Longing is an insatiable desire. It lies dormant in the soul and, especially in music, is a theme of immeasurable depth and complexity. Human existence is permeated by it and is conditioned by the desire to be satisfied. Many composers harbor an inner longing, the wish to express emotions and thereby gain recognition. Their musical settings become, so to speak, a mirror of deepest desires, a bridge between the unsayable and the expressible. But what is it that drives composers like Richard Wagner to transform this longing into sounds? Perhaps it is human nature itself that longs for the transcendent, for something that lies beyond tangible reality. Perhaps it is the search for beauty, for truth, for the feeling of connection with the universe. The “Wesendonck Lieder”, for example, are five otherworldly settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s muse. The songs inspired his opera “Tristan and Isolde”, in which the mutual longing of two lovers who cannot be united in life ends in madness and (love) death. The longing that the composer Hans Rott put into music in his Symphony No. 1 in E major was of a completely different kind: it was his deepest wish to be recognised as a composer by his contemporaries. In doing so, he had to endure bitter personal setbacks, because as Anton Bruckner’s favourite student, he was regularly judged negatively by his antipode Johannes Brahms. When Rott travelled to Mulhouse in Alsace to take up a position as choirmaster, Rott’s serious mental illness broke out – he suffered from “hallucinatory insanity and paranoia”. On the train journey, he threatened a fellow passenger who wanted to light a cigar with a revolver. Rott was convinced that Brahms had filled the train with dynamite in order to send him to his final death. Rott spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum, where he composed a lot but destroyed his works. He died at the age of 25 - his greatest wish was not to come true... 

Stamatia Gerothanasi

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Mar 14, 2025

6.SiKo Wagner and Rott – Longing · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

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