# The Purest and Deepest Form of Opera Love



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Hello all,

I have finally decided to start my own blog. My first entry is on a topic I feel very strongly about.

http://genevievecastleroom.blogspot.com/


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

I want a cherry on top of my cake, not gravel. No cherry is better than gravel but cherry is preferable to no cherry. I'm not in favor of replacing competent singers with incompetent eye candy, but to disregard the paramount vitality of the cherry is to give excuses for malicious undertakers to bury the cake in fistfuls of gravel. Knappertsbusch found the supposedly kitschy doves in Parsifal inspiring; as one of the greatest Wagner conductors of all time his words mean much more than the scribbling of modernist ideologues who scorn the essence of the works in question.

It has always been obvious to me that contemplative listening of recordings in private (with amplification) represents the purest and deepest form of opera love.

Shelling out half your life savings to obtain a ticket to the 1951 Bayreuth Festival, I think, represents the purest and deepest form of opera love.

Those who recognize that one cannot truly know and love an opera unless one has devoted the many hours to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score. Or the acknowledgment that one must at least make a wholehearted effort to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize most of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details. 

This can surely be done before attending the live performance.

(with amplification) 

I'm curious, Xavier, which opera houses have you attended in your life? The acoustics can be very different from place to place.

Those who recognize that one cannot truly know and love an opera unless one has devoted the many hours to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score. Or the acknowledgment that one must at least make a wholehearted effort to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize most of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details. Apparently there are some in the opera world today who need to be reminded of the fact that listening to music is a major cognitive task that requires very considerable processing resources. The simpler task of reading libretti or studying dramaturgy just cannot be compared to the process of meticulous listening. Let me also stress that this type of opera lover always experiences a thrill or sees aesthetic value in passages that many others dismiss as "inferior, dull or mediocre".

Carolyn Abbate has spent the better half of her life studying Wagner; she's one of the preeminent musicologists of our time and is a professor at Princeton, she wrote her dissertation on the differences between the Dresden and Paris Tannhauser. She disagrees with you as to whether even the most "symphonic" of opera works can be understood "symphonically" i.e. appreciated as absolute music, and she also dislikes recorded performances. 

For a work like Parsifal the deepest appreciation would be sitting in the front row at the 1951 performance with Knappertsbusch at the helm, with the person having studied the score and mastered the German language beforehand. For someone unable to see the performance live with great performers and who has little knowledge of German this DVD with subtitles would be a better alternative than a symphonic analysis of the score and a recording alone. There are too many musical gestures which make no sense in themselves; only in conjunction with theater does it cohere. The coherence need not be representational, symbolic, or consist in a collection of semaphores, it may be ironic, disjunctive, complementary or wholly unrelated for the most part, but the representations and the semaphores exist; excluding them would subtract understanding from the work and invite fanciful, imaginative perversions and distortions that ultimately degrade and desecrate the works in question.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> Carolyn Abbate has spent the better half of her life studying Wagner; she's one of the preeminent musicologists of our time and is a professor at Princeton, she wrote her dissertation on the differences between the Dresden and Paris Tannhauser.
> 
> She disagrees with you as to whether even the most "symphonic" of opera works can be understood "symphonically" (i.e. appreciated as absolute music, and she also dislikes recorded performances.


Please don't get me started on opera scholars and musicologists. Do you really think I give a rat's *** what Carolyn Abbate feels about my method of appreciation or her thoughts about recordings?

Even the most prominent and accomplished music scholars must get this *fundamental truth* through their heads:

_The leap from "understand" to "appreciate" is long and blind. Respectful cognizance and enlightenment through diligent listening tell me that Ralph Shapey was a brilliant composer, but at the end of a long day, how many of us take home his string quartets to cuddle with affection?

[......]

The word "understand" remains elusive. I don't understand an elm tree, but give me the right one, and I like to sit under it. Knowing its biology may help, but the heart is not a biologist. An implicit contract has been signed but is not necessarily being honored. It states that if I understand a piece of music, I'm likely to like it, too. This is not true. *No amount of experience and analysis can by itself induce the stab of communication between art and its beholder.*

[.......]

The downside of music education is not only that it confuses understanding with love; it threatens an arrogance that classical music can ill afford._

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/a...t-learn-to-like-it.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Xavier said:


> Please don't get me started on opera scholars and musicologists. Do you really think I give a rat's *** what Carolyn Abbate feels about my method of appreciation or her thoughts about recordings?


You should. She has partaken in the deepest appreciation of late 19th century and early 20th century opras, namely, unpicking, assimilating, and internalizing "all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score", far more than anyone here. Here is an article of hers on Tristan in Pelleas.

What seems important and worth noting, what does matter, and what
characterizes devils and angels alike, is the paradox at work in the system.
Hermeneutics argues formusic's eﬃcacy in a particularway, seeingmusical
conﬁgurations either as sonic media for embedded signiﬁcation or, more
subtly, as points of departure wherein cultural or poetic associations are
released in listeners during their contemplation of thework, upending their
sense of self in the process. And yet hermeneutics relies upon music's aura
and strangeness, its great multiplicity of potential meanings, the fact that
music is not a discursive language, thatmusical sounds are very bad at con-
tradicting or resisting what is ascribed to them, that they shed associations
and hence connotations so very easily, and absorb them, too.Hermeneutics
fundamentally relies on music as mysterium, for mystery is the very thing
that makes the cultural facts and processes that music is said to inscribe or
release (therein becoming a nonmystery) seem so savory and interesting.
Music's ineﬀability-its broad shoulder-is relied upon so thoroughly and
yet denied any value and even denied existence. This is the mysticismthat
will demonize mystery at every turn.

Having improvised a reading upon Wagner's words, I should emphasise that it is no method, no tricky sieve through which all Wagner's music might be strained into explicability. We must at least entertain the thought that no other passage, in no other opera, is precisely like the 'Tagesgesprach', for Wagner in the end composed with many different voices, the voice that ignores poetry, the voice that hears poetry, the banal voice, the excessively formal voice, the anarchic voice, the diatonic voice, the chromatic voice. His music will not be subsumed under generalisations. But by suggesting that *Wagner's harmonic discourse might at times be transcendently incoherent, *elevated beyond the absolute-musical in part by *formation of analogies to language, *I should expect to call up a loud throng of opposing shouts.

You seem to be afraid that if you give the written word any leeway in its power to as a key to the interpretation of music, music must then become the handmaiden of the word and thus merely representational, functional, semaphoric, symbolic, etc, appropriated for political purposes and abused as cryptograms, pulverizing the mystery and beauty of the music. No such extremism is necessary.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

A side comment: Oddly, Richard Strauss pointed out the Wagnerian flavor in Pelleas when he saw it for the first time.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

In my opinion, music alone, without the stage performance, is just not opera. At least for me.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

tyroneslothrop said:


> A side comment: Oddly, Richard Strauss pointed out the Wagnerian flavor in Pelleas when he saw it for the first time.


Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Strauss at the premiere say something to the effect of:

_"Is that all there is? There is nothing. No development. But I am a musician and I hear nothing"_


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Strauss at the premiere say something to the effect of:
> 
> _"Is that all there is? There is nothing. No development. But I am a musician and I hear nothing"_


Strauss said a number of things about Pelleas as he was not a fan of Debussy. My Wagnerian comment is from Paul du Quenoy's latest book:
Wagner and the French Muse


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

> She disagrees with you as to whether even the most "symphonic" of opera works can be understood "symphonically" i.e. appreciated as absolute music, and she also dislikes recorded performances.


With all due respect to Carolyn Abbate she is just *one* person with *one* sensibility. The above highlighted truths from Bernard Holland's still apply. And the fact that she dislikes recordings means diddly-squat to me.

Look I defer to experts in all fields but when it comes to music and opera you should not place another person's aesthetic judgments, quirks or preferences above your own.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Look I defer to experts in all fields but when it comes to music and opera you should not place another person's aesthetic judgments, quirks or preferences above your own.


Then why ask what people think of the manner you personally appreciate opera if those other people's opinions don't matter one way or another?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Because I am interested in knowing if there are other opera fiends out there who share my approach.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

tyroneslothrop said:


> In my opinion, music alone, without the stage performance, is just not opera. At least for me.


And for me it's the exact opposite... Without the stage most operas give up even _more_ secrets.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Xavier said:


> And for me it's the exact opposite... Without the stage most operas give up even _more_ secrets.


Full operas are very expensive to stage vis-à-vis concert operas. If your aesthetic tastes were more the rule than the exception, I think fully staged operas would have died out long ago in favor of the less expensive concert operas.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

tyroneslothrop said:


> Full operas are very expensive to stage vis-à-vis concert operas. If your aesthetic tastes were more the rule than the exception, I think fully staged operas would have died out long ago in favor of the less expensive concert operas.


Yes and I was surprised to see this by Sir Colin Davis:

_Why the concert format? To Sir Colin, formerly no stranger to the opera house, the concert hall is the promised land. ''The only reason for playing opera is the music,'' he said recently from London. ''In a theater, the orchestra is squashed into a small pit. It doesn't have the presence it has on the concert stage. And then there are the distractions due to the ingenuity and perversity of the producer. In the concert hall, the real experience of opera can be enjoyed for what it is_

New York Times interview, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/a...s-and-too-few-ears.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Yes and I was surprised to see this by Sir Colin Davis:
> 
> _Why the concert format? To Sir Colin, formerly no stranger to the opera house, the concert hall is the promised land. ''The only reason for playing opera is the music,'' he said recently from London. ''In a theater, the orchestra is squashed into a small pit. It doesn't have the presence it has on the concert stage. And then there are the distractions due to the ingenuity and perversity of the producer. In the concert hall, the real experience of opera can be enjoyed for what it is_
> 
> ...


And why would you grant the opinion of one Colin Davis but deny the opinion of one Carolyn Abbate?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Xavier said:


> Because I am interested in knowing if there are other opera fiends out there who share my approach.


What you mean is that you want people to bolster your very suspect opinions.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*Okay- so I had to check...*

... you know what I mean- check to see if my love of opera was impure and shallow--

That said, I think I have some epigrammatic musings that might be relevant.

A) I acknowledge that opera as an art form is meant to be an experience encompassing sight and sound, with music as its most prominent element, but with story-line, staging, background and sometimes even dance supporting the organic whole.

B) I believe that self-centered stagings by those who would place their intentions over the intentions of the works' creators play their role in _creating_ "opera fans" who hunker down at home with their CDs & DVDs.

C) For as long as I can remember, there are certain opera-goers who attend performances as a fashion-statement... for the "see-and-be-seen" aspect of it. Only thing I have to add to this is-- it's impossible to be a _poseur_ alone in the privacy of your own home, with a CD in the player and a study-score in your lap.


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

Reading this:



> Those who recognize that one cannot truly know and love an opera unless one has devoted the many hours to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score. Or the acknowledgment that one must at least make a wholehearted effort to aurally unpick, assimilate and internalize most of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details. Apparently there are some in the opera world today who need to be reminded of the fact that listening to music is a major cognitive task that requires very considerable processing resources.


I wonder: Shouldn't this examination of the score happen independently of any recording? Certainly, the conductor's, the singer's and the whole orchestra's interpretation of the score in question must be a further distraction, like a staging and all that dramatic business that (supposedly) isn't a part of the artform of opera?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> She disagrees with you as to whether even the most "symphonic" of opera works can be understood "symphonically" i.e. appreciated as absolute music, and she also dislikes recorded performances.


Again this is irrelevant nonsense.

Some of my absolute top favorite operas for listening as pure music are _Moses and Aron_, _Falstaff_, _Mathis der Maler_ and _Oedipus der Tyrann_ (among many others). These works probably wouldn't make the top 10 list of most fans and yet *I adore them to bits*.

(And I'm willing to bet that Ms. Abbate doesn't even know _Oedipus der Tyrann_)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Strauss at the premiere say something to the effect of:
> 
> _"Is that all there is? There is nothing. No development. But I am a musician and I hear nothing"_


In my opinion, Strauss was looking for the wrong thing. His Metamorphosen is just as guilty of "wanderitis." Additionally, Strauss retreated into a classical conservatism during his final phase.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I disagree about the assertion that opera can only be truly enjoyed live in the theater . Of course, this can be a wonderful way to experience the art form as long as the performance is good , but recordings are a perfectly valid way to experience opera, as well as performances broadcast over the radio etc .
On recordings, you ca n create your own idealized inner drama within your own imagination .
Its impossible to stage the Ring so as to recreate the fantasy of the story in an ideal way . The Siegfried and Brunnhilde may not be slim , young and beautiful looking ; the Alberich always looks like a normal sized or even burly guy instead of a real dwarf ; it's difficult to make a convincing ,let alone frightening dragon in Siegfried or to portray the awesome destruction at th e end of Gotterdamerung convincingly .
But in your mind, you can visualize all these aspects of the story to your heart's content when listening to recordings or radio broadcasts .
When television began , more than a few people said they missed those old radio broadcasts of stories 
with all those sound effects . They missed the experience of visualising the drama in their own minds .


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

I don't think anyone here is dismissing recorded opera as a valid form of appreciating opera, possibly except Carolyn Abbate, but she's not here, so let's not think too much about that. What we are objecting to is the notion that opera cannot be appreciated in a live setting.

And opera has always been about suspension of disbelief, no? I find it hard to imagine Pavarotti as a handsome Tyrolean lad who joins the French army to woo the fair maiden Joan Sutherland, but I buy it anyway because the singing is great. Opera has for the majority of its life been an audio-visual art form, combining the arts of music, acting and scenery. It's not like the castrati of the 17th and 18th centuries were especially pleasing to look at, and yet it was tolerated because they were incredible singers.

(And please, let's not start an argument over how much better singers were in the 50's. They get boring so incredibly quickly. And besides, no one sang Lucia like Nellie Melba)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The opera lover attends live performances, including those pocket opera type productions with a pared down arrangement with a handful of instruments.

The obsessive gets so far into it I cannot imagine that being called any form of love other than obsessive stalker variety, where there is no longer any direct connection with the love object, but a frenetic pre-occupation with it, all done in isolation, not in direct contact with...

I pity people like Ms. Abbate, living completely in her head, without a body, as it were, all the while dwelling in a place where emphasizing / valuing intellectual meaning far outweighs any actual visceral experience.

Passion experienced, discomfort with passion... terrified at having lost control and 'giving oneself up' to something or someone: 
Ergo, analyze the thing to death for the rest of your life. Sad.

*"... and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint. You suddenly wonder why anyone in the world did them." ~ Frank O'hara; Having a coke with you*


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Xavier said:


> Please don't get me started on opera scholars and musicologists. Do you really think I give a rat's *** what Carolyn Abbate feels about my method of appreciation or her thoughts about recordings?
> 
> Even the most prominent and accomplished music scholars must get this *fundamental truth* through their heads:
> 
> ...


Hmmm... I both "liked" yours and brian's comments here in posts 2 and 3 because I found them intriguing, although I agree more with your arguments and quote here.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

PetrB said:


> The opera lover attends live performances, including those pocket opera type productions with a pared down arrangement with a handful of instruments.
> 
> The obsessive gets so far into it I cannot imagine that being called any form of love other than obsessive stalker variety, where there is no longer any direct connection with the love object, but a frenetic pre-occupation with it, all done in isolation, not in direct contact with...
> 
> ...


And what is so mutually exclusive to the visceral experience about Ms. Abbate's approach? You really think you enjoy the music more, as if she is one to be pitied? That seems presumptuous.

But of course, isn't this the way it is in the world of music, that the people who enjoy music have to have their own particular approach, and often need to invalidate other approaches, reading more into them than is necessary. They think: "well that person is neglecting this and this, so he/she must not be having the authentic experience that I have". Well I ask these people: What is authenticity?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Xavier said:


> Please don't get me started on opera scholars and musicologists. Do you really think I give a rat's *** what Carolyn Abbate feels about my method of appreciation or her thoughts about recordings?


Please don't get me started on opera scholars and New York Time columnists Do you really think I give a rat's *** what Bernard Holland feels about my method of appreciation or her thoughts about the appreciation of music?



Xavier said:


> With all due respect to Carolyn Abbate she is just *one* person with *one* sensibility. The above highlighted truths from Bernard Holland's still apply. And the fact that she dislikes recordings means diddly-squat to me.
> 
> Look I defer to experts in all fields but when it comes to music and opera you should not place another person's aesthetic judgments, quirks or preferences above your own.


Ah, but Xavier, you are _more than one_ person! You _outnumber_ us all. :lol::tiphat::cheers:

You outnumber us all.



Xavier said:


> Again this is irrelevant nonsense.
> 
> Some of my absolute top favorite operas for listening as pure music are _Moses and Aron_, _Falstaff_, _Mathis der Maler_ and _Oedipus der Tyrann_ (among many others). These works probably wouldn't make the top 10 list of most fans and yet *I adore them to bits*.
> .
> (And I'm willing to bet that Ms. Abbate doesn't even know _Oedipus der Tyrann_)


The score and the performance must always be evaluated separately. I don't care if the performance is of the highest quality, there is still something trivial about all of the loud brass and the wistful flutes and bassoons next to being delighted, stirred, overwhelmed or profoundly moved by reading a score...The simpler task of record listening just cannot be compared to the process of meticulous reading and playing the score in your head.Isn't it the instinctive response of most sensitive people 99.9 percent of the time to turn inward and let it all transpire in their own head and imagination? Johannes Brahms said it best: _"If I wish to enjoy [Don Giovanni] I lie down on the sofa and read the score."_


Those who recognize that one cannot truly know and love an opera unless one has devoted the many hours to visually unpick, assimilate and internalize all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score. This cannot be done from listening because the scores of the best operas are so rich and dense and complex that no performance can hope to capture even a majority of what is in the score; ask any Wagner conductor as to whether they can play "all the notes", and they will tell you. Read Birgit Nilsson's memoirs, she sums it up nicely:

"Ten years later, after a premiere of Gotterdammerung with Karajan in Vienna, I met the famous concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskosky. He said it really _was_ impossible to play all the notes that Wagner had set down." 

Those poor audience members; they think they're appreciating Wagner when in fact they're merely being enchanted by the virtuoso orchestral playing of the Vienna Philharmonic. Those poor, deluded Debussy fans genuflecting before a vinyl copy of Karajan's recording of Pelleas et Melisande; they think they're appreciating Debussy when in fact they're merely being entertained by the luscious strings and luxurious woodwinds of the Berlin Philharmonic and the famous Karajan sound, box of chocolates and caramel. It reminds me of the bel canto opera fans who think they adore Bellini to bits when in fact they really adore the shiny stage costumes and Maria Callas' virtuoso voice.



Aksel said:


> I wonder: Shouldn't this examination of the score happen independently of any recording? Certainly, the conductor's, the singer's and the whole orchestra's interpretation of the score in question must be a further distraction, like a staging and all that dramatic business that (supposedly) isn't a part of the artform of opera?


You're absolutely _right,_ *Oxel. * I'm going to throw out all of my recordings, right this instance,  and only read the scores from now on. Then I will finally be able to experience_ the absolutely purest and deepest appreciation_ of the great composers of the past!

_*Boulez was right*_, we really should burn down the opera houses! And disband the orchestras too; it will force everyone to appreciate the music at a deeper, purer level.

Since I can't burn down the opera houses and disband the orchestras I will continue my crusade for the deepest appreciation of music by blogging and posting my views tourettically on various internet forums.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> _*Boulez was right*_, we really should burn down the opera houses!


Doing. right. now. _(after I *merge* with the score of Parsifal.)_


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

tyroneslothrop said:


> Doing. right. now. _(after I *merge* with the score of Parsifal.)_


_Was stürbe dem Tod,
als was uns stört,
was Eric wehrt,
Melisande immer zu lieben,
ewig ihr nur zu leben?

Doch dieses Wörtlein: und, 
wär' es zerstört,
wie anders als
mit Xavier eignem Leben
wär' Pelleas der Tod gegeben

So starben wir,
um ungetrennt,
ewig einig
ohne End',
ohn' Erwachen,
ohn' Erbangen,
namenlos
in Lieb' umfangen,
ganz uns selbst gegeben,
der Liebe nur zu leben!

So stürben wir,
um ungetrennt, -
ewig einig
ohne End', -
ohn' Erwachen, -
ohn' Erbangen, -
namenlos
in Lieb' umfangen,
ganz uns selbst gegeben,
der Liebe nur zu leben!

Muss ich wachen?

Nie erwachen!

Soll der brianwalker
noch Eric wecken?

Lass den brianwalker
dem Tode weichen!
_

*Rette dich, Eric!*

_Der öde brianwalker
zum letztenmal!

brianwalkergespenster!
Morgenträume!
täuschend und wüst!
Entschwebt! Entweicht!
_

_O brianwalker, das
kann ich dir nicht sagen;
und was du frägst,
das kannst du nie erfahren._


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> _Was stürbe dem Tod,
> als was uns stört,
> was Eric wehrt,
> Melisande immer zu lieben,
> ...


Ha! :lol:


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

brianwalker wrote:



> Johannes Brahms said it best: "If I wish to enjoy [Don Giovanni] I lie down on the sofa and read the score."
> 
> Those who recognize that one cannot truly know and love an opera unless one has devoted the many hours to visually unpick, assimilate and internalize all of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, coloristic and structural details of the score. This cannot be done from listening because the scores of the best operas are so rich and dense and complex that no performance can hope to capture even a majority of what is in the score; ask any Wagner conductor as to whether they can play "all the notes", and they will tell you.


I utterly disagree with this.

Knowledge of music theory or the 'instruction book' is NOT the basis for aesthetic experience. What it describes is, but theory is the description, not the object. We still have the object without the technical data. We still have ears and we are still fully equipped to hear it.

I don't think it deepens understanding of what the music expresses on its own terms which is GREATER than its own formal content.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Xavier wrote:



Xavier said:


> Hello all,
> 
> I have finally decided to start my own blog. My first entry is on a topic I feel very strongly about.
> 
> http://genevievecastleroom.blogspot.com/


I certainly do sympathise with many of yours gripes/ideas/critiques. I have often expressed views similar to those in your blog entry so I have a real affinity for some of your opinions. The problem, as I see it, is that you are unwilling to acknowledge the validity of the countervailing views. The truth is that many opera fans are actually drawn to the "live theatre" aspect of the art form first and foremost. I don't share that predilection, but I have come to accept it.

For these fans, the musical component of opera may or may not be of great importance, but they are certainly not ever going to be completely satisfied by the type of "contemplative, deep listening" that you describe as the ideal way of experiencing the art form.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

brianwalker wrote:



brianwalker said:


> You seem to be afraid that if you give the written word any leeway in its power to as a key to the interpretation of music, music must then become the handmaiden of the word and thus merely representational, functional, semaphoric, symbolic, etc, appropriated for political purposes and abused as cryptograms, pulverizing the mystery and beauty of the music. No such extremism is necessary.


This is the crux of the discussion and I disagree that 'fear' of the written word has anything to do with it.

Here's an analogy: our aesthetic experience of the sound of a violin depends on its tone, which in turn depends on the wood it is made of. So we can't separate "wood" from our enjoyment, they are fundamentally connected. But it does not follow that we must know what kind of wood this is to appreciate the tone because knowledge of this information is separate from the fact of it being true. It matters that the violin is made from quality material, and it matters that our ears can appreciate the result of this. Whether we know what the material is, is irrelevant. Another analogy: we might decide that to appreciate the tone of a flute on a deeper level if we put the sound through a spectrum analyser so we know what overtones it is made up of. This is all theory which is directly connected to what we are hearing. But does it deepen our aesthetic appreciation, or make us more open to musical expression? Of course not! It gives us something extra, outside of these things. Music theory is technical data about what we are hearing, as is the specifications of our hi-fi. It is connected to, but nevertheless exists outside of, the aesthetic experience. If a composer chooses to communicate something via the understanding of this data, they too are communicating outside of musical aesthetics, and, as I have pointed out, this information exists in the score even if the corresponding sounds do not. All of which is fair enough, we can "add" to music this way, just as we might add words to the experience. But I think there has to be a separation made between *musical expression*, which only occurs through listening, and an *extra musical information* which is nonetheless directly connected to the music, but accessible independently of it.

You are mistaken in your belief that an understanding of the latter amounts to a _deepening_ of the former. You are actually widening your experience outside of musical expression, as you would do if you went to see an opera, which also includes visual and verbal elements. Take away theory, and your ears can still be fully alert to what it references.

To sum up: the meaning of music is not defined by music theory. The score and the theoretical stuff are simply a set of boundaries. These boundaries can be broken to very powerful effect. If meaning _was_ defined by them, the effect would be the equivalent of using nonsensical words. It would be pointless gibberish.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Nourie, what's your favorite opera?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

brianwalker wrote:



brianwalker said:


> Nourie, what's your favorite opera?


How are my tastes in opera pertinent to this discussion?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Nourie said:


> brianwalker wrote:
> 
> How are my tastes in opera pertinent to this discussion?


It's not; I just find you so fascinating.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Nourie said:


> brianwalker wrote:
> 
> This is the crux of the discussion and I disagree that 'fear' of the written word has anything to do with it.
> 
> ...


While I don't share your point of view, I only have this to say: BRAVO! Well said!


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

Nourie said:


> But I think there has to be a separation made between *musical expression*, which only occurs through listening, and an *extra musical information* which is nonetheless directly connected to the music, but accessible independently of it.
> 
> You are mistaken in your belief that an understanding of the latter amounts to a _deepening_ of the former. You are actually widening your experience outside of musical expression, as you would do if you went to see an opera, which also includes visual and verbal elements. Take away theory, and your ears can still be fully alert to what it references.


I see myself as an example of why your argument ultimately fails (although it is quite cogently stated! ). I am originally from a culture whose native music most Western people would not appreciate on first listening. But why not? Isn't aesthetics universal in the human experience? I claim it is not. Aesthetics is rooted in a broader set of elements which fall into the "extra musical information" which you have cited.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Brian,



brianwalker said:


> I'm curious, Xavier, which opera houses have you attended in your life? The acoustics can be very different from place to place.


The Hungarian State Opera, The Comique (Paris) and the Metropolitan Opera

They're fine but I refuse to apologize for enjoying/preferring opera at a moderately high volume (most of the time) via the stereo system in my home and car.


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