Our Father Of Metal

This site is a humble tribute to the greatest composer of music...nay, the greatest Artist in the history of Western Civilisation, Richard Wilhelm Wagner. Wagner, beginning in earnest with Der Ring Des Nibelungen, not only took the forms, modulations, and intricacies of J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven further, but ended up smashing through all the harmonic straightjackets that existed up to his time. He often eschewed the by then terribly dated Sonata form, coming up with wildly courageous, multitudinal modulations based upon the individual personalities of his opera characters.

Not only was Wagner overwhelmingly responsible for the way soundtracks in movies today work with the characters and story, he was the father of the form of music that ultimately became known as Heavy Metal. As you probably guessed, this accomplishment was made far before Rock Music itself even existed!

When you see a movie with a particularly dramatic soundtrack, or listen to the music of Manowar, Judas Priest, classic Metallica, Rainbow, Deep Purple "Child in Time", etc, you are listening to something that Wagner almost single handedly conceived. When you listen to Slayer, all that crazy and seemingly brash harmonic weirdness was already done by Wagner in the 19th century. In fact, Tristan und Isolde could be seen as the very beginning of Extreme Metal. Ear-twisting chromaticism, often violently huge and powerful melodies, epic compositions with far greater scope and range than anything before or since in art...these were all the non plus ultra province of Wagner. Au fond, when you take away all the blues, folk, and country music elements in Rock and Roll, you have something closely approximating what Wagner accomplished in his parts of his late operas. Wagner's "Metalchild" was assimilated into Rock, just as the above mentioned other genres were, making the Heavy Metal subgenre into the most musically advanced form of Rock, period.

When I write the term "Heavy Metal", I am not writing about bands like Poison, Limp Biscuit, Kid Rock, or White Lion. I mean the bands that most obviously carry the banner, like Black Sabbath, Manowar, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica (Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets-era exclusively), Slayer, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Bathory, and Death. There are many others.

My aim with this site is to do my best to exalt Wagner's awe-inspiring music, as well as one of the genres of music he defined (Heavy Metal). I felt especially compelled to create a personal website concerning Wagner because of the inspiration his music gave me toward my own musical projects. As some might have guessed, Lyraka itself was influenced greatly by Der Ring Des Nibelungen.

I started out liking guitar driven Rock and Metal in the late 1970's. Even when I began playing an instrument (electric guitar) I never really bothered much with learning how to actually read music. Wagner (along with, to a lesser degree, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn) made me take a serious interest in studying music, an endeavor that for me will be lifelong. I hope that all will enjoy this site, it has been a great kick for me to write about such an amazing composer.

This site is an ongoing project, and thus is continually under construction.

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