Mendelssohn vs. Wagner

[Antoine Marchand]

"The most stupendous miracle in all music." Richard Wagner on JSBach

He was a good listener, without any doubt.

(Anyway, Mendelssohn thought something similar, it seems).

[Opus106]

Yea...anyone who loves JSBach, would appreciate Wagner's stupendous harmonic world.  0:)

In bleeding chunks.

[Franco]

In reality though, it says more about the forum community

Yes, that is what is heartening. 

[DavidRoss]

In reality though, it says more about the forum community here I'm afraid 
than any true measure of comparative artistic merits.

Yes...it's absolutely shocking...shocking, I say   ....that so many here seem unable to appreciate the comparatively subtle virtues of Mendelssohn.  Are these the same folks, I wonder, who disparage Mozart but think Stockhausen was an effin' genius?  Who think Shakespeare's comedies are lightweight but the tragedies are masterpieces?  Who go ga-ga over Pulp Fiction but haven't a clue about Howard's End?  To whom a good baseball game is an American League slugfest that ends 16-12, not a NL pitcher's duel that ends 1-0 in the 12 with an infield single, a steal, a sacrifice fly, and a perfectly timed hit-and-run?

Who was it said, "Dying is easy; comedy is hard!"  

[Franco]

Give me Cosi fan tutte over either Parsifal or P&M anyday.

[Chaszz]

I never assumed anyone here was suggesting Wagner used narcotics. The two posts about the narcotic effects of his music reminded me of the dreamy atmosphere of cloths and scents he created for himself to compose in. And that brought me, solely through my own meandering, to the topic of whether he "used".  Actually, I am kind of surrised he didn't, given the widespread drug addiction in the late 19th C.  and his tempestuous, highly nervous personality. 

I would say he made a tribute to Bach in the score of Die Meistersinger with its use of polyphony and air of cherishing tradition and the past. Especially also in the music of the first scene following the overture, which takes place in a church. Remarkable is that he wrote the Meistersinger score right after Tristan und Isolde - first breaking down traditional harmony and looking toward the future, then turning right around and writing a masterpiece in traditional harmony which celebrates the past -- albeit while making a plot point about the difficulties the pioneering artist must face.

I don't find his plots or characters boring as some do, the characters are alive and vital. It is just that he continually uses suicide or sudden death induced by love-sickness as his endings, and these forced deaths are often incompatible with the characters' vital elans. Riding one's horse into the flames - really! What about the poor horse? These endings, calling to mind the artificial deux ex machina climaxes of the ancient Greeks, are dramatically ludicrous and IMHO make the dramas into typical Victorian pot-boiler melodramas. But that music.... 

[rappy]

"Tristan and Isolde is the real opus metaphysicum of all art. . . insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death. . . it is overpowering in its simple grandeur". In a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde in October 1868, Nietzsche described his reaction to Tristan's Prelude: "I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture". Even after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche continued to consider Tristan a masterpiece: "Even now I am still in search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan — I have sought in vain, in every art."

"When I came out of the Festspielhaus, unable to speak a word, I knew that I had experienced supreme greatness and supreme suffering, and that this experience, hallowed and unsullied, would stay with me for the rest of my life". - Gustav Mahler on Parsifal

[karlhenning]

LOUIS HECTOR BERLIOZ


Effects of Opium on Their Creativity and Productivity

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) was born in France. His father was a physician who taught his son to appreciate classic literature. Berlioz's family attempted to interest him in studying medicine, but after his first year of medical school in Paris, he gave up medicine and became a music student instead. Berlioz entered the Paris Conservatoire of Music in 1826. As a boy, Berlioz adored both music and literature, and he went on to compose the Symphonie Fantastique, in which the hero (a thinly disguised representation of Berlioz himself) supposedly survives a large dose of narcotic. Another interpretation of the Symphonie Fantastique is that it describes the dreams of a jilted lover (Berlioz), possibly attempting suicide by an overdose of opium. This work is a milestone marking the beginning of the Romantic era of music.29 His creativity was fired in particular by a love for great literature and an unquenchable passion for the feminine ideal, and in the best of his works these elements conspired to produce music of exquisite beauty.

Berlioz took opium to relieve agonizing toothaches, but there is no indication that he ever took opium to become intoxicated, as the author De Quincey did. On September 11, 1827, Berlioz attended a performance of Hamlet at the Paris Odéon, in which the actress Harriet Smithson (Berlioz later called her Ophelia and Henrietta) played the role of Ophelia. Overwhelmed by her beauty and charismatic stage presence, he fell desperately in love. The grim program of Symphonie Fantastique was born out of Berlioz's despair because of the unrequited love he had for the English Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson.

Berlioz found a way to channel the emotional upheaval of "l'Affaire Smithson" into something he could control, that is, a "fantastic symphony" that took as its subject the experiences of a young musician in love. A detailed program Berlioz wrote prior to a performance of the Symphonie Fantastique, and which he later revised, leaves no doubt he conceived of this symphony as a romantically heightened self-portrait. Berlioz did eventually woo and win Miss Smithson, and they were married in 1833 at the British Embassy in Paris.

The program Berlioz wrote for Symphonie Fantastique reads, in part:

A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination in a paroxysm of love-sick despair has poisoned himself with opium. The drug too weak to kill plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by strange visions. His sensations, feelings, and memories are translated in his sick brain into musical images and ideas.

The underlying "theme" is obsessive and unfulfilled love. The symphony reflects Berlioz's hysteric nature with fits of frenzy, as revealed in his dramatic behavior (Figure 7 ).29

It was obvious that Berlioz was addicted to opium, which is a yellow to dark brown, addicting narcotic drug prepared from the juice of the unripe seed capsules of the opium poppy. It contains alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, and papaverine, and is used as an intoxicant. Medically, it is used to relieve pain and produce sleep. It is a tranquilizer and has a stupefying effect. Apart from alcohol, opium was the drug most commonly relied on in the 19th century, especially by poets for stimulating creative ability and for relief from stress.


From here...

http://arpa.allenpress.com/arpaonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1043%2F1543-2165(2005)129%5B1457:TEODDA%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Certainly however this is not where I initially read the idea that Berlioz took drugs. The article quoted from above has quite a few interesting things to say about the connections between artists, their illnesses and the work that came about partly due to their 'conditions'.

Most interesting, thank you, Mike!

[karlhenning]

He seems to make what could be a leap, from Berlioz took opium to alleviate toothache, to obviously Berlioz was addicted to opium. But perhaps I am only being pharmacologically naive.

[Dana]

In the bio I read (the one-volume Barzun) I don't recall any mention of Berlioz using drugs.  In his program for the Symphonie fantastique, he writes of the protagonist taking opium.  Until firmer reading on this, I am content to observe a distinction between Berlioz, and his literary creation . . . .

      Me neither. From what I've read, he was often described of being in a delirious state with his passions for Smithson, to the point that his friends wondered whether he would actually return from his physical wanderings hither and yon. I wouldn't expect him to be recreational drug user (somehow I think he'd have a hard time seeing sense of it), but I wouldn't call it a great leap of logic to say that actual drug use inspired some of his music.

[greg]

I like very much what I've heard by Mendelssohn, but few composers can top Tristan und Isolde, sooooo

[Florestan]

Mendelssohn.

[marvinbrown]

I like very much what I've heard by Mendelssohn, but few composers can top Tristan und Isolde, sooooo

 CORRECTION: NO COMPOSER CAN TOP TRISTAN UND ISOLDE! (Not even Beethoven!)  

 Any male who votes for Mendelssohn over Wagner doesn't have the "balls" to listen to Wagner! 

 marvin  

 

[Florestan]

   Any male who votes for Mendelssohn over Wagner doesn't have the "balls" to listen to Wagner! 

Oh, my "balls" are very comfortable with Wagner. It's my ears that don't comply... 

[DavidW]

The world is quickly heading to the world of Wall-E if a sign of having balls is the ability to loaf in a recliner for hours listening to Wagner.

[karlhenning]

That crittur in your av, Davey, looks like he's been listening to Wagner . . . .

[DavidW]

That crittur in your av, Davey, looks like he's been listening to Wagner . . . .

A marathon run through the Ring has been known to kill small animals and put larger creatures like humans into a coma state.

[Cato]

A marathon run through the Ring has been known to kill small animals and put larger creatures like humans into a coma state.

Ah, but if you are conducting one Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung operas, that has to be one of the best aerobic routines you can imagine!   0:)

[karlhenning]

A Cato sighting! 

[DavidW]

Ah, but if you are conducting one Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung operas, that has to be one of the best aerobic routines you can imagine!   0:)

Have you seen Karajan conduct?  Eyes closed... we were supposed to believe it's a sign of intensity and passion, but I think he's just catching a few Z's.