# Die Meistersinger - the greatest opera?



## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

A great performance of Tristan und Isolde will be one of the most shattering experience anyone could have.
A great performance of Meistersinger will be one of the most life affirming experiences anyone could have.
And he wrote them back to back.
Genius.

There have been many discussions of these two works over the years but I'm very keen to hear some new (and not so new) points of view.

And here are my two favourite recordings (amongst others).


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I love the Flagstad Furtwangler Tristan where Flagstad is still absolutely amazing. but also love it with Melchior and Flagstad by Reiner a lot.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

I like the Reiner Tristan with Flagstad and Melchior along with the Kubelik Meistersinger. There are plenty of great performances of both. I wouldn't rank the Karajan meistersinger as highly as some others but the Bohm Tristan is very good.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I have both and I wouldn’t be without either of them, though they may not be my absolute first choices of either opera.


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## LeoPiano (Nov 1, 2020)

I love both of these works and the recordings you chose. I think you can’t really compare the operas since they’re so different in the emotions they convey. However if I had to choose, I would give the nod to Tristan. Overall I prefer the intensity and harmonic dissonances of Tristan to the joy in Meistersinger. 

On top of recordings you listed, I wouldn’t want to be without these:


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## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)




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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

It is tremendously difficult to choose between those two operas, they are very different for atmospheres created, emotions evoked and philosophical approach (they are both inspired by Schopenhauer, but with a different point of view), but both _Tristan und Isolde _and_ Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _are absolutely masterpieces; _Tristan_ is so intense, overwhelming with its suggestive power and poignant, endless passions, so tense to the absolute but unrealizable, to the point to blow one away, while _Die Meistersinger _is, behind the lively, majestic colourful melodies, very profound and thoughtful about the importance of music as the greatest of arts, also seen as a mean to escape from the sufference of the world. 
For _Tristan und Isolde_, Karajan/BP is outstanding, but Furtwängler/Philharmonia is unparalleled; instead Karajan/Staatskapelle Dresden is the best performance ever recorded for Die _Meistersinger von Nürnberg_, in my opinion.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The longer I live, the more difficulty I have picking favorites among works and recordings. I suppose I still regard _Tristan und Isolde_ as opera's greatest phenomenon - nothing like it before or since, and potentially (in the rare great performance) the most intense and exhausting musical experience imaginable - but no performance is ever quite equal to it, and all recordings have conspicuous faults. With _Tristan_, more than with any other opera, we need to know at least a few different performances to get even an adequate idea of its potential and of the superhuman demands it makes on the mere humans who dare to tackle it. We can easily understand, listening to the consistent failures of singers and conductors, why the projected first performance in Vienna was canceled after 70 rehearsals. I'd say a great many performances since then which haven't been canceled should have been, but the lure of Wagner's essay on the great illusion of romantic love keeps us coming back to try and try again.


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## REP (Dec 8, 2011)

I've never heard a _Meistersinger_ I didn't like. Conversely, I've never heard a _Tristan _that I was entirely satisfied with_._ One seems to be hard to get wrong, while the other seems to be hard to do well. 

I find _Parsifal_ belongs in the latter camp as well. Some conductors seem to think that slower tempi equate to more spirituality ("the slower the better!"), but that's not how it works at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

REP said:


> I've never heard a _Meistersinger_ I didn't like. Conversely, I've never heard a _Tristan _that I was entirely satisfied with_._ One seems to be hard to get wrong, while the other seems to be hard to do well.
> 
> I find _Parsifal_ belongs in the latter camp as well. Some conductors seem to think that slower tempi equate to more spirituality ("the slower the better!"), but that's not how it works at all.


I wish I could say the same about _Meistersinger,_ but knowing well the excerpts recorded by Schorr, Melchior and Schumann in the '20s and '30s - especially their incomparable quintet - I'm harder to please. I agree, though, that a less than stellar _Meistersinger_ can still be enjoyable - especially when seen as well as heard - while a routine _Tristan_ is just depressing and something I'd rather avoid.

_Parsifal_ is interesting in that it can work with quite a range of tempo choices. Wagner's first interpreter, Hermann Levi, who presumably knew what the composer wanted, played the opera in what we'd consider a medium range of tempi (almost identical overall to Knappertsbusch's 1962 recording), but when Wagner took the baton for the final scene he was notably slower. We have timings for two of Wagner's own performances of the act 1 prelude in concert, and they differ by almost two minutes. It isn't how fast you play it, but how well you fill the time!


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Meistersinger seems (certainly among the later ones) the Wagner musical drama closest to "traditional" opera (despite some artifical/theoretic elements).
Tristan seems the first and most extreme case where Wagner just did something unique that is almost a new art form.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Kreisler jr said:


> Meistersinger seems (certainly among the later ones) the Wagner musical drama closest to "traditional" opera (despite some artifical/theoretic elements).
> Tristan seems the first and most extreme case where Wagner just did something unique that is almost a new art form.


I'm impressed by the fact that these extremes among his mature operas came one right after the other. They're musical and philosophical opposites, with Hans Sachs deliberately rejecting, as the orchestra quotes _Tristan_, the world-obliterating passion of T & I in favor of respect for custom and the need for reconciliation between the individual and society. The return to more traditional operatic forms expresses this philosophical turn.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tristan you can enjoy without understanding the words. Meistersinger you really need the words. I saw the latter as a 15 year old at Bayreuth and didn't understand enough to get much out of it. I was lucky enough to see it having prepared beforehand live with subtitles at Seattle Opera and I loved it. I think it has the best overture of any opera. I love Cameron Carpenter playing it on the pipe organ. It is like a diamond with countless facets moving around each other. Tristan has some of the most haunting melodies in any opera. Even Brangane, a secondary character, has some glorious melodies! To me Tristan has music you can listen to over and over and over and not get tired of it. Great artists such as Nilsson and Flagstad can create such different takes on Isolde and both can be right. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Wagner the only major composer to compose both the words and the music??????


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## REP (Dec 8, 2011)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Wagner the only major composer to compose both the words and the music??????


Depends on your definition of "major." Leoncavallo wrote his own libretti, for example, but I don't think most people would consider him a major composer, even if _Pagliacci_ is a smash hit. A few other major composers "wrote" their own libretti by adapting existing stage-works (Debussy for _Pelleas_, Strauss for _Salome_, etc.), but that's not quite the same thing, IMO.

Edit: Strauss also wrote his own libretto for _Intermezzo_, by the way, and he deserves full credit for that one. It's a completely original story inspired by a domestic spat between him and his wife.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Wagner the only major composer to compose both the words and the music??????


Boito wrote the librettos for his own operas. Not quite so major but Tippett also did his own.


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Tristan you can enjoy without understanding the words. Meistersinger you really need the words. I saw the latter as a 15 year old at Bayreuth and didn't understand enough to get much out of it. I was lucky enough to see it having prepared beforehand live with subtitles at Seattle Opera and I loved it. I think it has the best overture of any opera. I love Cameron Carpenter playing it on the pipe organ. It is like a diamond with countless facets moving around each other. Tristan has some of the most haunting melodies in any opera. Even Brangane, a secondary character, has some glorious melodies! To me Tristan has music you can listen to over and over and over and not get tired of it. Great artists such as Nilsson and Flagstad can create such different takes on Isolde and both can be right. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Wagner the only major composer to compose both the words and the music??????


It is certainly possible to enjoy _Tristan_ without understanding the words, but I think there is a much greater enjoyment by knowing the text (at least in my personal opinion), especially in the particular case of Wagner's operas, based on the concept that music and word have to be merged together; in _Tristan_, it is true that the music is fundamental to unfold what is behind the words and the silences, but the text has no secondary importance because of its philosophical meanings and its role in the musikdrama; besides, _Tristan_'s libretto is a superb work of poetry. But of course, there's not a single way to enjoy an opera. 

Schönberg also wrote his own libretto for _Moses und Aron_.


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## REP (Dec 8, 2011)

Becca said:


> Boito wrote the librettos for his own operas. Not quite so major but Tippett also did his own.


I thought about mentioning Boito, but in my estimation he was not a great composer who wrote his own libretti -- he was a great librettist who wrote his own music.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Wagner the only major composer to compose both the words and the music??????


I believe Wagner was himself inspired by Berlioz (although I could be wrong on this). Berlioz started his career working with librettists but ended it writing his own libretti.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

I've felt that I would do better without the words for Tristan. Some of the orchestral assemblages of the great moments, the most recent for me posted by Woodduck, are rapturously beautiful. But thats still not the same thing. As one who has tried but remains, as yet, outside of the enchanted circle of this opera it would be foolish for me to criticize it more than I occasionally have. But, for me, the words are a problem.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

According to this guy (Alkis Karmpaliotis Ranking Richard Wagner's Operas), Tristan und Isolde is Wagner's best and Die Meistersinger is his worst (of his "canonic 10")


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## Bernamej (Feb 24, 2014)

Come on bros ! This was too obvious that Tristan would win !


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> with Hans Sachs deliberately rejecting, as the orchestra quotes _Tristan_, the world-obliterating passion of T & I in favor of respect for custom and the need for reconciliation between the individual and society.


I love Meistersinger but can't know it as well as you.....doesn't Sachs reject it for more obviously spontaneous and selfish reasons....his own happiness?


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

T&I Is one of the very few works of art that not only had a profound, revolutionary impact on its medium that persisted over a century after its debut, but that STILL has the power to affect individual listeners on a profound level both emotionally and intellectually. Even for someone like myself who considers myself a connoisseur of all arts nearly equally (literature, film, music, even video games), T&I remains the second (and a close second) most powerful experience I ever had with art, and nothing really is close for third. 

Meistersinger is a work that took me longer to get, and while I now both appreciate it thematically (it's basically Wagner's Ars Poetica) and immensely enjoy it musically, I do think it's the most unnecessarily long of Wagner's operas, especially for what is fundamentally a comedy; and that the plot isn't quite worthy of the luxurious music that Wagner lavishes on it. It also lacks the palpable tone/atmosphere of Wagner's best, though perhaps that's simply due to comedy aspect and its general focus on brighter tones and memorable melodies. 

So T&I gets my easy vote, but I do find myself liking Meistersinger more the older I get and the more I hear it. It's still a masterpiece whatever its flaws, and if nothing else it's awesome to hear Wagner's genius stretching out into new territory.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> T&I Is one of the very few works of art that not only had a profound, revolutionary impact on its medium that persisted over a century after its debut, but that STILL has the power to affect individual listeners on a profound level both emotionally and intellectually. Even for someone like myself who considers myself a connoisseur of all arts nearly equally (literature, film, music, even video games), T&I remains the second (and a close second) most powerful experience I ever had with art, and nothing really is close for third.


I noticed that you have Tristan und Isolde in the 1st place in your ranking of Top 69 Operas


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ScottK said:


> I love Meistersinger but can't know it as well as you.....doesn't Sachs reject it for more obviously spontaneous and selfish reasons....his own happiness?


Sachs is concerned with everyone's happiness, and recognizes that he has to guide, and even frustrate, the impulses of Walther and Eva. He rebuffs Eva's suggestion that she might marry him, saying that he doesn't want to end up like King Mark, but neither does he want Walther and Eva to end up like Tristan and Isolde. He is neither spontaneous nor selfish.


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## ewilkros (8 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> ... saying that he doesn't want to end up like King Mark
> .


--to a musical quotation from Wagner's _Tristan_. Fun fact: the historical Sachs wrote a play on Tristan und Isolde. This is one of countless Easter eggs hidden away in_ Meistersinger_--the more you look, the more you find. There's always something new. One reason why I really love _Meistersinger_.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ewilkros said:


> --to a musical quotation from Wagner's _Tristan_. Fun fact: the historical Sachs wrote a play on Tristan und Isolde. This is one of countless Easter eggs hidden away in_ Meistersinger_--the more you look, the more you find. There's always something new. One reason why I really love _Meistersinger_.


_Meistersinger_'s libretto (and the music too, for that matter) is incredibly rich in references - historical, Biblical, artistic, etc. I'm sure I've never grasped half of what's in it. The book is a tour de force of erudition, just as the score is. I can understand those for whom it's his greatest opera, though for me it's supassed by the frighteningly intense flood of inspiration that is _Tristan_ and the psychological profundity and exquisite craftsmanship of _Parsifal. _I also agree with those who think_ Meistersinger _is longer than it needs to be, something I don't find true of his other operas. I can't sit for that long any more!


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

LeoPiano said:


> I love both of these works and the recordings you chose. I think you can’t really compare the operas since they’re so different in the emotions they convey. However if I had to choose, I would give the nod to Tristan. Overall I prefer the intensity and harmonic dissonances of Tristan to the joy in Meistersinger.
> 
> On top of recordings you listed, I wouldn’t want to be without these:
> View attachment 181817
> ...


They're all wonderful recordings. I could probably leave Karajan's second Tristan and Knappertsbusch's Meistersinger though. I love a stereo Meistersinger. I haven't heard Kubelik's Meistersinger. It's very difficult to get hold of.


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> According to this guy (Alkis Karmpaliotis Ranking Richard Wagner's Operas), Tristan und Isolde is Wagner's best and Die Meistersinger is his worst (of his "canonic 10")


Obviously I disagree. Dutchman is my least favourite Wagner Opera (of the 10).


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## ewilkros (8 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> _.... _I also agree with those who think_ Meistersinger _is longer than it needs to be, something I don't find true of his other operas. I can't sit for that long any more!


One of my fondest operagoing memories is of a Meistersinger in San Antonio, TX, in 1974 (Giorgio Tozzi, Heather Harper, Jean Cox, Klaus Hirte, Ara Berberian, Gary Glade, Joan Windom, Vern Shiunall, cond Victor Alessandro, SA Sym/Opera's Musical Director)--it was set up as an all-day outing, with a regular intermission after one act and a 90 min intermission after another--Act I on Friday evening, or Act II on Sunday afternoon).. The opera house was left over from the "Hemisfair" of the mid-1960's, and you could go out and stroll around the RiverWalk and grab a light meal. The extra time for that long intermission ;made the whole thing less tiring.

Another memorable thing: the SA Sym chorus was beefed up by singers from German singing societies from the surrounding area, most of them looking like they or some female relative ran up their costumes themselves. A lovely time was had by all. They did Rienzi a couple of years later and this time they included flag-twirlers from local high schools.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ewilkros said:


> One of my fondest operagoing memories is of a Meistersinger in San Antonio, TX, in 1974 (Giorgio Tozzi, Heather Harper, Jean Cox, Klaus Hirte, Ara Berberian, Gary Glade, Joan Windom, Vern Shiunall, cond Victor Alessandro, SA Sym/Opera's Musical Director)--it was set up as an all-day outing, with a regular intermission after one act and a 90 min intermission after anotherAct I on Friday evening, or Act II on Sunday afternoon).. The opera house was left over from the "Hemisfair" of the mid-1960's, and you could go out and stroll around the RiverWalk and grab a light meal. The extra time for that long intermission ;made the whole thing less tiring.
> 
> Another memorable thing: the SA Sym chorus was beefed up by singers from German singing societies from the surrounding area, most of them looking like they or some female relative ran up their costumes themselves. A lovely time was had by all. They did Rienzi a couple of years later and this time the included flag-twirlers from local high schools.


Sounds like a lovely way to experience the work. Some fine singers there too.


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## sqorda (Aug 9, 2013)

Today I would probably say that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is extremely interesting. In many ways. And, of course, insanely impressive (everything by Wagner is insanely impressive, at least from The Flying Dutchman and onwards).

But there’s no way around Tristan. No matter how you feel about its composer. No matter how you feel about the piece itself. It’s just there. And you have to deal with it.

Now how many works of art can you say that about?


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> Sachs is concerned with everyone's happiness, and recognizes that he has to guide, and even frustrate, the impulses of Walkther and Eva. He rebuffs Eva's suggestion that she might marry him, saying that he doesn't want to end up like King Mark, but neither does he want Walther and Eva to end up like Tristan and Isolde. He is neither spontaneous nor selfish.


I used selfish knowing what I meant, but incorrectly! Selfish in the sense of personal wisdom, looking out for his own well-being. He doesn't simply want to avoid the fate of King Mark.......he doesn't want to suffer the pains of investing in his fondness for Eva just to have her inevitably fall in love with someone her own age. 

Some degree of spontaneity is almost required for a character onstage to appeal to us as a living breathing human being. Passion, or the feeling of the germ of passion, is spontaneous.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ScottK said:


> I used selfish knowing what I meant, but incorrectly! Selfish in the sense of personal wisdom, looking out for his own well-being. He doesn't simply want to avoid the fate of King Mark.......he doesn't want to suffer the pains of investing in his fondness for Eva just to have her inevitably fall in love with someone her own age.
> 
> Some degree of spontaneity is almost required for a character onstage to appeal to us as a living breathing human being. Passion, or the feeling of the germ of passion, is spontaneous.


Not in a hair-splitting mood, I'll just say that Sachs is by nature more deliberate than spontaneous.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

sqorda said:


> Today I would probably say that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is extremely interesting. In many ways. And, of course, insanely impressive (everything by Wagner is insanely impressive, at least from The Flying Dutchman and onwards).
> 
> But there’s no way around Tristan. No matter how you feel about its composer. No matter how you feel about the piece itself. It’s just there. And you have to deal with it.
> 
> ...


It might not be too much to say that _Tristan _is the most impactful single work of art ever created. For performers, it's probably the highest mountain to climb, the Everest of operas. At least two conductors - Rodzinski and I forget who else - actually died climbing it, and Wagner himself seems to have fantasized that it killed his first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> It might not be too much to say that _Tristan _is the most impactful single work of art ever created. For performers, it's probably the highest mountain to climb, the Everest of operas. At least two conductors - Rodzinski and I forget who else - actually died climbing it,


Keilberth and Mottl [edit: he collapsed but survived, was hospitalized and died 2 weeks later, I think he should count as "Tristan conducting victim"] and maybe another one because I am not sure I ever knew about Rodzinsky.


> and Wagner himself seems to have fantasized that it killed his first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld.


He died pretty soon after singing it and while fairly young, in any case.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Kreisler jr said:


> Keilberth and Mottl [edit: he collapsed but survived, was hospitalized and died 2 weeks later, I think he should count as "Tristan conducting victim"] and maybe another one because I am not sure I ever knew about Rodzinsky.
> 
> He died pretty soon after singing it and while fairly young, in any case.


I've read that he had a rheumatic condition. I suspect singing Tristan didn't help.


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## LeoPiano (Nov 1, 2020)

damianjb1 said:


> They're all wonderful recordings. I could probably leave Karajan's second Tristan and Knappertsbusch's Meistersinger though. I love a stereo Meistersinger. I haven't heard Kubelik's Meistersinger. It's very difficult to get hold of.


Kubelik’s Meistersinger is available here on YouTube if you would like to check it out:


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

ScottK said:


> I used selfish knowing what I meant, but incorrectly! Selfish in the sense of personal wisdom, looking out for his own well-being. He doesn't simply want to avoid the fate of King Mark.......he doesn't want to suffer the pains of investing in his fondness for Eva just to have her inevitably fall in love with someone her own age.
> 
> Some degree of spontaneity is almost required for a character onstage to appeal to us as a living breathing human being. Passion, or the feeling of the germ of passion, is spontaneous.


If I may add something to the discussion above, Sachs can be also seen from a more profound point of view as he is one of the most schopenhauerian of Wagner's characters: he doesn't simply renounce to be Eva's suitor because he doesn't want to suffer for Eva loving another man, he renounces because in that way he denies the Will, which brings only sufference and makes the men self-destructive (what he sings in _Wahn! Wahn! Uberall Wahn!_), as he has a sort of sad knowledge given by the consciousness of the suffering of life, not only his own, but everyone's.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I don't think Sachs is only renouncing. One could say that he turns his Schopenhauerian insight eventually into practical action for his community. Unless one finds the speech at the end an inconsistent nationalist addition. But I think this would be shallow. 
A main point of that speech is the continuation of the Mastersinger culture and that art is as or more important for identity than political power ("Zerging in Dunst das heilge römsche Reich/uns bliebe gleich/die heilge deutsche Kunst", after all, the empire going up in smoke is precisely what happened several times in German history). One might also add that working within a community and producing art is a worthy "consolation prize" for those who had to renounce higher ambitions (or love interests).


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> It might not be too much to say that _Tristan _is the most impactful single *work of art* ever created.


Nah. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" or maybe one of the Beatles albums had far more worldwide influence. And that's just talking about music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

........................................


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

cybernaut said:


> Nah. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" or maybe one of the Beatles albums had far more worldwide influence. And that's just talking about music.


_Tristan_'s influence was incalculable in music - Bernstein (and others) have called it the pivotal work in Western music - but its impact extended far beyond music. Try to find an inexpensive copy of "The First Hundred Years of Wagner's Tristan" by Elliott Zuckerman.

Never having watched _Thriller_, I just checked it out. My first reaction is - "really?" Or maybe "uh huh..." I don't doubt it had plenty of influence on... well, some people.


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> _Tristan_'s influence was incalculable in music - Bernstein (and others) have called it the pivotal work in Western music - but its impact extended far beyond music. Try to find an inexpensive copy of "The First Hundred Years of Wagner's Tristan" by Elliott Zuckerman.
> 
> Never having watched _Thriller_, I just checked it out. My first reaction is - "really?" Or maybe "uh huh..." I don't doubt it had plenty of influence on... well, some people.


I think you overestimate how many opera fans there are in the world. And how much smaller the world population was when Wagner was alive. And how, since it was before electricity and recorded music, how few people ever heard his music. And remember, opera is European music. There's a big world out there.


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

cybernaut said:


> I think you overestimate how many opera fans there are in the world. And how much smaller the world population was when Wagner was alive. And how, since it was before electricity and recorded music, how few people ever heard his music. And remember, opera is European music. There's a big world out there.


how right you are, although with recorded music and broadcasts there is the way open for a larger audience. However Wagner’s operas remain problematic today because of the huge length of them and the difficulties of staging them. I always think it’s not a good idea to compare which is the greatest opera because everybody has different ideas and tastes differ. Of course Wagner was hugely influential but it has been argued that people who followed him (apart from some devoted disciples) were actually trying to get away from him and do something different. Been a long time since I listen to Wagner but the two recordings you suggested at the beginning are both very fine performances but the greatest Tristan on record is the 1952 Karajan.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

cybernaut said:


> I think you overestimate how many opera fans there are in the world. And how much smaller the world population was when Wagner was alive. And how, since it was before electricity and recorded music, how few people ever heard his music. And remember, opera is European music. There's a big world out there.


Well, no, I don't think opera is a majority interest by any means. But I don't think of influence or impact primarily in terms of absolute numbers. The specific nature of an influence is an important aspect of it, as is durability. Popular culture can have a huge effect on a lot of people, but there are the questions of what the nature of the effect is and how long it lasts.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

marlow said:


> I always think it’s not a good idea to compare which is *the greatest* opera because everybody has different ideas and tastes differ.
> 
> ...but *the greatest* Tristan on record is the 1952 Karajan.


But "everybody has different ideas and tastes differ."


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> I don't think Sachs is only renouncing. One could say that he turns his Schopenhauerian insight eventually into practical action for his community. Unless one finds the speech at the end an inconsistent nationalist addition. But I think this would be shallow.
> A main point of that speech is the continuation of the Mastersinger culture and that art is as or more important for identity than political power ("Zerging in Dunst das heilge römsche Reich/uns bliebe gleich/die heilge deutsche Kunst", after all, the empire going up in smoke is precisely what happened several times in German history). One might also add that working within a community and producing art is a worthy "consolation prize" for those who had to renounce higher ambitions (or love interests).


I agree; for Schopenhauer (and for Wagner) art is free and unselfish knowledge, which refers to the pure forms and to the eternal models of the things and makes understandable their true, deep immutable essence, because it's an immediate revelation of the Will to itself; and since art is able to move in a world of eternal forms, it takes men off a dependance of needs and sufferences. Art, especially music, has the aim to catch this revelation and communicate it so to make men able to rise above the Will, self-destructive madness, time and suffering. Sachs' is a conscious renunciation, that represents the awareness of the vanity of the achievements of life and the denial of the Will and its effects; indeed it is not only a consolation prize, because through art, he escapes the sufference of the world. This also can be merged with Wagner's words in _Work of art of the future_: "The most urgent and strongest need of the perfect man and artist is to communicate himself – in all the fullness of his nature – to the whole community" and " In the work of art we will be one being, we will be those who bring the need, those who know the unconscious: we will be the witnesses of nature, that is, of happy men".


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> But "everybody has different ideas and tastes differ."


quite! I should have added IMO !


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

_Tristan_ is the greatest tribute ever raised to Dionysus, while _Meistersinger_ is like an ornate frieze adorning the temple of Apollo. I don't know if one can be said to be "better" than the other. An overindulgence in one would tend to lead to a craving for the other, as a very drunk man craves sobriety, and a sober man craves drunkenness. Together there is balance. 🙏


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> _Tristan_ is the greatest tribute ever raised to Dionysus, while _Meistersinger_ is like an ornate frieze adorning the temple of Apollo. I don't know if one can be said to be "better" than the other. An overindulgence in one would tend to lead to a craving for the other, as a very drunk man craves sobriety, and a sober man craves drunkenness. *Together there is balance.* 🙏


I believe Wagner himself needed to balance the experience of composing _Tristan_ by creating a completely dissimilar, even opposing, world. Schopenhauer aside, _Meistersinger_ is simply Leviathan breaching the surface of the dark waters and taking a big gulp of fresh air.


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## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

I love _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _and love or like the rest of the Bayreuth canon.
Except _Tristan und Isolde _though. Mostly I leave it and haven't listened to one for several months, perhaps a year.
I'm not sure why. Mein deutsch isn't good enough to glean the storyline from the work but as I'm aware it's about a couple who can't be together maybe the cliched subject matter is unappealing.
Maybe it's the unresolved thing in the musicology?
Maybe I've forgotten I like it.
Odd as many polls have _Tristan und Isolde_ second to _Der Ring des Nibelungen_


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Never having watched _Thriller_, I just checked it out. My first reaction is - "really?" Or maybe "uh huh..." I don't doubt it had plenty of influence on... well, some people.


FWIW, Thriller wasn't just one song but an entire album that ended up being (by a pretty large margin) the best-selling album of all-time. It's not a personal favorite, even as far as pop music goes (I think Prince was much better than MJ), but it's had an immense influence on all pop music (worldwide; so much of Korean and Japanese pop owe their styles to MJ) over the last 40 years. That video you watched is also easily the most influential music video of all time. Though pretty cheesy by today's standards, it was the first music video to be made like a short film, and it's still popular to this day, even among kids who weren't alive with MJ made it. The dance and his jacket are pretty iconic within their own spheres of dance and fashion. 



Woodduck said:


> Well, no, I don't think opera is a majority interest by any means. But I don't think of influence or impact primarily in terms of absolute numbers. The specific nature of an influence is an important aspect of it, as is durability. Popular culture can have a huge effect on a lot of people, but there are the questions of what the nature of the effect is and how long it lasts.


One point for both sides: 

1. Wagner's influence was hardly limited to opera, so however limited the audience for opera is, Wagner's innovations extend far outside that. Most film music wouldn't exist as it is/was without Wagner, for but one example. Hell, the film often cited as the greatest of all-time (Hitchcock's Vertigo) has a score by Bernard Herrmann that's at times a Tristan & Isolde clone (a very good and affective one, mind): 





2. I think what you say is the reason it's important to consider things contextually. Wagner's impact was immense within the sphere of western classical music; something like Thriller was immense within the sphere of pop music. I don't know how to compare them against each other except by "absolute numbers" and I agree with you that's a rather silly thing to do. I think within their respective genres they've been about equally important. Wagner's influence has lasted longer, but that's to be expected given he had a century-plus head start on Mikey. I think The Beatles are actually a fairer comparison, and their influence on pop and rock music was at least as profound and far-reaching as Wagner's was on classical and is still ongoing ~60 years later.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> FWIW, Thriller wasn't just one song but an entire album that ended up being (by a pretty large margin) the best-selling album of all-time. It's not a personal favorite, even as far as pop music goes (I think Prince was much better than MJ), but it's had an immense influence on all pop music (worldwide; so much of Korean and Japanese pop owe their styles to MJ) over the last 40 years. That video you watched is also easily the most influential music video of all time. Though pretty cheesy by today's standards, it was the first music video to be made like a short film, and it's still popular to this day, even among kids who weren't alive with MJ made it. The dance and his jacket are pretty iconic within their own spheres of dance and fashion.
> 
> One point for both sides:
> 
> ...


Regarding the impact of Wagner's musical/dramatic subjects, goals, methods and techniques (exemplified in his mature works _Tristan,_ the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_), here are the names of some well-known people who have reported and exhibited that impact.

_*Music:*_ Bruckner, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Myaskovsky, Dvorak, Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Franck, Bizet, Chabrier, Massenet, Debussy, Chausson, Dukas, Sibelius, Elgar, Bantock, Holst, Strauss, Reger, Schoenberg, Berg, Korngold

_*Literature:* _ Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Proust, Flaubert, Zola, Moore, Joyce, Eliot, Woolf, Lawrence, Pound, Rilke, Sartre, Zweig, Mann, Cather, Whitman, Tolkien, Lewis, W. E. B. Dubois

_*Visual arts:*_ Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Fantin-Latour, Beardsley, Böcklin, Doré, Van Gogh, the Pre-Raphaelites, Rackham, Ryder, Kandinsky

_*Theater:*_ Adolf Appia, Alfred Roller, Wieland Wagner, Richard Wagner (the composer himself introduced to theatrical production the darkened auditorium and concealed orchestra)

_*Film and TV:*_ D. W. Griffith, Korngold, Steiner, Waxman, Herrmann, Williams, Hitchcock, Coppola, Syberberg, Spielberg, Lukas, Jackson, Disney, Bugs Bunny (  )

*Philosophy:* Nietzsche

*Psychology:* Nietzsche, Ehrenfels, Freud, Jung, Robert A. Johnson

*Anthropology and the study of myth:* Levi-Strauss, Joseph Campbell


Many, many more names could be dropped, but most of those mentioned will be familiar even outside their respective specialized fields.

I await a comparable list of distinguished cultural figures influenced by the artworks of Michael Jackson and John Lennon.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

_"In 2002, pop music producer Pete Waterman described Canon in D as "almost the godfather of pop music because we've all used that in our own ways for the past 30 years"."_
Wagner's influence on the popular culture of today vs. Pachelbel's - is only the former meaningful while the latter isn't?
A question I posed in Is classical music "the highest form of musical...: "One could ask- Upon seeing the phenomenon of hundreds of millions of people (even without the knowledge of how a canon works) going onto youtube to listen to it (something written for the sensibilities of an age 350 years of the past), -aren't you in AWE, of the power of Western classical music?"


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

marlow said:


> Of course Wagner was hugely influential but it has been argued that people who followed him (apart from some devoted disciples) were actually trying to get away from him and do something different.


Just as Wagner tried to do things differently from his "precursors". Also, why do we always associate "being influential" as something positive? What if there are Negative Influences.

Also, for instance, it could be argued that this was all because Wagner's teacher, Weinlig, was a Mozart fan and used Mozart's compositions as teaching material for Wagner, (inevitably affecting Wagner's musical thinking on the long run). Is this legitimately "Mozart's influence", or just a butterfly effect of Weinlig's Mozart fanboyism (and also the "education" Wagner had received as a child)?—


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> I await a comparable list of distinguished cultural figures influenced by the artworks of Michael Jackson and John Lennon.


To confuse artistic influence with album sales in a commercialized pop culture is not worth debating but pretty typical for this site... I wonder how many people under 30 even know any actual albums of Jackson, not mainly about his bizarre bodily transformation and dubious sexual proclivities...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> To confuse artistic influence with album sales in a commercialized pop culture is not worth debating


Whatabout "influence on commercialized pop culture"? Does it matter or not? (If not, what is this "cultural impact" we're talking about in essence?) To what extent does Wagner's influence on film, for instance, matter?



> but pretty typical for this site...


So is elitism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Whatabout "influence on commercialized pop culture"? Does it matter or not? (If not, what is this "cultural impact" we're talking about in essence?) To what extent does Wagner's influence on film, for instance, matter?


What do you mean by "matter"? Matter to whom? Presumably everything matters to something and to someone. So...?

I would say that Wagner's influence on film has "mattered" to film, and therefore it has "mattered" to those with a thoughtful interest in film. Of course you don't have to be interested thoughtfully in film - maybe you just enjoy going to the movies and eating chemical-laden popcorn - and if you aren't, Wagner's influence won't matter to you. Wagner has nonetheless "mattered" to the art form you consume mindlessly.



> So is elitism.


So is the fear of elitism. In politics that's called "populism." It thrives in ignorance, nurtures bigotry, disguises itself as democracy, and breeds demagogues. I don't know how relevant that is, but it does suggest that discrimination may not be a bad thing.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I don't think there is any such thing as "the greatest opera " , but Die Meistersinger and Tristan are certainly AMONG the greatest operas , along with the Ring and Parsifal .


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## mormonsocialist (5 mo ago)

I've seen Meistersinger once in performance, and I can say without hesitation is was the greatest night I've ever had at a live staged performance of any kind. The lift it gave me sustains me to this day.

I was perfectly placed to see it - I knew the music to a modest extent, but not so well that I could hum along with every note; and therefore it was still fresh for me and could unfold naturally. And while I was familiar with the libretto generally, I wasn't prepared for how fun, moving and exciting it would be to watch it play out on the stage. Ah, what a night!

I have never seen a live performance of Tristan, and I hope I do get to see it (a good production!) before I pass on. It would have to be an earth-shatteringly good performance to match the impact of Meistersinger.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Lotte Lehmann on Toscanini
conducting Meistersinger.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Regarding the impact of Wagner's musical/dramatic subjects, goals, methods and techniques (exemplified in his mature works _Tristan,_ the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_), here are the names of some well-known people who have reported and exhibited that impact.
> 
> ...
> 
> I await a comparable list of distinguished cultural figures influenced by the artworks of Michael Jackson and John Lennon.


My first thought reading through your list is at what point influence ends and we're just left with a kind of inspirational appreciation. As an example, I've read a good chunk of those authors and while I have no problem imagining that they loved Wagner's music and perhaps took a kind of nebulous inspiration from it, I find it very hard to see how Wagner's art influenced them in any meaningful way. Maybe Joyce and Eliot reference a line or two from a Wagner opera, and maybe Mann has his characters argue for a half-chapter over Wagner in _Buddenbrooks _(a superb novel I just recently read); but Wagner's art is so idiosyncratically relevant to music and musical drama that I can't help but be skeptical when I see authors, painters, and filmmakers on the list. At most you can say the ideas/themes of the operas are relevant in other fields, but that's true of all narrative/dramatic art, and were it not for Wagner's music I doubt anyone would care for his drama on its own. There are far better authors/books of myths, and there are more interesting philosophical dramatists. Wagner's magnificent music is wholly responsible for making all that stuff matter because he makes you feel the themes, not just notice they're there. 

I also find Nietzsche an odd mention given that Wagner and Nietzsche were at one time friendly but eventually had a falling out over what Nietzsche perceived as Wagner's... shall we say, philosophical failings? Plus, both men were really more mutually influenced by Schopenhauer than influenced by each other. Nietzsche may have used Wagner as an example in some of his writings on art, but I don't think Wagner inspired or influenced those ideas. I'd say the same for Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell. 

My second thought is that if we are going to be so broad and take into consideration even the most vaguest of inspiration then I can almost guarantee the list for Lennon/McCartney would probably be even longer. You really think it's possible to have as massive a socio-cultural impact as The Beatles had and NOT have a good number of people from that culture go on to be influenced or inspired in some way by that work? How many people that grew up listening to The Beatles in their prime, or even who found them later, went on to be artists themselves? There's an entire Wikipedia Page on the cultural impact of The Beatles. I mean, I probably rank Wagner ahead of The Beatles on my own personal tastes (it's honestly close though: I love both dearly); but I think anyone who wants to argue that Wagner had anywhere near the same cultural impact as The Beatles is fighting a losing battle. Wagner's impact may have been just as deep within his own genre of classical music, and certainly many artists and authors who loved classical music took some inspiration; but I still see that as far more niche than the much broader socio-cultural impact of The Beatles.


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## vgvalkyrie (Jun 17, 2018)

damianjb1 said:


> They're all wonderful recordings. I could probably leave Karajan's second Tristan and Knappertsbusch's Meistersinger though. I love a stereo Meistersinger. I haven't heard Kubelik's Meistersinger. It's very difficult to get hold of.


The Kubelik Meistersinger is available on Opera Depot. It's a wonderful performance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> My first thought reading through your list is *at what point influence ends and we're just left with a kind of inspirational appreciation.* As an example, I've read a good chunk of those authors and while I have no problem imagining that they loved Wagner's music and perhaps took *a kind of nebulous inspiration* from it, I find it very hard to see how Wagner's art influenced them in any meaningful way.


I think it's best to let people say for themselves what's meaningful to them, and in what way. I won't presume, for example, to debate how meaningful the psychological effect and dramatic power of Wagner's leitmotiv technique was to a writer who was inspired to create "stream of consciousness" narrative structures intended to achieve a similar artistic end. And I don't need to debate the writer's success. It's enough for me to know that an important writer was so inspired. Have you actually investigated the ways in which any of those writers were inspired/impacted/influenced by their perception of Wagner's art? You might find some of the connections more than "nebulous," although you undoubtedly have your own standard for nebulousness.



> Maybe Joyce and Eliot reference a line or two from a Wagner opera, and maybe Mann has his characters argue for a half-chapter over Wagner in _Buddenbrooks _(a superb novel I just recently read); but *Wagner's art is so idiosyncratically relevant to music and musical drama that I can't help but be skeptical when I see authors, painters, and filmmakers on the list. *


Skeptical? Skeptical that the impact of Wagner on these people doesn't meet your standard for "meaningful" impact? What standard is stringent enough for you? You can find all of these artists' relationship to Wagner and his work and ideas discussed by scholarly people who know far more than I do. You can look up what writers, painters and others all thought and said about Wagner, and assume that they said a great deal more when they were alive and working. Amateur though I am, I can guess with reasonable certainty that you haven't investigated much along this line. Honestly, neither have I, but I know enough to know that there's a lot more to know.



> At most you can say the ideas/themes of the operas are relevant in other fields, but that's true of *all* narrative/dramatic art,


At most? Really? How relevant? Which other fields? _All_ other narrative/dramatic art? In what way and to what degree? Sorry for all the questions, but there are reasons why the Western world in the late 1800s was buzzing with talk about Wagner in particular, describing unfamiliar new music as "Wagnerian" whether it was or not, forming Wagner societies to talk not only music but aesthetics, politics, religion, psychology, vegetarianism, and so forth. Wagner was such a hot topic that it seems a little bizarre to us now, since we tend to relegate him to the position of "one of the great composers."



> and were it not for Wagner's music I doubt anyone would care for his drama on its own.


Of course they wouldn't. Who has ever claimed otherwise? Wagner wasn't a playwright or novelist. There's literally no such entity as "his drama on its own." It wasn't merely the excellence of his music, but rather the creation of a new form of drama characterized fundamentally by a new kind of music, that shook the culture beyond the field of music. _Tristan, _his first "mature" work and undoubtedly his most radical, has been characterized by one scholar of drama as exemplifying, because of the originality of its musico-dramatic structure, a new dramatic genre all by itself (the "theater of passion"). It had no predecessors and no real successors (maybe Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_, which Wagner influenced profoundly both musically and through the French symbolist poets, comes closest), but it bored through the realms of music and music drama relentlessly for decades, and through the theatrical conceptions of Adolph Appia and Alfred Roller it was influential in creating for the 20th century the idea of the stage as psychological, rather than merely physical, space. Of course Wagner himself had begun that transformation in his innovative theater in Bayreuth, with its multi-prosceniumed stage a glowing dream space suspended in a blackened amphitheater, and its orchestra wafting occult secrets out of a mystic gulf inaccessible to the conscious mind - already, in 1876, the psychoanalytic model of the mind, embodied in a space that obliterated every trace of opera's old, glittering social milieu.



> There are f*ar better* authors/books of myths, and there are *more interesting* philosophical dramatists. Wagner's magnificent music is wholly responsible for making *all that stuff* matter because he makes you feel the themes, not just notice they're there.


Wagner's art is _drama through music_. The music does indeed make "all that stuff" matter, and because it's given an unprecedented kind of musical utterance, "all that stuff" ended up mattering greatly to an immense number of people in many fields of human endeavor. It's beside the point whether someone else's plays or philosophical tracts are "better."



> I also find Nietzsche an odd mention given that Wagner and Nietzsche were at one time friendly but eventually had a falling out over what Nietzsche perceived as Wagner's... shall we say, philosophical failings?


Nietzsche would not have found it odd to be mentioned as falling under Wagner's influence, to the extent of writing the work ("The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music," inspired directly by _Tristan_) that first made his name as a philosopher. He remained obsessed with Wagner and his work to the end of his days. I believe that counts as more than nebulous impact.



> Plus, both men were really more mutually influenced by Schopenhauer than influenced by each other. Nietzsche may have used Wagner as an example in some of his writings on art, but *I don't think Wagner inspired or influenced those ideas. I'd say the same for Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell.*


You'd _say, _but... Do you have any real idea what impact an acquaintance with, or awareness of, Wagner's psycho-mythical creations, or his prose writings concerning the mytho-musical genre he created, had on the sensibilities and thinking of these men, either directly or indirectly? Wagner, obsessed with myth, dreams and the unconscious, and expressing that powerfully in the substance and form of his dramas as well as his writings and letters, has been cited as a founding father of the mythical studies and psychological thought that blossomed in the late19th and early 20th centuries. The better you know Wagner's work, the more understandable this is. No one else at the time was taking foundational myths of his civilization and setting them forth in modern psychological terms, much less doing it with compelling artistic power. Indirect or second-hand influence can still be highly significant, but Jung and Ehrenfels (founding theorist of gestalt psychology) were well acquainted with Wagner, the latter even writing essays about him.



> My second thought is that if we are going to be so broad and take into consideration *even the most vaguest of inspiration*


I'm not considering "the vaguest of inspiration." I'm considering mostly people who claim to have derived something from Wagner, whose work reveals that they did, or whose work stands in a line of succession or belongs in a definable cultural movement to which Wagner's work contributed. As i said, the people I've listed are well-known examples, but they're only the tip of an iceberg whose proportions are much greater. I want also to indicate how far beyond music Wagner's impact has reached, and over what time period. It's hard for us now to appreciate the wide reach of "Wagnerism" when that was a thing, but not so hard to see its echoes in the arts down to our own time.



> then I can almost guarantee the list for Lennon/McCartney would probably be even longer.


Then let's have a list.



> You really think it's possible to have as massive a socio-cultural impact as The Beatles had and NOT have a good number of people from that culture go on to be influenced or inspired in some way by that work? How many people that grew up listening to The Beatles in their prime, or even who found them later, went on to be artists themselves?


I've never suggested that a large number of people haven't been excited by the Beatles. Even a classical guy like me appreciated them, although I never did and never will see the inside of a yellow submarine.



> There's an entire Wikipedia Page on the cultural impact of The Beatles. I mean, I probably rank Wagner ahead of The Beatles on my own personal tastes (it's honestly close though: I love both dearly); but *I think anyone who wants to argue that Wagner had anywhere near the same cultural impact as The Beatles is fighting a losing battle.* Wagner's impact may have been just as deep within his own genre of classical music, and certainly many artists and authors who loved classical music took some inspiration; but I still see that as *far more niche than the much broader socio-cultural impact of The Beatles.*


Wiki's page is impressive, but you overlook an important fact. Because the Beatles lived and worked within our own time, a time when almost everything can be known about almost everything, and everyone can know more about anything than they want to know, it's easy to describe the Beatles' influence on our era in endless, excruciating detail. Add to that the fact that contemporaries are by definition unable to assess the ultimate importance of anything. Let's look at the cultural legacies of Wagner and the Beatles a hundred years hence, and then have this debate with the perspective of history.

I know how I think it will shake out. Your guesses may differ, but luckily we won't be here to argue about it.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Skeptical? Skeptical that the impact of Wagner on these people doesn't meet your standard for "meaningful" impact? What standard is stringent enough for you?


My issue is mostly of a technical nature. Taking something like literature, which I'm very familiar with both as a reader and writer, literature utterly lacks anything of the abstract nature of music with which to use as leitmotivs against the representational aspect of the language and what it describes (characters, places, actions). Literature certainly has motifs, but those have been a part of literature long before Wagner. I know, eg, that Mann says he was influenced by Wagner's leitmotivs, but when I read Mann what he probably would've called leitmotivs I would simply describe as character quirks of an almost Dickensian nature. They sure don't play a role anywhere near as important as Wagner's music does. Literature simply isn't a hybrid art in the way that music and drama is. Poetry can get closer with its "musical" aspects of meter and sound, but these are precisely things that fell by the wayside after Wagner and the rise of modernism, with free-verse dominating over verse. Film is closer, but with cinematography and editing taking a much more important role than music, and certainly more important than music is to opera. 

I'd certainly be willing (and interested) in reading whatever sources/references you may have on Wagner's influence on these people, but I would need more than just general statements of influence and actual examples of how that manifested in their art. Even taking myself as an example, not many artists in any medium had a bigger/deeper emotional/intellectual impact on me than Wagner, but when I'm writing I don't (can't) think of Wagner because there just aren't any real analogs to his musical/dramatic art for literature. I certainly think of things like motifs, and how to develop those motifs over the course of a work, and hopefully even ending the work with some kind of culmination and integration of them; but, again, this has been around in literature for as long as literature as been around, and it's still very dissimilar to the kind of abstract/representational pairing that is afforded with music and drama. 



Woodduck said:


> At most? Really? How relevant? Which other fields? _All_ other narrative/dramatic art? In what way and to what degree?


All narrative/dramatic art has themes merely by them being about something. So any art that's about something can influence other art that's about something. "In what way and to what degree" would depend on specific works in question. One issue is that most themes are as old as art itself and get recycled endlessly with what changes being the actual artistic renderings: new skin on old bones. To take one example relevant to Wagner, much of his themes has its roots in Schopenhauer, which has its roots in various Eastern philosophies (especially Buddhism and the Vedanta; Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita in particular). Wagner's innovation was situating these themes in dramas based on Western legends and romances. I can imagine both of these aspects (the resurrection of old Western legends/romances and the Schopenhauer/eastern philosophy) influencing a lot of art and artists. 

Personally, I find these thematic influences less significant than artistic ones, the reason being two-fold: one being what I already mentioned about such themes getting recycled endlessly and what makes them interesting being their specific artistic rendering (whether that's via music, cinematography/editing, painting, etc.); two being that it's always ultimately the actual artistic rendering that makes us care. Without Wagner's music being so powerful I doubt anyone would care about him mixing Schopenhauer with Western legends/romances. A way of saying that art is really more about how something is said rather than what is said (if we just cared about the "what" we could just read Schopenhauer, Eastern philosophy, or the original legends/romances). 



Woodduck said:


> Of course they wouldn't. Who has ever claimed otherwise? Wagner wasn't a playwright or novelist. There's literally no such entity as "his drama on its own." It wasn't merely the excellence of his music, but rather the creation of a new form of drama characterized fundamentally by a new kind of music, that shook the culture beyond the field of music. _Tristan, _his first "mature" work and undoubtedly his most radical, has been characterized by one scholar of drama as exemplifying, because of the originality of its musico-dramatic structure, a new dramatic genre all by itself (the "theater of passion"). It had no predecessors and no real successors (maybe Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_, which Wagner influenced profoundly both musically and through the French symbolist poets, comes closest), but it bored through the realms of music and music drama relentlessly for decades, and through the theatrical conceptions of Adolph Appia and Alfred Roller it was influential in creating for the 20th century the idea of the stage as psychological, rather than merely physical, space. Of course Wagner himself had begun that transformation in his innovative theater in Bayreuth, with its multi-prosceniumed stage a glowing dream space suspended in a blackened amphitheater, and its orchestra wafting occult secrets out of a mystic gulf inaccessible to the conscious mind - already, in 1876, the psychoanalytic model of the mind, embodied in a space that obliterated every trace of opera's old, glittering social milieu.


I disagree that there's no such entity as "his drama on its own." One is free to read his librettos without musical accompaniment just as one is free to read Bob Dylan's lyrics without the music. The point of noting that is to say it's the actual hybrid nature of the art, the music and drama together, that's important; and it's precisely that art that one can't replicate in other genres/mediums that lack that hybridity like literature on its own. Literature on its own can only really be influenced by Wagner's drama because there's simply no analog in literature for the abstract nature of music because language is innately representational. 

I 100% agree with everything you're saying about Wagner's innovation/revolution when it comes to musical drama; what I'm contesting is to what degree that innovation/revolution is relevant to very different art-forms like literature, painting, and film. 



Woodduck said:


> Nietzsche would not have found it odd to be mentioned as falling under Wagner's influence, to the extent of writing the work ("The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music," inspired directly by _Tristan_) that first made his name as a philosopher. He remained obsessed with Wagner and his work to the end of his days. I believe that counts as more than nebulous impact.


The Birth of Tragedy is about what Nietzsche saw as art's shift from the unity of Dionysian and Apollonian elements (or, roughly irrationality/chaos and rationality/order) as represented by the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles to the dominance of Apollonian elements as represented by Euripides and Socrates. Nietzsche saw Wagner as potentially being a return of that unity. Nietzsche was hugely influenced by Schopenhauer, with Nietzsche's "Appolonian and Dionysian" dichotomy being very similar to Schopenhauer's "will and representation," but Nietzsche disagreed with Schopenhauer about the negation of the will being the path to enlightenment; and when Nietzsche saw that element in Wagner, especially in Parsifal, is where the two parted ways. I'd argue those same themes are already there in Tristan, and I've always been curious why Nietzsche didn't see that before Parsifal. 



Woodduck said:


> You'd _say, _but... Do you have any real idea what impact an acquaintance with, or awareness of, Wagner's psycho-mythical creations, or his prose writings concerning the mytho-musical genre he created, had on the sensibilities and thinking of these men, either directly or indirectly?


Nietzsche I'm pretty familiar with; Jung and Campbell I read long before I'd listened to Wagner, and I don't remember Wagner figuring heavily into their work. I could be wrong, and as with the others I'd be open/interested in reading any sources you may have on this. One thing I'll note is that these "psycho-mythical creations" were already hugely present in the works of William Blake. I've always considered Blake the immensely overlooked (and misunderstood) father of the whole Wagner/Jung/Campbell school of psychological mythos. Perhaps understandable as he was writing many decades before any of them and was thought something of a madman in his own time, and he still isn't an easily digestible read even today. As much as I love Wagner, at least on the purely "psycho-mythical" level I find him much shallower compared to Blake. To me, Wagner's greatest contribution to that tradition is in his unparalleled ability to make us feel those themes through the music; but textually those themes are far less complex than what you'd find in Blake. 



Woodduck said:


> Wiki's page is impressive, but you overlook an important fact. Because the Beatles lived and worked within our own time, a time when almost everything can be known about almost everything, and everyone can know more about anything than they want to know, it's easy to describe the Beatles' influence on our era in endless, excruciating detail. Add to that the fact that contemporaries are by definition unable to assess the ultimate importance of anything. Let's look at the cultural legacies of Wagner and the Beatles a hundred years hence, and then have this debate with the perspective of history.
> 
> I know how I think it will shake out. Your guesses may differ, but luckily we won't be here to argue about it.


I'm afraid you and I won't be around in 100 years to look at anything, my friend.  50-60 years is not an insignificant amount of time to be removed from something to judge the influence/impact someone had on a half-century of society and culture. That said, I do agree to some extent that it's much easier to see and document the influence/impact of more recent artists, especially in the age of the internet where one can write Wiki pages that will be there for as long as the internet will exist. No doubt much of the influence/impact of older artists have been lost to time.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> There's an entire Wikipedia Page on the cultural impact of The Beatles.


A person wouldn't _normally_ be contributing to wikipedia articles on stuff unless he's enthusiastic enough of the stuff to spend time doing the research, finding scholarly sources, and writing texts there. If he writes articles on the Beatles, chances are, he's _likely_ a fan of the Beatles himself. What gets included or excluded in the article is _essentially_ decided by a (unofficial) "voting process" participated by the "editors" in the "Talk" page. What I'm saying is, just cause there are wikipedia articles on things, it doesn't mean they're not biased, especially ones that don't get visited by other people very often. There's one about a certain classical period composer's set of six string quartets published under one opus number, and the "fan editors" there always try to make it seem as if it's something more than Tristan und Isolde in terms of historical significance, and I'm "outnumbered" as an editor there.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> A person wouldn't _normally_ be contributing to wikipedia articles on stuff unless he's enthusiastic enough of the stuff to spend time doing the research, finding scholarly sources, and writing texts there. If he writes articles on the Beatles, chances are, he's _likely_ a fan of the Beatles himself. What gets included or excluded in the article are _essentially_ decided by a (unofficial) "voting process" participated by the "editors" in the "Talk" page. What I'm saying is, just cause there are wikipedia articles on things, it doesn't mean they're not biased, especially ones that don't get visited by other people very often. There's one about a certain classical period composer's set of six string quartets published under one opus number and the "fan editors" there always try to make it seem as if it's something more than Tristan und Isolde in historical significance, and I'm "outnumbered" as an editor there.


All true, and I'm familiar with how Wiki pages work; but all these caveats (Woodduck's included) just mean it's very difficult to find any objective method for comparing things like influence, inspiration, and impact. Plus, pretty much everything you said (about such things mostly getting written by enthusiasts, about bias, etc.) would apply just as much to Wagner or any artist. Most people (even academics) don't write about artists they have no interest in. 

Still, there's a good deal on that Wiki page that is objectively true, some of which (especially as it relates to The Beatles' influence on later artists and their innovations in terms of album-oriented approach and using the studio artistically) I'm very familiar with simply by having listened to a lot of popular music from that period and after. It's very difficult to find artists from the late 60s and 70s who wouldn't list The Beatles as an influence, and I've often compared their influence on such dichotomous genres like prog and punk rock to be similar to the "war of the romantics" that Beethoven caused over later composers debating about what aspects of his art should be focused on.


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

vgvalkyrie said:


> The Kubelik Meistersinger is available on Opera Depot. It's a wonderful performance.


Thanks for that.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> My issue is mostly of a technical nature. Taking something like literature, which I'm very familiar with both as a reader and writer, literature utterly lacks anything of the abstract nature of music with which to use as leitmotivs against the representational aspect of the language and what it describes (characters, places, actions). Literature certainly has motifs, but those have been a part of literature long before Wagner. I know, eg, that Mann says he was influenced by Wagner's leitmotivs, but when I read Mann what he probably would've called leitmotivs I would simply describe as character quirks of an almost Dickensian nature. They sure don't play a role anywhere near as important as Wagner's music does. Literature simply isn't a hybrid art in the way that music and drama is. Poetry can get closer with its "musical" aspects of meter and sound, but these are precisely things that fell by the wayside after Wagner and the rise of modernism, with free-verse dominating over verse. Film is closer, but with cinematography and editing taking a much more important role than music, and certainly more important than music is to opera.
> 
> I'd certainly be willing (and interested) in reading whatever sources/references you may have on Wagner's influence on these people, but I would need more than just general statements of influence and actual examples of how that manifested in their art. Even taking myself as an example, not many artists in any medium had a bigger/deeper emotional/intellectual impact on me than Wagner, but when I'm writing I don't (can't) think of Wagner because there just aren't any real analogs to his musical/dramatic art for literature. I certainly think of things like motifs, and how to develop those motifs over the course of a work, and hopefully even ending the work with some kind of culmination and integration of them; but, again, this has been around in literature for as long as literature as been around, and it's still very dissimilar to the kind of abstract/representational pairing that is afforded with music and drama.
> 
> ...


I have to say that the whole premise of this conversation has seemed to me absurd from the start, and I rather regret being drawn into it. We can observe ways in which people have "influenced" or "impacted" the world, but when we start arguing about how "meaningful" the impact is, and creating competitions between the impact of A and the impact of B, we'd better decide how much time we're willing to waste. Richard Wagner against John Lennon and Paul McCartney? Yikes! It's too early in the day, and I need another cup of coffee.

We probably don't even agree on what constitutes "meaningful" (your word) influence. You think that the differences between music and literature rule out the possibility that a writer can be "meaningfully" influenced by a composer. I don't see it that way. People are "influenced" in a lot of ways. I prefer to believe them when they say they've been influenced, however that may be manifested in what they do. And if, over many years, I see frequent mentions of the influence of something on someone, I'm inclined to think there's been some influence unless I see something to the contrary.

You know literature much better than I do, and I wouldn't presume to analyze the work of any writer. But based on your comments on Wagner, I think I know his work much better than you do - possibly better, in some basic ways and in many details, than anyone else on this forum. If I were twenty years younger (or even 8 years younger, which I was when I joined TC), I might feel energetic enough to carry this discussion much further. Nowadays, "explaining" Wagner is just too much work. I'm just going to have to leave you to enjoy the profound impact of yellow submarines while I hie me back to the more relaxing company of fellow connoisseurs of singing. Titta Ruffo's _Pagliacci_ prologue is up next.

But here's an article I found recently and haven't read yet. It looks interesting.



https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4669&context=open_access_etds


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I also find Nietzsche an odd mention given that Wagner and Nietzsche were at one time friendly but eventually had a falling out over what Nietzsche perceived as Wagner's... shall we say, philosophical failings? Plus, both men were really more mutually influenced by Schopenhauer than influenced by each other. Nietzsche may have used Wagner as an example in some of his writings on art, but I don't think Wagner inspired or influenced those ideas.


Nietzsche himself called Wagner his single greatest influence. Even after their "break" he recounted his evenings debating music, religion and philosophy at the Swiss Wagner residence (where he had his own permanent guest room) as the fondest memories of his life. Most of his books have references to Wagner, and several dedicated to him (The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Case of Wagner).


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Comparing Wagner to the Beatles is like comparing Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling. The Beatles and Harry Potter were both influential mass media phenomenons of a popularity Shakespeare and Wagner could never approach. They lived at the wrong time, in the wrong line of work.

Enjoying Shakespeare and Wagner is an investment, the more effort you spend on learning about their works the more you get out of them. None of The Beatles could read music, and had no formal knowledge of music theory. They crafted purely by intuition music which has broad, immediate appeal with lyrics people can immediately relate with, for the purpose of topping popularity charts. Compare that to Wagner, who originally intended _Siegfried's Death_ to be a limited weeks-long engagement impressed upon a select few after which the theater and score are destroyed!

Mass popularity was not the goal, to Wagner that would be selling-out (_comme les Français_). At the same time, Wagner resisted Nietzsche's elitism, his conception of the Bayreuth Festival was for it to be accessible to all, the seating arrangement egalitarian, the opera house bare-boned without any aristocratic comforts, the admission free of charge. Anybody willing and capable regardless of birth-class to elevate themselves to the works, and in return be elevated by them, was welcomed.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There is also quantity and quality. I am not sure how many authors of the quality of Thomas Mann have been around in the 50 years since the Beatles (probably not more than 2 or 3, and was any influenced by the Beatles?) and if this one below is the page meant, there is nothing substantial at all mentioned of influence beyond pop culture (where it is hardly surprising). That Liverpool university now offers MA in Beatles Studies (BS?) or sth. like that is a self-serving feedback loop, not any real influence in humanities or "science".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_the_Beatles#Continued_interest_and_influence



And while I agree that it's disputable to what extent Mann's technique is similar to Wagner because the media are so different, one should not discount what an author says himself and the claim that it's like recurring character quirks in Dickens seems quite mistaken to me. This sounds like someone who has never read any Mann. In a way it's even secondary if the structural similarities are as clear or strong as Mann seems to claim himself. *It's a clear sign of the huge impact of Wagner that Mann would claim this in the first place.* But he could get away with it, so there is considerable plausibility. In addition there are at least two short novellas with explicit Wagnerian content ("Wälsungenblut" and "Tristan"), a long section in Buddenbrooks (I think around a Lohengrin performance) and probably more "surface level" homages.


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## ewilkros (8 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> ... there are at least two short [Thomas Mann] novellas with explicit Wagnerian content ("Wälsungenblut" and "Tristan"), a long section in Buddenbrooks (I think around a Lohengrin performance) and probably more "surface level" homages.


Also, there is a section in _Zauberberg/Magic Mountain_ where the protagonist encounters a series of Wagnerian 78s in conjunction with the sanitorum's wind-up gramophone. Plus: Mann wrote numerous essays on Wagner, of course.

Edit: Oh, and "Zauberberg" is pretty clearly a play on Wagner's "Venusberg", and Castorp is a kind of Tannhäuser.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> Comparing Wagner to the Beatles is like comparing Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling.
> Enjoying Shakespeare and Wagner is an investment, the more effort you spend on learning about their works the more you get out of them.


"Shakespeare overrated" howlround.com/seriously-calm-down


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

...........................................


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Shakespeare overrated" howlround.com/seriously-calm-down


The only thing worth reading there is one J. Millbran's response that follows the completely useless (but mercifully brief) article.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> We probably don't even agree on what constitutes "meaningful" (your word) influence. You think that the differences between music and literature rule out the possibility that a writer can be "meaningfully" influenced by a composer. I don't see it that way. People are "influenced" in a lot of ways. I prefer to believe them when they say they've been influenced, however that may be manifested in what they do. And if, over many years, I see frequent mentions of the influence of something on someone, I'm inclined to think there's been some influence unless I see something to the contrary.


I did try to draw the distinction between influence and inspiration. I think the latter can happen in a much broader sense. To me, influence is more direct; Artist A does X, Artist B sees X and does it themselves. That's always possible within the same medium; not always across mediums. However, if we're going to just "take people's words" then I'm sure you could find just as many who've listed The Beatles as influences on some level. I don't know how anyone has that kind of broad socio-cultural impact without influencing people. 



Woodduck said:


> You know literature much better than I do, and I wouldn't presume to analyze the work of any writer. But based on your comments on Wagner, I think I know his work much better than you do - possibly better, in some basic ways and in many details, than anyone else on this forum. If I were twenty years younger (or even 8 years younger, which I was when I joined TC), I might feel energetic enough to carry this discussion much further. Nowadays, "explaining" Wagner is just too much work. I'm just going to have to leave you to enjoy the profound impact of yellow submarines while I hie me back to the more relaxing company of fellow connoisseurs of singing. Titta Ruffo's _Pagliacci_ prologue is up next.
> 
> But here's an article I found recently and haven't read yet. It looks interesting.
> 
> ...


I have no doubt you know Wagner better than me. My broad artistic tastes necessarily means I have to sacrifice some depth of knowledge to accommodate that breadth. However, I'm not sure how much understanding Wagner is relevant to a discussion of influence; that's more about knowing the work of other artists and how they were impacted by Wagner. 

That link isn't so much an article as it is a literal thesis! No doubt there's been much academic study of Wagner (as there has been of The Beatles, fwiw), but I'm not sure how relevant that is to influence. I have read some scholarly works on Wagner, from Shaw's famous The Perfect Wagnerite to Donington's The Ring and Its Symbols to Cooke's I Saw the World End.


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

much has been made of Wanger and his influence but much of it is tremendously over-rated. In fact if it had not been for Hitler’s trumpeting of Wagner and the controversy (right or wrong) caused after he might have been just anothe4 opera composer with a dedicated but limited following. In the world today opera - like it or not - is of limited interest even among classical music fans and as classical music is a minority interest in the wider world most people will not have heard of Wagner even in Western culture, outside the odd clip of film music. So we must not over rate his influence


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Nietzsche himself called Wagner his single greatest influence. Even after their "break" he recounted his evenings debating music, religion and philosophy at the Swiss Wagner residence (where he had his own permanent guest room) as the fondest memories of his life. Most of his books have references to Wagner, and several dedicated to him (The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Case of Wagner).


Now it seems like you're describing a kind of personal influence Wagner had on Nietzsche due to their friendship and private discussions. While I have no issue with that, I had assumed in this thread we were talking about the influence of Wagner's art, and not the influence of Wagner as a person. When I said I don't see much influence of Wagner on Nietzsche I was referring to the influence of Wagner's art on Nietzsche's philosophical work. So much of what Wagner and Nietzsche share in common philosophically they got from Schopenhauer, and yet Nietzsche also defined much of his philosophy in opposition to the parts of Schopenhauer he disagreed with in a way Wagner did not, and that explains why Nietzsche was disillusioned with Wagner over Parsifal. Yes, Nietzsche wrote some philosophical works about Wagner, but these aren't terribly relevant to Nietzsche's most important/influential philosophical texts like Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, and Thus Spake Zarathustra. At most in the latter you can argue Nietzsche borrowed his "death of god" from Wagner's Ring, though I'm not sure how much so other than the very general idea.



Couchie said:


> Comparing Wagner to the Beatles is like comparing Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling. The Beatles and Harry Potter were both influential mass media phenomenons of a popularity Shakespeare and Wagner could never approach. They lived at the wrong time, in the wrong line of work.


This is a false analogy. Shakespeare WAS a popular entertainer in his day (probably THE most popular entertainer of his day). Obviously it was impossible back then to have the kind massive sociocultural impact as it would be post-industrial revolution; but as much as such a thing was possible back then people were reading/seeing Shakespeare as popular entertainment long before the intellectuals and academics canonized (and nearly deified) him. Wagner not achieving the kind of mass popularity of The Beatles (and Shakespeare) is multi-fold, from the fact that opera has always been more of an upper class (at least bourgeoisie and above) interest, except maybe in Italy where the likes of Verdi seemed quite massively popular, to the fact that Wagner demands a lot of attention musically, dramatically, and thematically to really "get," so he's always going to be a more niche interest, for better and for worse. 



Couchie said:


> Enjoying Shakespeare and Wagner is an investment, the more effort you spend on learning about their works the more you get out of them. None of The Beatles could read music, and had no formal knowledge of music theory. They crafted purely by intuition music which has broad, immediate appeal with lyrics people can immediately relate with, for the purpose of topping popularity charts. Compare that to Wagner, who originally intended _Siegfried's Death_ to be a limited weeks-long engagement impressed upon a select few after which the theater and score are destroyed!


Shakespeare only requires such investment now because the language has dramatically changed and we are no longer raised with an education that focuses on understanding rhetoric and figurative language as Shakespeare and his audiences were; but back then Shakespeare was popular because he wrote exciting, dramatic, funny plays that everyone (including the lower classes) were entertained by. Shakespeare as the "intellectually demanding artist" is basically historical revisionism. This doesn't mean that Shakespeare doesn't reward investment and study--he very much does; spoken as someone who's studied him quite a bit--merely that Shakespeare's studies began because people were so entertained by him; the exact same thing has happened with The Beatles. I'd also put a filmmaker like Alfred Hitchcock into that category. I wonder if anyone in this thread is familiar with just how much academic work has now been written on The Beatles from a variety of angles. 

Also, what you say about The Beatles crafting music with "broad immediate appeal with... (relatable lyrics)" only really applies to the first several years of their music, their "pop phase." By the time of Revolver they became the most progressive, experimental band on the planet, and that's where most of their musical innovation and influence stems from. In their combination of accessible entertainment and artistic substance/innovation they were arguably far more akin to Shakespeare than Wagner.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Shakespeare overrated" howlround.com/seriously-calm-down


I don't see much of substance in that article beyond the idea that the over-focus on Shakespeare has come at the detriment of other worthy playwrights; which is a sentiment I can agree with to the extent that there ARE other excellent playwrights and authors that seem unfairly overlooked in part due to how much dominance Shakespeare has in academia and among audiences that still care about such old plays. Still, I've never felt such complaints were solvable by claims of Shakespeare (or _insert massively popular here_) are overrated in contrast to just trying to promote whatever other artists/playwrights you think are worthwhile. Those with an actual interest will always find those others on their own anyway. A much more interesting negative take on Shakespeare was Tolstoy's: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tolstoy on Shakespeare, by Leo Tolstoy.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

marlow said:


> much has been made of Wanger and his influence but much of it is tremendously over-rated. In fact if it had not been for Hitler’s trumpeting of Wagner and the controversy (right or wrong) caused after he might have been just anothe4 opera composer with a dedicated but limited following. In the world today opera - like it or not - is of limited interest even among classical music fans and as classical music is a minority interest in the wider world most people will not have heard of Wagner even in Western culture, outside the odd clip of film music. So we must not over rate his influence


Two things here: 

1. I can't imagine how you think Hitler's (and the Nazi's) adoration of Wagner actually helped Wagner's influence/legacy rather than nearly single-handedly destroying it. It certainly doesn't help that Wagner was an anti-semite himself, and many today still feel uneasy about separating the man from the music. The great Stephen Fry even did an excellent documentary on this subject ("Wagner and Me"). 

2. It's true that opera is of limited interest, but Wagner's music had much greater influence than just within opera. Nearly every major composer that came after Wagner was influenced by him in some way, and that influence even found its way into film music (I gave one major example above). So the argument that Wagner's influence was limited because opera has limited appeal doesn't really hold.


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