Wagner – Siegfried Idyll
by Max Derrickson
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (b Leipzig, 22 May, 1813; d Venice, 13 February, 1883)
Siegfried Idyll
After being banished from Munichfor scandal, Wagner and his new wife Cosima, with her children, and their new son, Siegfried, settled into their new home on Lake Lucerne, Switzerlandin 1870 to a blissful peace. On Christmas Day that year, Cosima turned 33 (to Wagner’s 57), and she awoke to the sounds of an orchestra playing the composer’s Siegfried Idyll, a “symphonic birthday poem,”
The scandal in Munichinvolved Cosima and Wagner’s affair that left her ex-husband, conductor Hans von Bulow humiliated, and the newlyweds run out of town. Yet amidst all that, Wagner somehow was inspired
[. . .]
serenity and gentle flowingness assuredly evoke an idyllic scene, and are always beautiful to hear.