Closing Lecture Of Summer Course

CLOSING LECTURE OF SUMMER COURSE

PROF. STANLEY'S INTERESTING TALK ON WAGNER

Listened to With Close Attention by a Large Audience of Music Lovers

Prof. A. A. Stanley's lecture given Wednesday in the Law building, closed the series of lectures arranged for the summer students and the weekly entertainment which the pubic has been permitted to enjoy. Each lecture has had its peculiar audience, and last night's was large and appreciative and music loving, who listened to Prof. Stanley speak of "That subject so near his heart," Wagner, the great dramatic master in whom interest is increasing with the years.

He spoke of his life, his difficulties, his misfortunes, his career, his earlier compositions, bringing it all vividly before the audience by illustrations. But his lecture was primarily on "The Nibelung's Ring," Wagner's masterpiece and the sole place where it is represented, Baireuth.

The "Nibelung" is a cycle of four dramas or operas- The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, The Dusk of the Gods. The Ring is begun in the afternoon and heralded by a chorus of trombones, which play motives from opera which is to follow.

The Rhinegold is a prelude to the trilogy with the ethical suggestion at once obvious, that control for the sake of power must bring misery and destruction.

Prof. Stanley explained the entire cycle by illustration and word picture until the audience grasped something of the genius of the master mind that conceived it, something of "the melody that streamed from end to end" in Lohengrin," something of the sublimity which was the ruling spirit of "Parsifal," something of the power of music in the "Funeral March," which could give such a wonderful picture of a man's life.

The drama takes over four hours to perform and not one female character is introduced till the last scene. The intensity with which the people listen is a tribute to the great genius of the man.

Wagner tried to get an opera house built in Munich and this proving an impossibility, Baireuth was chosen. It was selected because it was a quiet town and as Prof. Stanley says, "like the text of a sermon- a convenient point of departure." Here, in 1876, the first Baireuth festival was held and the complete "Niebelung Tetralogy" had its first appearance. Year after year is here given the Wagner music as it can be heard in no other place in the whole world.

Wagner was born into a time when the watchword was romanticism. He stood for something that was in the air, said Prof. Stanley, and represented something that made his art inevitable. He did all that he did because he was true to an ideal.

At first unappreciated, afterward he became a fad; he died in 1883 in Venice, a recognized master. If you wish to get full of the spirit of Baireuth, said Prof. Stanley, visit Wagner's grave there in the vines, then go up and hear his "Parsifal." It is a work of genius and immortal.