Random thoughts

[Chaszz]

Each not enough for a thread.

1. The Three B's; one opera. How can this be?

2. As a Wagner lover, the biggest problem (for me) of this composer, in spite of all the wrangling about other things, is lack of output. I have been listening to Bach and Brahms for fifty years (not nonstop) and still have more to discover. With Wagner it was all over in two years. Well, probably because I listened nonstop. But still. Would he had taken time out from his writing his long shelf-full of unneeded opinion books and pamphlets to write more operas, and a few symphonies also.

3. Related to 2. I cannot get involved with the detailed inspection of alternate versions which occupies so many fans. Perhaps my Wagner mania would be more productive if I could. Once I have listened intensively to one or two versions of a work for a year or two, that is it, alternate versions don't really interest me, as I don't have the patience to listen all the way through to something which has ceased to really exercise its magic on me. I may listen to it piecemeal once or twice a decade or so, and of course a live performance is always welcomed. But as part of a daily life, no more. Too bad.   

4. Wagner's music is much better than his ideas, plots, librettos. There is almost no comparison. While in the plots there is always mawkishness and lack of believable motivation in trying to depict failure and tragedy (Meistersinger excepted, and Parsifal partly so), in the music there is a stupendous positive life-force, a sheer glory and happiness, almost without parallel in the arts.

3. The late 19th century was perhaps the greatest time, culturally, in the history of the post-medieval West. The panoply of greatness across music, art and literature is vast and varied. Yet many of the practitioners thought the culture was dying and depraved. So people often undervalue their own time. This cannot be true of us, however, as our time really is depraved, no two ways about it. And where is there culture today?     

[Florestan]

1. The Three B's; one opera. How can this be?

Say what? Bellini, Berlioz, Bizet. 

2. As a Wagner lover, the biggest problem (for me) of this composer, in spite of all the wrangling about other things, is lack of output. I have been listening to Bach and Brahms for fifty years (not nonstop) and still have more to discover. With Wagner it was all over in two years.

Yeah, but with Wagner it takes two full years of non-stop listening. 

4. Wagner's music is much better than his ideas, plots, librettos. There is almost no comparison. While in the plots there is always mawkishness and lack of believable motivation in trying to depict failure and tragedy (Meistersinger excepted, and Parsifal partly so), in the music there is a stupendous positive life-force, a sheer glory and happiness, almost without parallel in the arts.

The most devastating critique of Wagner´s librettos came from Schopenhauer. I´ll post it as soon as I find it (it´s somewhere online). He literally mops the floor with Wagner´s literary pretentions. 

3. The late 19th century was perhaps the greatest time, culturally, in the history of the post-medieval West. The panoply of greatness across music, art and literature is vast and varied. Yet many of the practitioners thought the culture was dying and depraved. So people often undervalue their own time. This cannot be true of us, however, as our time really is depraved, no two ways about it. And where is there culture today?

Are you sure about letting the worms crawl out of the can?   

[North Star]

Each not enough for a thread.

1. The Three B's; one opera. How can this be?

Wonderfully simple and easy: Berlioz, Berg, Britten

[ibanezmonster]

No, the three B's are Bruckner, Berg and Brahms.

[Karl Henning]

1. The Three B's; one opera. How can this be?

Well, to address your query . . . I'd suggest that neither Bach nor Brahms felt drawn to the genre.  Beethoven struggled with it;  not that he did not also struggle with some of his instrumental works . . . but I guess that was one struggle he did not feel any inclination to resume.

Side note:  of course, the original third B was Berlioz, who succeeded well in the genre 

[Florestan]

No, the three B's are Bruckner, Berg and Brahms.

Never heard ´bout them.

Binchois, Boccherini and Bartok, on the other hand....

[Jo498]

As someone pointed out in another thread, the original suggestion in the 1850s or so apparently was Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz. But interested parties exchanged Berlioz for Brahms or Bruckner a few years/decades later.

Why not more operas? I think Brahms was temperamentally not suited to the genre and there would not have been "space" for him between Wagner and italian-style opera - what kind of operas would he have composed? I lack the imagination.
Bach apparently didn't care much for contemporary opera either and the genre was very ephemeral whereas Bach at least in some works strove for "eternal perfection" untainted by popularity (even the utterly pragmatic Handel put more effort in his oratorios than into operas).
Beethoven was extremely interested in opera but Leonore/Fidelio had cost him A LOT of time and effort (there are probably a bunch of different reasons for that) and he never found another convincing libretto (and to find the Fidelio on convincing requires some stretch...). Apparently, there were plans for both "Macbeth" and "Faust", and also Grillparzer is supposed to have provided him with a libretto. It all came to nought (and I am not sure if I wanted another Beethoven opera if that meant there would be no Missa solemnis or late piano sonatas...)

[Karl Henning]

Beethoven was extremely interested in opera but Leonore/Fidelio had cost him A LOT of time and effort (there are probably a bunch of different reasons for that) and he never found another convincing libretto (and to find the Fidelio on convincing requires some stretch...). Apparently, there were plans for both "Macbeth" and "Faust", and also Grillparzer is supposed to have provided him with a libretto. It all came to nought (and I am not sure if I wanted another Beethoven opera if that meant there would be no Missa solemnis or late piano sonatas...)

Thanks.

[San Antone]

Bach did write some dramatic vocal works: the passions, for example.

[Jo498]

Greg:
    No, the three B's are Bruckner, Berg and Brahms.

Never heard ´bout them.

Binchois, Boccherini and Bartok, on the other hand....

Neither group fares much better in the opera department (Binchois is not to blame...).

@Karl: our posts overlapped. I think the "plans" for those opera projects were very hazy and never really got off the ground. The Faust project might have been not more than a remark by Beethoven that he would like to compose the sujet. After all, he did write incidental music to "Egmont", a lesser Goethe play, set at least one famous song (Flohlied) from Faust, and he probably was "romantic" enough to share Berlioz's and Schumann's fascination with the Faust sujet.
But I once read somewhere about a presumed connection between the spooky largo of the "ghost trio" op.70/1 and sketches for a witches chorus for Macbeth.

[Jo498]

Bach did write some dramatic vocal works: the passions, for example.

Also, the Coffee and Peasant cantatas are almost like tiny comic operas (the German Baroque sort of funny, I am afraid...)

[Florestan]

Bach apparently didn't care much for contemporary opera either and the genre was very ephemeral whereas Bach at least in some works strove for "eternal perfection" untainted by popularity (even the utterly pragmatic Handel put more effort in his oratorios than into operas).

I beg to differ. We should not judge the 18th century operas by today´s standards, which are mostly Wagner´s standards. If anyone would have suggested to an 18th century opera composer or opera lover that the music should make them think about the greatest and gravest issues of life and death, and that they should leave the opera house deeply disturbed by, and profoundly concerned about, what they had just heard and seen --- they would have thought he was just ripe for the bedlam. 

[Karl Henning]

(the German Baroque sort of funny, I am afraid...)

As an old friend of mine quipped (in an entirely different context): Ah. Humor.  Like the funny kind, only different.

[Florestan]

As an old friend of mine quipped (in an entirely different context): Ah. Humor.  Like the funny kind, only different.

ROTFLMAOL 

[North Star]

As an old friend of mine quipped (in an entirely different context): Ah. Humor.  Like the funny kind, only different.

Shostakovich sure knew how to do that.

Bach's cantatas, passions & Mass can stand next to any opera composers' oeuvre.

[Florestan]

Shostakovich sure knew how to do that.

+ 1

Bach's cantatas, passions & Mass can stand next to any opera composers' oeuvre.

+1

Now, how do you say +1 in Finnish, I wonder...

[Karl Henning]

Shostakovich sure knew how to do that.

Aye, the difference between succeeding at wry and failing to manage amusing 

[North Star]

+ 1

+1

Now, how do you say +1 in Finnish, I wonder...

'Plus yksi'
And you know how to pronounce that, too.

[Florestan]

'Plus yksi'
And you know how to pronounce that, too.

Of course. Romanian transliteration: Plus x. I pronounce it exactly as you pronounce Plus yks. 

The correct Romanian translation is: Plus unu, pronounced exactly as it reads. 

[North Star]

Of course. Romanian transliteration: Plus x. I pronounce it exactly as you pronounce Plus yks. 

The correct Romanian translation is: Plus unu, pronounced exactly as it reads. 

The 'i' at the end is pronounced in Finnish, although not always in colloquial speech.