The Evidence Of The Hardcore Wagnerian

[Operahaven]

Which most sentient beings would consider something other than "no purpose."  See:

Karl,

You know what I meant... I miswrote that.

Wagner's librettos mean absolutely nothing to me.

[marvinbrown]

Karl,


Wagner's librettos mean absolutely nothing to me.

  OH NO, operahaven I was agreeing with you up and until you wrote this.......

  marvin

[PSmith08]

Val and Patrick,

I still disagree.

The music is always the paramount definer, shaper, and transmitter of the drama.

You're welcome to disagree. In this case, however, it's rather like disagreeing with the Second Isomorphism Theorem or Euclid's proof of the infinitude of prime numbers: whether or not you accept it is ultimately irrelevant. So, then, whether or not you take Wagner at face value is of no consequence. I don't mean to be unnecessarily unpleasant, but there is no way around this: You might really dig Wagner, but your appreciation appears to be the most superficial and trivial sort possible. Heckfire, Wagner might even be "the center of [your] musical universe," but your Wagner is not the Wagner of history or the Wagner who wrote the music you profess to adore.

Now, that's fine, you can replace anything with anything else these days, and if the real Wagner doesn't much suit your taste, then you can make up a new Wagner that does - as you seem to have done. If, however, we're playing the game where you reinterpret music to fit your aesthetic "theories" (I'm being generous), then we really shouldn't speak in absolute terms. We really shouldn't speak in absolute terms about music anyway, but I'm not going to point out that speck while I've got a similar [log] in my eye. So, you're welcome to recast Wagner so he is more easily digestible given your musical predilections, but you really should either keep it to yourself or be as subjective as possible.

My compliments, however, for stirring the pot in a slightly more creative way than your latest efforts. While I'd rather you found a constructive use for your time (e.g., puzzles), if you're going to create controversy for its own sake, then I want you at your tip-top "best."

[val]

Operahaven
Val and Patrick,

I still disagree.

The music is always the paramount definer, shaper, and transmitter of the drama.

Even if that was true, it could be also applied to Fidelio, Aida, Tosca or Wozzeck. In opera it is the music, more than the words, that characterizes better the characters, but that doesn't mean that music is enough to define them and the situations that made the plot of the drama.
I agree that Wagner's systhematic use of leitmotiv in the Ring, gives the music a greatest importance defining the situations in which the characters are involved.
But, even if in a more modest scale, Verdi also uses leitmotiv in Traviata or Otello, Puccini in Tosca, Mussorgsky in Khovantchina.

What I am trying to say is that the text, the plot, have the same importance in Wagner's operas that they have in all other operas, from Incoronazione di Poppea to Die Soldaten.

[jochanaan]

What I'm saying is that his texts are trivial compared to his transcendent musical genius.

By all accounts, he would disagree with you.  Perhaps you don't know that he was a dramatist, born to a family of actors, before he was a composer...? Or why do you think he concentrated so exclusively on opera?  If he were an "absolute musician," his purposes would have been much better served by writing symphonies, chamber music or other purely instrumental music.  (Among the top-rated composers, ironically enough, Chopin is perhaps the nearest qualifier for the term "absolute musician," since he concentrated so exclusively on piano music.  But even he insisted on using dance forms--hardly "absolute." )

Your remarks show that your appreciation of Wagner rises only to the level of profound emotional response.  It's perfectly valid to stop there, but it hardly qualifies you to pass that kind of judgment on his art, nor does it necessarily qualify you as a "hardcore Wagnerian."

BTW, what do YOU think of "What's Opera, Doc?"

[Operahaven]

You're welcome to recast Wagner so he is more easily digestible given your musical predilections, but you really should either keep it to yourself or be as subjective as possible.

Easily digestible ?

What on earth are you talking about ?

My friend, I can assure you that my adoration and love for Wagner goes beyond yours.

Let us get some things straight:

First, Wagner as a dramatist was insignificant and inferior.... He was essentially a dramatic symphonist, a writer of programme-music who used drama and its appurtenances for the most part as a mere stalking-horse for his magnificent orchestral tone poems. Yes, he called his operas by the proud title of "music-drama" yet it is impossible to find the drama  because  of the music. He smothered his dramas in a welter of magnificent and inspired music.... filled up every possible space in them with his wonderful  tonal  commentary.

In reality Wagner was the first and only Wagnerite. As a matter of fact he was one of the most formidable antagonists that Wagnerism ever had.

Gorgeous and exquisite, epical and tender, sublimely noble, and earthly as passion and despair, the music of Wagner is still, at its best, unparalleled and unapproached.

Nothing can ever dim the glory of Wagner, the conjurer of tones.     

[jochanaan]

Easily digestible ?

What on earth are you talking about ?

Wagner's MUSIC is more-or-less easily digestible; his philosophy and drama, which by many accounts he considered the more important part of his work, are much less so.

My friend, I can assure you that my adoration and love for Wagner goes beyond yours.

Let us get some things straight: ...

See my post above.  What you say is true only in your own experience.  Some would say that "one's own experience" is the only valid measure of greatness; but how do you set your experience against anyone else's?  How can you possibly say that PSmith08, or marvinbrown, or I, have less or more or otherwise differing "adoration and love for Wagner" than you?

[PSmith08]

Easily digestible ?

What on earth are you talking about ?

My friend, I can assure you that my adoration and love for Wagner goes beyond yours.

Eric, I don't doubt that you absolutely adore the Wagner you have created for yourself. Now, it's trivial and painfully obvious that your Wagner bears little resemblance to the Wagner of fact and history. It is then eminently reasonable (and this is the only time I can use that phrase in relation to your ramblings) that you love "Wagner" far more than I do, if only because you're adoring your own creation. That's fine, as I have said, but let's not pretend that the Wagner you have turned into Debussy has much in common with the Richard Wagner about whom the rest of us have discussed here. I'll ignore your traditional gambit (and this isn't the first time you've pulled it on me alone) of asserting that you love Wagner more than the rest of us and implying that that fact gives your gobbledygook some sort of authority. You might, but that doesn't mean anything at all.

Let us get some things straight:

First, Wagner as a dramatist was insignificant and inferior.... He was essentially a dramatic symphonist, a writer of programme-music who used drama and its appurtenances for the most part as a mere stalking-horse for his magnificent orchestral tone poems. Yes, he called his operas by the proud title of "music-drama" yet it is impossible to find the drama  because  of the music. He smothered his dramas in a welter of magnificent and inspired music.... filled up every possible space in them with his wonderful  tonal  commentary.

Now, this comment bears out my assertion that you have created a Wagner for yourself that bears such little resemblance to Wagner in his own words that he has ceased being Wagner. Your nonsense, and I am being generous there, exists in a vacuum where none of Wagner's voluminous writings on the subject of drama are allowed. In other words, you've either never bothered to slog through Wagner's theoretical writings, or you're incapable of the exertion. In either case, and it really doesn't matter which, your thoughts on Wagner are crippled by a lack of understanding and a lack of context. To put it another way, you've taken three wheels off a car and then entered it in the Indianapolis 500.

As to your assertions about Wagner as a dramatist, I'll assume you just don't have much familiarity with drama throughout the ages. You really shouldn't make judgments without some context, but that hasn't stopped you before. No, if you had any familiarity with historical drama, you'd have rather a different view of Wagner's skills in that department. Since you don't, I really can't discuss the matter with you: no shared frame of reference, you see.

In reality Wagner was the first and only Wagnerite. As a matter of fact he was one of the most formidable antagonists that Wagnerism ever had.

Gorgeous and exquisite, epical and tender, sublimely noble, and earthly as passion and despair, the music of Wagner is still, at its best, unparalleled and unapproached.

Nothing can ever dim the glory of Wagner, the conjurer of tones.     

Now this bit, this peroration of yours, is so irrational, confused, and silly that no one should be subjected to the indignity of replying to it in any substantive manner. I'll just say that the gulf between reality and fantasy is pretty apparent here.

[Operahaven]

O.k. Patrick fair enough.

True, if there is one principle that is definite, positive and unmistakable in his theoretical position it is that, in the evolution of a true music drama, the dramatist should be the controlling, the composer an accessory, factor.... But as someone who has adored Wagner since age 16 I still stand by my position that in his music-dramas the music is supreme, both in its artistic quality and effect, while the drama is a mere framework for its splendors.

[PSmith08]

O.k. Patrick fair enough.

True, if there is one principle that is definite, positive and unmistakable in his theoretical position it is that, in the evolution of a true music drama, the dramatist should be the controlling, the composer an accessory, factor.... But as someone who has adored Wagner since age 16 I still stand by my position that in his music-dramas the music is supreme, both in its artistic quality and effect, while the drama is a mere framework for its splendors.

I still don't see what the duration of your Wagner-adoration has to do with anything, nor do I particularly care, as the final word on this subject was given by Wagner himself. The implicit appeal to authority, therefore, you're making is hopelessly doomed, as Wagner trumps Eric on matters of Wagner. That doesn't seem, however, to bother you much, and that's fine. As I said before, though, let's not take one's deeply unorthodox notions of Wagner and attempt to make them normative by saying you've adored Wagner since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. You could adore Wagner until the end of days, but that won't make your positions any more factually consonant to Wagner's own theories.

[Operahaven]

Patrick,

Does Wagner the librettist fascinate you more than Wagner the composer ?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Wagner's theories are of secondary interest to Wagner's practice. In fact, by Tristan and the last operas of The Ring he turned away from some of his most cherished original theories (such as the notion that only one voice could sing at a time - good thing he did, else we'd never have the Meistersinger quintet). As for the overall role of music in opera, of course it is central, but the drama is never irrelevant or a framework; otherwise the composer would not care about what librettos he set and he might just as well use the telephone book. Opera is a form of drama in which music performs a function analogous to poetry in spoken drama - that is, to create characterizations, control the pace and momentum of the action, and establish a tone for the opera as a whole. And this is as true for Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, and Berg as it is for Wagner - despite the latter's smokescreen use of the term "music drama" to set his operas apart from all others.

[karlhenning]

Wagner's theories are of secondary interest to Wagner's practice. In fact, by Tristan and the last operas of The Ring he turned away from some of his most cherished original theories (such as the notion that only one voice could sing at a time - good thing he did, else we'd never have the Meistersinger quintet).

Probably in the case of all composers, the verbiage about the music is of little significance compared to the actual music — only, since he was such a pamphleteer, (a) Wagner managed to make himself more tiresome about it than your average composer, and (b) since words are easier to produce, discuss and latch onto than is music, his logorrhea spawned an enormous cesspool of secondary literature.

The "only one voice singing at a time" is a great example of 1.) a neat Idea being unnecessarily imposed upon artistic Practice, and 2.) a major composer of opera failing to understand a fundamental difference in What Goes On, between spoken drama, and opera.

[karlhenning]

Does Wagner the librettist fascinate you more than Wagner the composer ?

Thanks for yet another irrelevant question, Eric!

[(poco) Sforzando]

Patrick,

Does Wagner the librettist fascinate you more than Wagner the composer ?

Eric, you're trying to make an impossible case, as it's based on the dubious premise that a highly conspicuous element in opera is completely irrelevant.

[DavidRoss]

Eric, you're trying to make an impossible case, as it's based on the dubious premise that a highly conspicuous element in opera is completely irrelevant.

Yes, especially since in the case of Wagner, the interminably turgid libretti are all-too conspicuous!

[PSmith08]

Patrick,

Does Wagner the librettist fascinate you more than Wagner the composer ?

Karl is right. That question is pretty consarned irrelevant as such things go. I think you deserve an answer, though: Why do I have to separate Wagner? I don't have an agenda (e.g., turning Wagner into a Debussy who wrote more music for the voice), and I have a surprisingly high tolerance for Romantic hero "business" (I was going to say "nonsense," but I realized that such usage would really undermine my position). In other words, I can deal with the verbal part of the drama as well as the musical part. There's no reason to make your silly division. Unless of course you're pulling a Pierre Boulez and rewriting musical history.

Wagner's theories are of secondary interest to Wagner's practice. In fact, by Tristan and the last operas of The Ring he turned away from some of his most cherished original theories (such as the notion that only one voice could sing at a time - good thing he did, else we'd never have the Meistersinger quintet).

Or the vengeance trio at the end of act 2 in Götterdämmerung. That is, though, another discussion.

[Sergeant Rock]

In my opinion the true hardcore Wagnerian listens to Wagner's music dramas merely as absolute music

I'm coming late to this discussion (my computer died the day it began) and I have little to add. But I will say that what you've defined, Eric, is actually a softcore Wagnerian...well, not even a Wagnerian. My dad liked the music too but had no interest in opera.

You seem to have very little understanding of the relationship in Wagner's works between words (meaning) and music. You're actually doing yourself an intense disservice by refusing to engage with the text.

If he or she loves  Siegfried  (all 240 minutes) as much as the other operas and prefers to listen to it on CD....
Someone who adores the raspy voice of the Mime, Siegfried, The Wanderer, Erda and so on....
That, ladies and gentleman, is a hardcore Wagnerian.

Not at all. The true hardcore Wagnerite is one who adores Act 2 of Walküre, with all those long-winded "debates" between central characters. This act is, in fact, the heart of the Ring, the place where difficult, life and death decisions are made that will eventually impact every character. Without a knowledge of what the characters are saying at any given moment, the act itself is boring, the barking and yodeling meaningless. With an understanding of the text (and that means having a libretto in your hand), it provides the most gripping drama in the entire cycle. If you don't adore this act, you are no Wagnerite, hardcore or softcore.

The other way to know a hardcore Wagnerite is this: if you own a succession of German Shepherd bitches and name them Senta, Elsa and Kundry, and name your only daughter Elisabeth (an American child but the name spelled with an S) then you are a true hardcore Wagnerite.  I personally know these people, and their dogs 

Sarge

[karlhenning]

. . . and their little dogs, too!

[Sergeant Rock]

. . . and their little dogs, too!