THE STORY BEHIND: Wagner's Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

THE STORY BEHIND: Wagner's Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Title: Die Meistersinger, WWV 96: Prelude

It was March 1862, and Richard Wagner had just settled in the town of Biebrich near Mainz. This was still a troubled time for him, following a long exile in Switzerland, a theatrical scandal in Paris involving Tannhäuser, and an aborted attempt to stage Tristan und Isolde in Vienna. A short stay in Venice in 1861 had not helped much, but on the way back to Vienna several ideas for the Prelude to Die Meistersinger had occurred to Wagner instantaneously and with the greatest clarity, and he immediately composed the opening section of the score. Now, established near his publisher, Schott, the entire music drama, originally conceived in 1845 as a satirical counterpart to Tannhäuser, crystallized in Wagner’s mind.

It took the composer until 1868 to complete Die Meistersinger, but in the meantime he presented several tantalizing previews in the form of libretto readings and concert performances of the Prelude, which he had finished first. When completed, this music drama became Wagner’s only comedy and his only story featuring ordinary mortals. As Richard Sternfeld puts it, the Prelude “contains the germ of the entire musical cosmos of the opera.”

It opens with the rugged but formal theme of the guild of Mastersingers and the brassy March of the Mastersingers, based on an actual 16th-century Meistersinger melody. In contrast with these, the next section focuses on themes associated with love, the dominant musical idea being a phrase from the famous third act “Prize Song.” Following a fugato on the main Mastersinger theme, the three main themes plus a fourth are freely interwoven in a glorious climactic section presented in luxuriant counterpoint.