Wagner

But this is not saying much (since Wagner is rub composer). I have a vivid memory however of an occasion when our music teacher played us an hilarious record by this woman (a sort of operatic equivalent of Joyce Grenfell - from that era anyway) who in about 45 minutes did the whole story of the Ring cycle and sang highlights from it accompanied just by piano. If someone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please identify the lady in question. Ta.

The guy who presented it (howard Goddall i think) was alright until trying to explain Wagner's music by using pancakes! But overall not too bad...and he did confront his anti-semitism head on (well the music seemed to be first but some of his politics emerged, he was a leftie early on it seems though the programme didn't explain whether he hated jews throughout his life).

I found his music too full of bombast but then again I do not know much abt Opera (or music heh).

This is a difficult subject to discuss without sounding insensitive... but I think I know what you mean by being drawn to Wagner, in spite of and because of his politics.

Wagner? I might invite him to dinner for study purposes, but not for enjoyment. Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings. It is noble, generous, etc. But now we are entering into the whole discussion of whether it is moral or not and this becomes too involved in a discussion. But suffice it to say for now that Wagner's anti-Semitism was monstrous. That he used a lot of, at the time, common terminology for what could be described as salon anti-Semitism, and that he had all sorts of rationalizations about it, does not make it any less monstrous. He also used some abominable phrases which can be, at best, interpreted as being said in the heat of the moment - that Jews should be burned, etc. Whether he meant these things figuratively or not can be discussed. The fact remains that he was a monstrous anti-Semite. How we would look at the monstrous anti-Semitism without the Nazis, I don't know. One thing I do know is that they, the Nazis, used, misused, and abused Wagner's ideas or thoughts - I think this has to be said - beyond what he might have had in mind. Anti-Semitism was not invented by Adolf Hitler and it was certainly not invented by Richard Wagner. It existed for generations and generations and centuries before. The difference between National Socialism and the earlier forms of anti-Semitism is that the Nazis were the first, to my knowledge, to evolve a systematic plan to exterminate the Jews, the whole people. And I don't think, although Wagner's anti-Semitism is monstrous, that he can be made responsible for that, even though a lot of the Nazi thinkers, if you want to call them that, often quoted Wagner as their precursor. It also needs to be said for clarity's sake that, in the operas themselves, there is not one Jewish character. There is not one anti-Semitic remark. There is nothing in any one of the ten great operas of Wagner even remotely approaching a character like Shylock. That you can interpret Mime or Beckmesser in a certain anti-Semitic way (in the same way, you can also interpret The Flying Dutchman as the errant Jew), this is a question that speaks not about Wagner, but about our imagination and how our imagination is developed, coming into contact with those works.

How could Wagner evoke a style he pre-dates?

Apparently she analyses the whole cycle in just over 20 minutes in fact, tackling other subjects on Side 2.

Or Baudelaire: "I love (Richard) Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws."

Or Rossini: "He had some good moments but some dreadful quarter-hours."

Or Twain: "Richard Wagner was a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds."

Or Nietzsche: "Whatever else he was, he was, in any case, the world’s most impolite genius (Wagner takes us quasi "as if" - he says one thing so often until one despairs - until one believes it).

Or Wagner on Wagner: "I know nothing at all about music."

Or Baudelaire: "I love (Richard) Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws."

Or Rossini: "He had some good moments but some dreadful quarter-hours."

Or Twain: "Richard Wagner was a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds."

Or Nietzsche: "Whatever else he was, he was, in any case, the world’s most impolite genius (Wagner takes us quasi "as if" - he says one thing so often until one despairs - until one believes it).

Or Wagner on Wagner: "I know nothing at all about music."

According to that link, it seems Chopin was a "rabid antisemite," but they still play him in Israel, while there is a ban on Wagner. Of course, it makes sense to have a ban on Wagner in Israel, but to an American guy who never experienced the Holocaust and only knows what the music sounds like, I have just never really heard anything like it. I don't understand why everybody seems to hate it so. Maybe you all need to put on your spear and magic hewmet and give it another listen. I do remember thinking it was corny as fuck when I was a kid and my brother had some of these songs on a "best of" classical bullshit cd because they were all so overplayed. I still have that problem with a lot of famous classical, like Vivaldi's 4 Seasons, but this morning I dumped a bunch of Wagner on my mp3 player and when the Flight of the Valkyries came on, the (I hate to use a gay term here, but) majesty of it blew Elmer Fudd's voice right out of my head every time it started to creep in there. It was like a fight between Gods and cartoons; my own little Mike Patton moment (ack! I have a problem with that guy!).

There are patterns of swells he used, but some of that crap just sounds so awesome and so unlike anything else I've ever heard. It is kind of like classic rock with it's power and it's fiddly emotional bits. Wagner is the Led Zeppelin IV of classical music. Is O Fortuna not the creepiest piece of music ever (don't tell me about Suspiria)?!

search:

Flying Dutchman: cond. Sinopoli, Deutsche Grammophon

Tannhauser: cond. Solti, Decca. I don't like most of Solti's Wagner recordings but this one is outstanding.

Lohengrin: cond. Abbado, DG. I think this one is great but I haven't heard much else for this opera. The other big one available is Solti/Domingo, but as I say I don't really like Solti and to me Domingo and Wagner don't really mix.

Meistersinger: cond. Karajan, EMI. Admittedly, the only one I've listened to all the way through. Like Karajan's Ring (see below), not the most dramatic version available but musically very satisfying. Particularly great choral work in this one.

Tristan and Isolde: cond. Furtwangler, Emi; cond. Kleiber, DG. The former is expansive and ethereal, the latter jittery and restless. Both great in very different ways.

Parsifal: cond. Karajan, DG. This is quite unbelievably gorgeous. People seem to have a problem with the early digital recording but it sounds great to me. The Boulez recording is also very good... it really moves along compared to most other recordings.

The Ring: cond. Karajan, DG. A lot of people find this lacking in power and drama; this is the version to have if you're primarily interested in Wagner as music. If you're more interested in Wagner as drama then Solti is the alternative - plenty bombast. There's also a great version from the 1953 Bayreuth Festival available for dirt cheap, with an incredible cast.

The Ring on DVD: Bayreuth Centennial production, cond. Boulez. A non-traditional production, but an intelligent one that doesn't scream "look how clever and radical we are!!!!1!" (unlike the Stuttgart/Zagrosek version). The Met version with Levine, by contrast, is ultra-traditional and from what I saw seemed staid and unsatisfying. That said, the singer who plays Siegfried in the Boulez version leaves a lot to be desired. Nothing's perfect.

We're not going to begin to debate this, are we? Richard Wubble You was a painfully anti-Semitic Fuck. I'd say he invented two thirds of 20th Century orchestral music, but he was a painfully anti-Semitic fuck. So I love his work, but I will not defend his ideology for a moment.

2/3rds?!

I've been hearing the 'Siegfried Idyll' and still to make my mind up about it. Maybe I'll get a look into the Furtwangler as I like his perf of Beethoven's 9th.