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Here's my little list of milestones for the 1880s:
Nietzsche's purple patch (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, Beyond Good & Evil, The Antichrist, The Genealogy of Morals, The Happy Science...). Also his "green" patch, where he spewed forth his bile about his former friend, Richard Wagner, in Nietzsche contra Wagner.
Wagner's last opera, and arguably his masterpiece, Parsifal, was first performed in private, with Wagner himself conducting, in 1880. It was first performed in public after the composer's death, in 1882, when it was conducted by Hermann Levi. Here's an opera with a deeply Christian theme, of a German mediaeval romance drawing on French sources, written by an atheistic and rabidly anti-semitic composer, being given its official world premiere by a Jewish conductor. Who said opera was boring?
Gustav Mahler, himself a great composer, conducts complete cycles of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen at Leipzig. It was also in the 1880s that Mahler's First Symphony was performed. He would later go on to write another 9 symphonies, but being superstitious of reaching his "ninth" (Beethoven and Schubert had both died on nine), he cunningly called what should have been his 9th symphony "The Song of the Earth". This ruse seemed to work, for he finished his next symphony (which he was then happy to call his "Ninth") unscathed. Unfortunately, he died half-way through writing his 10th. Serves him right.
Sigmund Freud qualifies in medicine and studies with Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, under whose tutelage it could be said that Freud's interest in psychiatry was forged. This set in motion a movement which, over the next century, would soften the brains of the Western World with nonsensical pronouncements about symbolism and sexuality. Way to go, Siggi!
Gilbert & Sullivan wrote The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and Iolanthe (amongst other lesser gems). Gilbert o'Sullivan didn't write anything - so this decade wasn't all doom and gloom after all
Nietzsche's purple patch (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, Beyond Good & Evil, The Antichrist, The Genealogy of Morals, The Happy Science...). Also his "green" patch, where he spewed forth his bile about his former friend, Richard Wagner, in Nietzsche contra Wagner.
Wagner's last opera, and arguably his masterpiece, Parsifal, was first performed in private, with Wagner himself conducting, in 1880. It was first performed in public after the composer's death, in 1882, when it was conducted by Hermann Levi. Here's an opera with a deeply Christian theme, of a German mediaeval romance drawing on French sources, written by an atheistic and rabidly anti-semitic composer, being given its official world premiere by a Jewish conductor. Who said opera was boring?
Gustav Mahler, himself a great composer, conducts complete cycles of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen at Leipzig. It was also in the 1880s that Mahler's First Symphony was performed. He would later go on to write another 9 symphonies, but being superstitious of reaching his "ninth" (Beethoven and Schubert had both died on nine), he cunningly called what should have been his 9th symphony "The Song of the Earth". This ruse seemed to work, for he finished his next symphony (which he was then happy to call his "Ninth") unscathed. Unfortunately, he died half-way through writing his 10th. Serves him right.
Sigmund Freud qualifies in medicine and studies with Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, under whose tutelage it could be said that Freud's interest in psychiatry was forged. This set in motion a movement which, over the next century, would soften the brains of the Western World with nonsensical pronouncements about symbolism and sexuality. Way to go, Siggi!
Gilbert & Sullivan wrote The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and Iolanthe (amongst other lesser gems). Gilbert o'Sullivan didn't write anything - so this decade wasn't all doom and gloom after all
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