Analyzing Wagner's Operas

STEPHEN MCCLATCHIE is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan.

Alfred Lorenz - the discoverer of Wagnerian form - Lorenz's life and work, Lorenz and national socialism; aesthetics and analysis of form at the turn of the century - the expressive aesthetic, musical form and analysis, the problem of Wagner; Lorenz's aesthetics - the work of art and its form, the Leitmotive, the Gesamtkunstwerk; Lorenz's analytical method - the ring analysis, the three elements of form, creation of large-scale structure, Lorenz's formal types; the development of Lorenz's analytical methods - the later volumes, evaluating Lorenz; the reception of Lorenz's analytical method -contemporary reception in Germany, post-war reception in Germany, English language reception - Lorenz as artifact; Alfred Lorenz and German nationalist ideology. Appendices: Lorenz's formal types; Lorenz's analysis of the poetic musical periods of "Der Ring des Nibelungen".