# Wagner Reconsidered



## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

I have a friend that never listens to classical music. I told him I had recently been listening to Wagner's Opera, Tristan and Isolde (Herbert Von Karajan). He said he would like to try it. (Bless his little heart he made it all the way through.) Needless to say it was not his cup of tea. I asked him to write his thoughts:

_An interesting piece of music that has many different movements that seem unrelated. I actually enjoyed the grand finale quite a bit it was very classical.

I don't think German language makes the best opera and even though I couldn't understand what they were saying I'm sure that it all fits together somehow, but I believe that a piece of music should have more of a fluid transition from one movement to the next, and if you're going to have anything contrasting it should be very dramatic in its contrast, not something like a half contrast - something more like its all happy and then its all sad, strong contrast. _


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

How could you torture a friend like that. It wasn't at the opera even you were just listening? This really makes me think something is skewed like he has an ulterior motive or owes you one or feels bad about breaking something of yours that he hasn't yet told you about, maybe look around.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

I listen to the opera all the time. I have little interest in going to the opera, my only interest is in the music.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Klassic said:


> I couldn't understand what they were saying


Opera is the art of musical drama. Without knowing what they're saying you have no idea if the music is doing a good job at dramatizing. The complaint that T&I, of all things, doesn't have "fluid transitions" is funny since Wagner was probably THE key composer for breaking up the recitative/aria contrast and creating a whole work.

All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

*"All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end."*

Wagner would certainly not be my first recommendation.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Klassic said:


> *"All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end."*
> 
> Wagner would certainly not be my first recommendation.


I agree, Wagner is more for opera lovers that like musical dramas from Romanticism.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I started with *watching* The Ring Cycle. It reminds me a lot of Tolkien's masterpiece of course, or vice versa. That was my gateway if indeed I have fully entered into it at all. Tristan is still too much for me. Kudos to your friend for giving it serious thought.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end.


You just have to be in the right mindset, and be totally receptive to letting the music and the drama overwhelm you.

Perhaps I'm particularly sympathetic to his art, or just connect with it in a very innate way, but before I was introduced to Wagner I didn't have a whole lot of interest in classical music. But I became intrigued about what I read and heard of Wagner, and the controversy he inspired. So I sat down with Tristan und Isolde, and a libretto, and I was entranced. It was truly a life changing experience.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end.


I once 'pushed' a friend into the really deep end by taking him to _Gotterdammerung_ as his first opera. The result...he insisted on going to Seattle to attend a complete, week-long Ring Cycle! You never can tell!!


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Klassic said:


> *"All that said, starting a friend with Wagner is like teaching someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end."*
> 
> Wagner would certainly not be my first recommendation.


I would say that is from person to person.
The problem that make it difficult for people to start with Wagner are that the operas are long and they often have the most horrible regie productions.
But I think The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin and the operas in the Ring are as good to start with as the most popular operas by Verdi and Puccini. 
Tristan und Isolde have very beautiful music but it have the problem that it have many slow passages and it is a long opera but it works if one give it some chances.

For Wagner operas to start with I rank it like this:

1. Dutchman, Lohengrin and The Ring
2. Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger
3. Tannhäuser and Parsifal


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I came to opera and to classical music in general, precisely through Wagner, but Tristan und Isolde was the last one of his operas I heard. All that sheer emotion can be quite overwhelming for a beginner. If I were you, I would offer your friend to watch the Ring first. Not that there is no emotion to the Ring - there is more than enough of it, it's just that there is more action as well.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

For all those who responded to my "Wagner/Deep End" comment, 

I definitely wouldn't say it's impossible to come to classical music through Wagner, far from it; but neither is it impossible to teach someone to swim by pushing them in the deep end. It's just generally an all-or-nothing, sink-or-swim proposition. Wagner is polarizing, provoking as much obsessive-awe as any composer, and equally as much hatred as any composer. I think a better method would be to start with composers that many love, most at least enjoy, and very few hate, like any of the Big 3. I also think opera, in general, is a divisive genre which many classical lovers dislike, or like much less than other music, while many love it more than any genre, if not exclusively. Opera is the only classical genre that is, technically, a different (hybrid) medium, where, in the best works, the literary drama influences the mode of composition, so that the drama is enhanced by the music. While the music can be enjoyable on its own, it's rarely as coherent as in music-only composition precisely because it's organized around the drama, and starting someone with opera who doesn't understand this principle is likely elicit statements like the "Wagner lacks fluidity," which makes zero sense to someone who understands the genre.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

From what you say, your friend didn't have the advantage of a libretto to follow what was going on: an obvious shortcoming that will detract from the opera experience as envisaged by Wagner (and indeed opera composers generally).


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

manyene said:


> From what you say, your friend didn't have the advantage of a libretto to follow what was going on: an obvious shortcoming that will detract from the opera experience as envisaged by Wagner (and indeed opera composers generally).


German is not that difficult to understand.
And to find a translation of a libretto of a Wagner opera is not that difficult.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Sloe said:


> *German is not that difficult to understand.*
> And to find a translation of a libretto of a Wagner opera is not that difficult.


It is when you can't speak it! :lol:


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I had a friend who actually asked me to make him a classical music primer. I went through the late baroque to the mid-20th century and I pretty much only included examples that I liked but I also thought would be approachable for him. I touched on the subjects that I felt compelled to explain (fugue, sonata-allegro), but I avoided ones that I felt I had too little knowledge of (Beethoven - there are literally thousands upon thousands of other people who would be better Beethoven guides than me, so I'll leave it to them).

The Wagner I included was the Act 3 Prelude of Lohengrin and the Transformation music from act one of Parsifal. I don't think he liked either of them that much, but I felt they had a good combination of approachability as well as transmitting some of Wagner's essence.

One thing that I feel obliged to voice when we talk about Tristan und Isolde is that, I wish music would be considered without its historical significance overwhelming the experience or discussion. How is anyone supposed to experience the music on its own terms after being told that its importance is as a historical milestone in Western music history? It also doesn't help that, in my belief, when music becomes 'standard' it loses some of its appeal. For me it takes away from Wagner's music for it to be given attention on the basis of it being a marking point in some linear idea of musical progress.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Fugue Meister said:


> How could you torture a friend like that. It wasn't at the opera even you were just listening? This really makes me think something is skewed like he has an ulterior motive or owes you one or feels bad about breaking something of yours that he hasn't yet told you about, maybe look around.


Until recently I might have agreed. But a few weeks back I had a visitor from another country staying with me who had never attended or listened to an opera in her life. On the first or second evening of her visit she asked what I had on DVD. As a joke I said "I have Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen" (Boulez, Bayreuther Festspiele). To my surprise and, eventually, chagrin, she said "That sounds good, put it on." I thought she would get bored and give up half way through Das Rheingold. Wrong! She was enthralled and, with no prompting from me (and even a few pleas for mercy  ), demanded each of the successive installments until we finished the cycle less than 48 hours later. Of course, there were subtitles and the plot and drama was a key factor in her continued interest.


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