Pieces that are too long?

[DavidW]

Hey, if those Malhlerettes have time enough to sit around for longer than 80 minutes, more power to them.

I guess you don't watch movies much?

[Kullervo]

Messiaen's works for orchestra, all of them.

[longears]

Almost all Wagner's operas.

Whaddya mean, "almost?"

[Lethevich]

Whaddya mean, "almost?"

Die Hochzeit is perfectly proportioned...

[dtwilbanks]

I guess you don't watch movies much?

Well, if there are pictures... 

[DavidW]

Well, if there are pictures... 

Alright, you practically admitted it, you love Wagner then.

[dtwilbanks]

Alright, you practically admitted it, you love Wagner then.

[DavidW]

tehehe ain't I a stinka?

[Larry Rinkel]

Almost all Wagner's operas.

Tell me exactly what you'd cut.

[Larry Rinkel]

Messiaen's works for orchestra, all of them.

Not just orchestra. I'd be far happier if the Vingt Regards were reduced to Douze, or better yet Deux.

[Mark]

meow.

And there was me thinking I'd earn that response for this, David:

It's sleep paralysis.

[Tsaraslondon]

Tell me exactly what you'd cut.

Well the Norns at the beginning of Gotterdammerung for one, with their "the story so far". Is this for people who didn't manage the first three operas? King Mark's (over)long aria after he finds Tristan and Isolde in flagrante. No wonder Tristan falls on Melot's sword. Anything to shut him up.

But seriously, I know Wagnerites will shoot me down in flames, I honestly think Wagner had a faulty grasp of theatre and drama. In most of his operas, characters spend ages relating what happened to them before the curtain opened. This does not make good drama or good theatre.

[marvinbrown]

But seriously, I know Wagnerites will shoot me down in flames, I honestly think Wagner had a faulty grasp of theatre and drama. In most of his operas, characters spend ages relating what happened to them before the curtain opened. This does not make good drama or good theatre.

  Tsaraslondon, you are killing me with this criticism  .......


  marvin

[val]

Some pieces that I think that are too long:

SCHUMANN: 4th movement of the first piano Sonata

WAGNER: First Act of Tannhäuser

MAHLER: First Symphony (4th movement), 2nd Symphony (after the Urlicht)

SCHÖNBERG: Pélleas et Melisande

[Tsaraslondon]

  Tsaraslondon, you are killing me with this criticism  .......


  marvin

Sorry, Marvin. This observation in no way diminishes my admiration for Wagner as a musician. And there are certainly parts of all his operas, in which I can wallow with the best of them. But the very static nature of many of his works, vitiates against them being truly theatrical. Puccini, a much lesser composer than either Wagner or Verdi IMO, was a theatrical wizard. His operas rarely fail in the theatre, even in less than good performances.

[MDL]

Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier. I know that's blasphemy, and I love Salome and and Elektra, but so much of DR seems like a twittering endurance test. The libretto suffers from verbal diarrhoea.
Stockhausen: Anything I've heard from Licht, with the exception of Donnerstag, outstays its welcome.

[Larry Rinkel]

Sorry, Marvin. This observation in no way diminishes my admiration for Wagner as a musician. And there are certainly parts of all his operas, in which I can wallow with the best of them. But the very static nature of many of his works, vitiates against them being truly theatrical. Puccini, a much lesser composer than either Wagner or Verdi IMO, was a theatrical wizard. His operas rarely fail in the theatre, even in less than good performances.

I'm going to dig out something I wrote a year or more ago on the previous version of this board. Not all of it directly responds to your points, but I think there is enough that is relevant in terms of what you call the static quality of Wagner's dramas:

(Person I was responding to:) When you write music as controversial as Wagner, there will be those who revere you and those who hate you. The same was true for Berlioz and Liszt and Bruckner and Mahler. Mediocre composers rarely cause any contraversy because their music arouse no emotions.


(My response:)
There's something to that, but although there are exceptions I wouldn't say such
controversy attends upon Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach - at least not to the degree
one can say that about Wagner. Dislike of Wagner is often expressed as dislike of
the man, for his anti-Semitism, grandiosity, or arrogance, which spreads to the
music and is felt to have implications for Nazism; or it is expressed as distaste for
the musical style - especially because of its slow pace, heaviness, and alleged
verbosity; or he is pilloried for working primarily within one genre. His influence is
usually granted, but would he have been so influential had he been less of a genius?

I'm less an ardent Wagnerian than I was some 20-30 years ago, but I still consider
him one of the top 10 or so (don't ask me all the other 9), and certainly one of the
greatest and original composers after Beethoven. It doesn't matter to me that he
concentrated on opera any more than that matters for me with Verdi, or that it
matters to me that Beethoven's greatest strength was instrumental music or
Chopin's almost entirely as a composer for the piano. Few composers succeed in all
genres. But the accusations of verbosity, tedium, and slow pacing need to be
answered, as I think they at least have some relevance to Wagner's musical style.

Whenever I hear a statement like, "easily 10% (or more) of each major Wagner
opera can be cut," I always ask "which 10% do you have in mind?", and I've never
gotten a satisfactory answer. As an example, it's often pointed out that the Ring
librettos were composed in reverse order, and much of the story is repeated in later
operas as a result. But the music to the operas was written in forward order, and
Wagner could easily have pruned all the reminiscences and retellings had he felt
they impeded the musical drama he was trying to create. He did not. And since
Wagner was obviously not stupid, it's worth trying to understand why he kept all
the apparent repetition in. The answer, I believe, is that Wagner's characters do
not simply act, but they also constantly re-interpret and try to make sense of their
actions, to the point where this introspection is essential to the kind of drama
Wagner was trying to create. To an unprecedented degree, Wagner's characters
live within their minds. This is as relevant to Tristan trying to understand his
experiences in Act III of his opera as it is to Wotan reviewing his reasons for
creating a race of heroes in Act II of Walkuere, or even to Siegfried trying to grasp
his life's history as he recounts his adventures in the last act of
Goetterdaemmerung.

It is true as well that Wagner's style is basically slowly paced, Meistersinger perhaps
the major exception. That is appropriate to a musical drama that deals in
archetypes and myths. Wagner's aim is only rarely edge-of-your-seat excitement -
though he can achieve this when needed, as with Hagen's call to the vassals or
Siegfried's forging song. More often he is aiming for in-depth characterization, but of
figures who are less like "real people" than like the shadowy archetypes of elemental
human emotions and motivations. This mythical remoteness is part of the style too,
and is allied to the generally slow pacing.

Wagner's most obvious musical technique, the Leitmotif, is essential as well to the
type of musical drama he created. He broke in the later operas from the standard
"number opera" of Mozart and Verdi, but based his style instead on the constant
development and deployment of short, pregnant figures that can stand for a
character, a concept, an emotion, etc. This means though that if one does not
listen with the words in mind and simply hears the music, it can seem incoherent as
these brief figures shift in and out of the musical texture. But if one attends to the
words and music together as part of the "Gesamtkunstwerk," the coherence -
largely text-based of the musical texture becomes more apparent. One becomes
also aware of how the immense Wagnerian orchestra can serve as a commentator
on the musical action - a famous example being how when Hagen, welcoming
Siegfried to the Gibichungs' hall, does so to the motif of Alberich's curse on the ring.
Or to take another famous, more enigmatic example, there is the way Siegmund, on
pulling the sword from the tree in Act I of Walkuere, uses the same music as did
Alberich on renouncing love in the first scene of Rheingold. Wagner obviously linked
the two moments in some way, but what did he mean?

Clearly this way of proceeding is very different from that of prior operatic
composers. In Handel, for instance, working within the number opera convention,
the action is carried by the secco recitative and the da capo aria is used as a
means of reflecting on the action. Mozart continues this tradition to some degree,
but already is more flexible in introducing small ensembles and in particular the
stunning, purely musical 20-minute finales that typically end each of his acts. Yet
when listened to without attention to the words, these numbers still achieve an
immediate musical coherence that Wagner's textures might not. But Wagner's
innovations produced a greater continuity of texture, which led the way to
composers like Mahler, Strauss, and Schoenberg, and not only in their vocal music.

I could go on in terms of Wagner's harmonic innovations - that is, his greater
chromaticism and freer approach to modulation and tonality - and to his
enlargement of the symphony orchestra primarily to increase the size of the
woodwind choir and to rely more on the fully chromatic brass instruments that came
into being in the mid-19th century. But enough. This post is already turning all
too Wagnerian itself. I don't relish the kind of pissing contest threads like this turn
into. But if you have objections to Wagner, maybe you can at least try to raise them
in response to some of what I've said here.

[Grazioso]

Suk's Fantastic Scherzo, a piece I adore but have always thought could be shaved by a minute or two to excise unnecessary repetition. As delightful as the themes are, they just don't warrant that much time. The same could be said for most of Bruckner's scherzi.

[Kullervo]

Not just orchestra. I'd be far happier if the Vingt Regards were reduced to Douze, or better yet Deux.

Actually I wouldn't change any of the Regards. His best work, easily.

[Keemun]

Cage - 4'33"   (needs to be edited out of existence)