New German School Essay

The concept of the New German School, while vague, had a huge effect on the world of music. It is a group of musicians who aimed to expand upon the legacy of Beethoven and further the German narrative. The New German School was not a set “club” or meeting group of composers. Rather, they were musicians who Franz Brendel, a philosopher whose influential writings impacted the musical sphere, grouped together and praised. The three he frequently praised on high were Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner because they all held up the ideals that Brendel set forth for the New German School, including a unity of poetic and musical features, the transformation of art, programmaticism, progressivism, and a German spirit. Aligning with Brendel, the three composers who best represent the tenets of the New German School are Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, but it may be argued that another composer, Friederich Smetana, deserves an honorary membership. The main composer and promoter of the New German School was not even German. Liszt, a Hungarian, was the most celebrated composer by Brendel. Through …show more content…
Brendel considered Wagner’s operas to be the “summit of musical attainment.” The work that shows his part in musical history the most is the four-part Ring Cycle. Like much Romantic music, it was based on a poem (an Old Norse poem about Siegfriend the Dragon-Slayer). This opera expanded on the thematic transformation of Liszt with something called a leitmotif. There are many heard throughout the operas, including the death leitmotif, the rhine river leitmotif, and the sword leitmotif. There is a clear progression from Beethoven’s organicism to Berlioz’ idée fixe to Liszt’s thematic transformation to now the leitmotif. This is representative of what the New German School stood for: taking great German influences and adding to them over time to secure Germany’s place in the musical