Most Intelligent Composers

[max]

...to put it another way! I'd much rather take whatever the dumbest genius has to offer than anything you guys have to contribute by way of art!

[head-case]

Sorry bud, but you're wrong. First of all you assume I'm talking about a single hearing of the work, which is apparently the sum total of your experience with this music. Wagner doesn't give up his secrets that easily. You've got to listen carefully and often, just as with any other difficult but worthy music. Intelligent composers require intelligent listeners.

Sorry, I've heard the work numerous times and in numerous versions.  Truely a thrilling drama.  When Parsifal shoots the magic goose with his bow and arrow, truly a soul retching scene.  Too bad we don't have the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fud version of this work to complement their insightful version of "The Ring."

And I am to understand that I'm not as intelligent as you because I don't listen to my stereo as well?  How sad for me.   

[max]

Sorry, I've heard the work numerous times and in numerous versions.  Truely a thrilling drama.  When Parsifal shoots the magic goose with his bow and arrow, truly a soul retching scene.  Too bad we don't have the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fud version of this work to complement their insightful version of "The Ring."

And I am to understand that I'm not as intelligent as you because I don't listen to my stereo as well?  How sad for me.   

Hey Head-case! Do you know what a LIMITATION IS? It's when you use your own to limit others. In that sense you seem to be "Incorporated".

If I were you, I'd stick with the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fud version of Wagner which quite frankly I did find hilarious.

To bad they couldn't serialize ALL of Wagner's works into a single 20 minute episode for fellows like you. There could have been parts for Daffy Duck, Foghorn-leghorn and probably even for Sylvestor the cat and Tweedy.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

First, Wotan does not scold Brünnhilde twice. She knows that by saving Siegmund she's impulsively committed an act that is likely to get her punished, but that's at the very end of Act Two, and Wotan doesn't find her among her fellow Valkyries under Act Three is under way.

Second, as for the flashbacks and reminiscences: these are not necessarily literal recaps of the previous night's action. Wotan's long monologue in Walküre Act II both reprises some of the Rheingold story and provides much new "information." But more important, in this monologue Wotan re-interprets and synthesizes his reactions to the action in a new way, having been outsmarted by Fricka when he realizes his grand scheme to use Siegmund to reclaim the ring is doomed to failure because Siegmund is not truly a free agent. And this is true of virtually all of Wagner's lengthy retellings of events we've seen the night before: they are not present to take up space or waste the audeince's time, but because they provide opportunities for a character to understand his or her prior experiences in a wholly new and significant way.

Mine was an allegorical telling...

[Haffner]

...to put it another way! I'd much rather take whatever the dumbest genius has to offer than anything you guys have to contribute by way of art!

Attaboy!

[karlhenning]

Ah well, another topic which, rightly considered, is much broader than Wagner, but which has managed to become Yet Another Referendum on Wagner.

Sehr yawn-lich.

[Mark G. Simon]

Ah well, another topic which, rightly considered, is much broader than Wagner, but which has managed to become Yet Another Referendum on Wagner.

Thanks in large part to you. Sehr yawn-lich, indeed.

[karlhenning]

Well, I think that you were entirely right to address what you find to be unfair charges against Wagner, Mark. I have found your remarks of interest.

[Mark G. Simon]

Most of the time I ignore the anti-Wagnerian nonsense that gets posted here. Every once in a while I feel the need to take the opposing view.

[jochanaan]

As for me, anybody capable of writing something as deeply and genuinely felt as Tristan and Isolde (the only Wagner opera i'm truly familiar with) can't possibly be the monster everybody paints him out to be. I just can't accept that.

This and stranger things have actually happened. But please note that neither I, nor Deems Taylor, nor anybody else whose comments I've read here have said that Wagner was a total monster with no redeeming qualities.  And after all, the man's dead; his works are what matter most now.

[greg]

I should mention Xenakis here on this thread......

not only was he a composer, but also an architect, engineer, and his work often deals with very advanced math (just try going through "Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition")..... (ok, the only copy i have is in French so I can't read it, but just look at the math......)
not to mention the Greek mythology he was into (nearly all of his works are titled after something to do with Greek mythology)

[greg]

So what, the results of his main focus (music) sound primative  A lightweight & a blip compared to the major intellectual & creative achievements of the seminal figures. i.e. Wagner's Tristan & Isolde

So what, I'd rather listen to Xenakis than Wagner any day 

[greg]

That's fine but it still doesn't change history. 

(shakes fist at history)

[Cato]

  Really...well why don't you tell that to Bruckner who named his 3rd Symphony "Wagner" and dedicated it to him.   Wagner advanced music beyond the realm of Beethoven in a way that Brahms could never do.  That's a fact that you Karl and every anti-Wagnerian on this forum are just going to have to live with. 

  marvin

My emphasis above:

And what say ye to Schoenberg's famous essay "Brahms, the Revolutionary"?  (Also translated as "Brahms the Progressive.")

I do believe Arnie Baby would beg to differ: I suspect he would say that Brahms was just as important in "advancing music" (definition?) as Rick Wagner.

[lukeottevanger]

...or indeed Bartok, who thought that Liszt was more important for what came after than Wagner was.  Taking the long view, I think that's very likely true.

[DavidRoss]

Would the most intelligent composer have been smart enough to distinguish between fact and opinion?

[Mark G. Simon]

My emphasis above:

And what say ye to Schoenberg's famous essay "Brahms, the Revolutionary"?  (Also translated as "Brahms the Progressive.")

I do believe Arnie Baby would beg to differ: I suspect he would say that Brahms was just as important in "advancing music" (definition?) as Rick Wagner.

Schoenberg was an intelligent composer. He saw this at a time when so many others saw music strictly in terms of Brahms vs. Wagner. Surely, no one today thinks like that.

[karlhenning]

Did Wagner write much in D Minor, I wonder . . . .

[karlhenning]

I have to put on the Prelude [...] from Parsifal

That is a beauty! And incidentally, the Apotheosis of "Anchor's Aweigh" 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Did Wagner write much in D Minor, I wonder . . . .

The opening of Walküre comes to mind, and the ending of Act II in Tristan. I suspect he wrote in most of the keys. (Even if GGGGRRRREEEEGGGGG shakes fist at history.)