Composer: Richard Wagner
- Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
Review
After fighting for the losing side in the uprising of 1848, Wagner was forced to resettle in Zurich, where he set about doing the two things he did best: compose music and seduce women. Through the rich merchant Otto Wesendonck, Wagner had met his pretty young wife Mathilde and he quickly gained access to Otto's bank, his house, and finally, his wife. Although this arrangement didn't do much for Otto or for Wagner's wife, it did inflate Wagner's afflatus and he dropped Der Ring with its divinities for Tristan und Isolde and their sensualities. After finishing the libretto for Tristan in September 1857, Wagner discovered he needed to devise a new musical language to express endless erotic longing. Taking sentimental poems by Mathilde as his texts, Wagner created that language as he composed his sexual attraction for Mathilde into the best songs he ever composed. Wagner composed Stehe still (Be Still), the second of the Funf Gedichte von Mathilde Wesendonck, in November 1857. Mathilde's text conflates Schopenhauer's yearning for oblivion with an obviously sexual longing for orgasm, and Wagner matches her with music that opens with restless passion, passes through torpidity to languidity to end with sublimated sexual ecstasy. Originally written for voice and piano, Stehe still was orchestrated by conductor Felix Mottl in 1880. ~ James Leonard, RoviAlbums with Complete Performances of the Work
| Stehe ich am Eisengitter, song | |
| Stehn zwei Stern am hohen Himmel, folk song setting for women's chorus |
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