Mendelssohn vs. Wagner

[Gurn Blanston]

Proposed emendation.

That's fine, Karl. Actually, it was an unfortunate grammatical juxtaposition which caused my modifier of the one to be attributed to the other also. Mike called me on it earlier. Of course, your emendation caught my original intent precisely.



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Listening to:
Christine Faron - Kozeluch Op 15 #1 Sonata in g for Fortepiano 2nd mvmt - Allegro molto

[Chaszz]

Yes, although there are dry patches of Wagner; the above puts the position nicely. I have often suggested that T&I is like a narcotic.

Mike

The narcotic effect of the music and orchestration has often been commented upon. Well, the guy was composing in exotic silk costumes and in the midst of profusions of colors and textures from silks, velvets and taffetas that he had his sewing lady decorate his room in. Also perfumes and incense abounded. It is lucky that he did not use drugs, as Baudelaire and others did, or he might not have written as well.

(As to that, there's no mention of drug use in any of the voluminous writings he produced or that others produced about him. Also he had enormous energy, as when he undertook a back-breaking conducting tour to promote the construction of Bayreuth; it is doubtful he could have had this energy if on drugs.)

 

[Franco]

Speaking for myself, Wagner's antisemitism has nothing to do with why I dislike his music.  Mendelssohn is a very good composer, I especially like his Songs Without Words and his chamber music for strings, but he was also a great choral composer, Elijah is a very very good oratorio.

I am a huge opera lover, but find Wagnerian works heavy, dull, plodding, shrieky and tedious, melodramatic in a really stupid way and the librettos pretentious and silly - all about twice as long as possibly tolerable.

That about sums it up. 

[knight66]

Chaszz, I assume my comment was just a jumping off point for you; as it never entered my mind to suggest he had used drugs. As an aside, I have read that Berlioz wrote the Symphonie Fantastique under the influence of drugs. That one turned out all right. But as a habit I should think it saps ability rather than releases it.

Mike

[Opus106]

Cons:

FMB

• Music is sub-par.
  
• Not a genius.
  

RW

• Didn't do a thing for the wide-scale revival of Bach's music.

Hm...whom should I choose? Actually, I did vote for Mendelssohn for the wide variety of music he produced.

[DavidW]

Chaszz, I assume my comment was just a jumping off point for you; as it never entered my mind to suggest he had used drugs. As an aside, I have read that Berlioz wrote the Symphonie Fantastique under the influence of drugs. That one turned out all right. But as a habit I should think it saps ability rather than releases it.

Mike

There was a Family Guy episode where they were trying to write and perform songs (Peter and Louis) but they couldn't come up with anything.  So they had some weed to inspire them and they felt like they really had something going... but then they flipped it and showed that to the audience it sounded just absolutely terrible!  It was hilarious!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

This 50% white, 50% black poster has just made Mendelssohn and Wagner equal (by voting for the latter).

[karlhenning]

As an aside, I have read that Berlioz wrote the Symphonie Fantastique under the influence of drugs. That one turned out all right. But as a habit I should think it saps ability rather than releases it.

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 . . . .

[knight66]

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'.


Mike

Edit: BTW, Richard Wagner is a pharmacist and the Drug Use Management Leader for Kaiser Permanente, Southern California.

I assume he works closely with Elvis.

[Diletante]

So, is this poll about who wrote the best wedding music?

[knight66]

That would be Mozart then; the march from The Marriage of Figaro

Mike

[DavidW]

That would be Mozart then; the march from The Marriage of Figaro

Mike

No love for Pachelbel?

[Gurn Blanston]

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

Big deal. I've seen YOU say worse.



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Listening to:
Le Concert des Nations / Savall - Hob 20 1 The Seven Last Words - Orchestral version pt 8 - Sonata VII. Largo

[Gurn Blanston]

Lipservice that counts. 

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Listening to:
Le Concert des Nations / Savall - Hob 20 1 The Seven Last Words - Orchestral version pt 9 - Il Terremoto: Presto con tutta la forza

[Valentino]

Fifteen - All

VERY exciting match this.

[Franco]

Fifteen - All

VERY exciting match this.

It is vaguely heartening that RW can barely hold his own against a "lightweight" such as Mendelssohn.

[Superhorn]

   I reject the notion that Wagner's operas(or music dramas to be more correct) are in any way silly or absurd .  That's just an old canard.
But you just can't judge them by the standards of real life.
  After all, the Lord of the Rings,  Star Wars and Harry Potter etc aren't reaistic and the stories aren't"believable", but so what ? People still flock to see these movies and read the books.
  It's the same with Wagner.  And Wagner's protagonists are three-dimensional flesh and blood characters, and often much more interesting people than some of the stock heroes,heroines and Snidely Whiplash
caricature villain characters in many  other operas.
  Furthermore, the old stereotypical image of fat singers in Viking costumes in the minds of so many people reinforces the notion that Wagner's stories are absurd or silly.
  If you see singers like the late Hildegard Behrens in Wagner DVDs, she's not a caricature, but a flesh and blood woman when she portrays Brunnhilde or Isolde etc.

[Franco]

   I reject the notion that Wagner's operas(or music dramas to be more correct) are in any way silly or absurd .  That's just an old canard.
But you just can't judge them by the standards of real life.
  After all, the Lord of the Rings,  Star Wars and Harry Potter etc aren't reaistic and the stories aren't"believable", but so what ? People still flock to see these movies and read the books.
  It's the same with Wagner.  And Wagner's protagonists are three-dimensional flesh and blood characters, and often much more interesting people than some of the stock heroes,heroines and Snidely Whiplash
caricature villain characters in many  other operas.
  Furthermore, the old stereotypical image of fat singers in Viking costumes in the minds of so many people reinforces the notion that Wagner's stories are absurd or silly.
  If you see singers like the late Hildegard Behrens in Wagner DVDs, she's not a caricature, but a flesh and blood woman when she portrays Brunnhilde or Isolde etc.

Can't speak to Harry Potter since I have not read any of the books or seen any of the movies, but as far as Star Wars, it was very entertaining and never took itself seriously.  Wagner's operas are horribly not entertaining to me, they represent the worst excess of self indulgence and decadence.  And it has nothing to do with the singers.

[Opus106]

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

Duh! Just stating the obvious, he was.

[Opus106]

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

The question was indeed about what the forum community here preferred, and not about any true measure of comparative artistic merits.

In other words, this is a silly poll.