# Is the message of Wagner's Ring optimistic or pessimistic?



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

As above...................:tiphat:


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I would think it depends on your own outlook on life. Has anyone had thier dispositon changed by Opera?


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## GodotsArrived (Jan 12, 2017)

Technically, Wagner's work is a prime example of Romantic Pessimism, heavily influenced by Schopenauer. It's this that in large part caused his break with Nietschze (or more accurately the reverse; Nietschze's break with Wagner), who came to strongly oppose both Schopenauer and Wagner who he concluded were nihilistic after being a fervent disciple in his early years. So while yes, your own outlook on life will always dictate your personal response to anything, that doesn't mean your personal response coincides with the composer's (or artists) intention. The best example of Romantic Pessimism, by the way, is probably the Liebestod.

I think art (not just music, all art) does have the power to change you (call it disposition but many other words would suffice). If it didn't, it would just be elevator music and, indeed, we wouldn't even need the term "elevator music" as it would otherwise be all encompassing.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

For me the one thing you learn in opera..........the music never lies

The very final closing music with the return of the Ring is without doubt an optimistic hopeful musical passage, a new dawn for mankind......the clearest path to a *composers intention* is still to listen to the music despite any confusion from the actual words or actions

Now everyone can draw their own personal conclusion based on other things, but I think wagner intends an optimistic final message

Also the woodbird told me this so it must be true.........


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

The Ring, the Ring, the Ring......

The timeless perfect shape of the Ring, the opera journey begins with theft of the Ring and ends with its return, a restoration of order and harmony in symbolic terms as thing come "full circle"...........peace and hope returns (listen to the closing music)


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## gellio (Nov 7, 2013)

DarkAngel said:


> For me the one thing you learn in opera..........the music never lies
> 
> The very final closing music with the return of the Ring is without doubt an optimistic hopeful musical passage, a new dawn for mankind......the clearest path to a *composers intention* is still to listen to the music despite any confusion from the actual words or actions
> 
> ...


You are so smart!  I agree. Just want to say you are one of my favorite posters. I have learned so much from you. I'm not being funny. It's true.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Belowpar said:


> Has anyone had thier dispositon changed by Opera?


Of course they have!

My own quality of mind, and thus character, has changed more than once through the power of music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Neither unambiguously optimistic nor pessimistic.

The _Ring_ was composed over a period of a quarter of a century, during which Wagner's outlook on life evolved, and that evolution is traced in the work. To put it somewhat simplistically, Wagner's exuberant and inchoate belief in a reformed world of free men achievable through political activism gave way to a skepticism of worldly action and institutions, and to a focus on personal spiritual growth. That evolution is portrayed in Wotan, who begins _Das Rheingold_ as the young Wagner, devoted to free love, bold action, power, and glory, and ends as the middle-aged Wagner who recognizes the futility of his strivings and schemings but is not yet ready, like the old Wagner (Parsifal), for the inner transformation which lies beyond self-analysis and renunciation.

The music which ends _Gotterdammerung_ is that of Sieglinde's ecstatic reception of Brunnhilde's prophecy of the birth of Siegfried. Precisely what is to be born when the gods are gone is left to our imaginations. The nearest thing in it to optimism is hope - not quite the same thing.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Neither unambiguously optimistic nor pessimistic.
> 
> The _Ring_ was composed over a period of a quarter of a century, during which Wagner's outlook on life evolved, and that evolution is traced in the work. To put it somewhat simplistically, Wagner's exuberant and inchoate belief in a reformed world of free men achievable through political activism gave way to a skepticism of worldly action and institutions, and to a focus on personal spiritual growth. That evolution is portrayed in Wotan, who begins _Das Rheingold_ as the young Wagner, devoted to free love, bold action, power, and glory, and ends as the middle-aged Wagner who recognizes the futility of his strivings and schemings but is not yet ready, like the old Wagner (Parsifal), for the inner transformation which lies beyond self-analysis and renunciation.
> 
> *The music which ends Gotterdammerung is that of Sieglinde's ecstatic reception of Brunnhilde's prophecy of the birth of Siegfried*. Precisely what is to be born when the gods are gone is left to our imaginations. The nearest thing in it to optimism is hope - not quite the same thing.


Music theme that had previously been used to reference birth or children almost certainly should be viewed as positive and optimistic, even if the theme was unique to ending most would find it elicits positive peaceful feelings.....if wagner felt otherwise he could have easily left a somber forboding bleak theme to end the opus, he wanted us to feel positive, to have hope you must be optimistic about future

Don't you agree wagner's final intent is more optimistic vs pessimistic, even if you don't want to call it fully optimistic.......


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> Music theme that had previously been used to reference birth or children almost certainly should be viewed as positive and optimistic, even if the theme was unique to ending most would find it elicits positive peaceful feelings.....if wagner felt otherwise he could have easily left a somber forboding bleak theme to end the opus, he wanted us to feel positive, to have hope you must be optimistic about future
> 
> *Don't you agree wagner's final intent is more optimistic vs pessimistic, even if you don't want to call it fully optimistic.......*


When you consider that without that last tune we'd have little more than a cosmic catastrophe with practically everybody but the Rhinemaidens dead, Wagner had to do something. Whether that gesture amounts to optimism, I'd rather not debate too finely. One might theorize that a world without gods could only be better off, but humans don't seem to be managing it too well either. The gods have a funny way of sneaking back in.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

There's basically only two good explanations for the recurrence of the so-called Redemption theme at the very end of the Ring. The theme is heard in only two places, when Siegliende sings "O hehrstes Wunder" early in Act 3 of Walkure and as the final notes of Gotterdammerung. 

In Act 3, Sieglinde is in suicidal despair over the death of Siegmund; Brunnhilde reveals that she is pregnant with Siegmund's child, and Sieglinde responds to the revelation from Brunnhilde with this beautiful and joyful embrace of life.

The restatement of the theme at the end can then be understood as this moment writ large--the death and despair of the deaths of Siegfried and Brunnhilde, the flooding of the Rhine, and the downfall of Valhalla then the life-embracing theme of "O hehrstes Wunder" pointing to a new beginning and a re-embrace of life.

Or the other reasonable explanation for this recurrence is that Wagner was just a showman who decided to end the Ring on a non-thematic repetition of the most beautiful part of the Cycle--Puccini for instance did this kind of thematically unmotivated repetition of the best bits of his operas quite a lot. So the Cycle is a tragedy ending in death and destruction, and the restatement of the Redemption theme is meaningless except for just ending the Cycle on a simply beautiful note.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> When you consider that without that last tune we'd have little more than a cosmic catastrophe with practically everybody but the Rhinemaidens dead, Wagner had to do something. Whether that gesture amounts to optimism, I'd rather not debate too finely.* One might theorize that a world without gods could only be better off, but humans don't seem to be managing it too well either The gods have a funny way of sneaking back in*.


Also Wagners final "optimism" for the downfall of the gods (ruling class) and the emergence of human self determination could also be a reflection of his political beliefs......remember in 1840s he had to flee Dresden because of involvement in left wing uprising


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Okay, OP. It's like this. If you have a bladder problem, the message is resoundingly _pissimistic_.

If you are three years old and can hold it for hours without getting up, lucky you, optimistic all the way!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Duplicate post.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> *There's basically only two good explanations for the recurrence of the so-called Redemption theme at the very end of the Ring. *The theme is heard in only two places, when Siegliende sings "O hehrstes Wunder" early in Act 3 of Walkure and as the final notes of Gotterdammerung.
> 
> In Act 3, Sieglinde is in suicidal despair over the death of Siegmund; Brunnhilde reveals that she is pregnant with Siegmund's child, and Sieglinde responds to the revelation from Brunnhilde with this beautiful and joyful embrace of life.
> 
> ...


Joseph Kerman calls attention to Puccini's opportunistic use of "O lucevan le stelle" to end Tosca, where Scarpia's theme would have been more apt but less tear-jerking. Puccini's sense of audience appeal may have been infallible, but Wagner, whose theatrical sense was pretty good (if unconventional), subordinated his to poetic truth.

Of your two explanations, only #1, or some variant of it, is credible.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Joseph Kerman calls attention to Puccini's opportunistic use of "O lucevan le stelle" to end Tosca, where Scarpia's theme would have been more apt but less tear-jerking. Puccini's sense of audience appeal may have been infallible, but Wagner, whose theatrical sense was pretty good (if unconventional), subordinated his to poetic truth.
> 
> Of your two explanations, only #1, or some variant of it, is credible.


Yes, I agree, which is why I think the only really sensible conclusion is the optimistic reading of the ending. The reappearance of the O hehrstes Wunder motif must be a meaningful thematic statement of the embrace of life and rebirth. The only other real explanation is that Wagner is just randomly putting beautiful music at the end for effect, and as you say, that seems contrary to Wagner's art.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Just for kicks, this guy does not see it very optimistically:



> I will probably get over it [Gotterdammerung], but it seems like such a disappointment after the other three. It seems almost like Wagner resorted to 'the truck' ending. In writing it means that if you find you've written a piece and can't figure out how to end it, have everyone get run-over by a truck.


:lol:
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/e/emi72731a.php


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Florestan said:


> Just for kicks, this guy does not see it very optimistically:
> 
> :lol:
> http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/e/emi72731a.php


It's completely disgraceful that a publication would assign a reviewer who is openly inexpert in opera and has little familiarity with Wagner other than bleeding chunks to a review of any Ring Cycle recording. I've actually seen into this exact review before and reading this confirmed for me long ago that classical.net was a source I never needed to look at again for anything relating to opera recordings.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

howlingfantods said:


> It's completely disgraceful that a publication would assign a reviewer who is openly inexpert in opera and has little familiarity with Wagner other than bleeding chunks to a review of any Ring Cycle recording. I've actually seen into this exact review before and reading this confirmed for me long ago that classical.net was a source I never needed to look at again for anything relating to opera recordings.


Definitely a very shallow review. The guy may be more suited to reviewing pop music. At least he led on in his review that he didn't now jack about the Ring.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The word "optimism" is used rather blandly nowadays to mean "hopefulness," or simply a feeling, justified or not, that the glass is at least half full and that we have a fighting chance. Originally it had a more definite implication, something like Candide's "best of all possible worlds": a belief that, temporary setbacks notwithstanding, things were ultimately as they should be, or would work out for the best. Only religious belief can embody that sort of optimism, by positing a supernatural world which will supplant and, somehow, justify the trials and disappointments of this one.

Wagner, who did not believe in the supernatural, could not be optimistic in this stricter sense. The _Ring_ - and, by the way, _Parsifal_ - is humanist; it looks to man to make what he can of life, and it tells us that the gods and their claims and edicts - whether of Wotan or his successor, Titurel - must be left behind in order to free man to be himself. But Wagner - at least not the mature Wagner, struggling to realize his visions in an uncomprehending world, chastened by the failure of political revolution, and immersed in Schopenhauer - was not so naive as to think that freedom was a guarantor of success.

We mustn't make the mistake of seeing the death of the gods as representing the obliteration of all that they represent. Wotan is still, in all his tragic complexity, us. The _Ring_'s final moments tell us, symbolically, that we might become the free agents Wotan's children could never be, and promise only an open road to a horizon beyond our sight. In the aftermath of cosmic catastrophe, that is exhilarating and reassuring. But soon Wagner will tell us again, in _Parsifal_, how hard it is to exorcise the parent-gods and to grow up.

Does the ending of _Parsifal_ represent optimism? And if it does, is that just another illusion, for which the old composer might be forgiven?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Does the ending of _Parsifal_ represent optimism? And if it does, is that just another illusion, for which the old composer might be forgiven?


That sounds like exactly the type of question which would give the Woodduck's keyboard a real workout


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner, who did not believe in the supernatural, could not be optimistic in this stricter sense.


I think you're changing the question so you can give the answer you want. Itullian is asking whether the work is optimistic or pessimistic in the contemporary sense of whether the work ends fundamentally in despair or hope. I think it's clear from the repetition of the O hehrstes Wunder theme that the end of Gotterdammerung is meant to be fundamentally hopeful, but yes of course it's not the Panglossian optimism of Candide; but it's clearly also not the end of Mahler's Sixth.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ...
> 
> Does the ending of _Parsifal_ represent optimism? And if it does, is that just another illusion, for which the old composer might be forgiven?


Interesting you bring up Parsifal. I was looking over a book about the philosophical aspects of the Ring and the author said something like that Parsifal could be considered a fifth segment of the Ring.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

howlingfantods said:


> I think you're changing the question so you can give the answer you want. Itullian is asking whether the work is optimistic or pessimistic in the contemporary sense of whether the work ends fundamentally in despair or hope. *I think it's clear from the repetition of the O hehrstes Wunder theme that the end of Gotterdammerung is meant to be fundamentally hopeful*, but yes of course it's not the Panglossian optimism of Candide; but it's clearly also not the end of Mahler's Sixth.


I still think the end of Gotterdammerung goes well beyond a passive or qualified feeling of hope.......

I will make the case that the jarring juxtaposition of the optimistic "birth theme" compared to the violent destruction and cleansing that transpires just before it *powerfully underlines and amplifies the message of Wagner*, he wants us to see a brighter future with and better days ahead........that is very clear to me, it is a positive glorious ending statement by Richard W


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

If religion is about projection, the projection of man-made ideals & emotions on divine beings in a divine setting, than opera is about projection in an even more intensive degree: if you want optimism, you get optimism, and pessimists will get what they want. Whether Wagner projected an optimistic or pessimistic message into the Ring? I would say, he was typically opportunistic, if you want: a-moral.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> *I think you're changing the question so you can give the answer you want.* Itullian is asking whether the work is optimistic or pessimistic in the contemporary sense of whether the work ends fundamentally in despair or hope. I think it's clear from the repetition of the O hehrstes Wunder theme that the end of Gotterdammerung is meant to be fundamentally hopeful, but yes *of course it's not the Panglossian optimism of Candide; but it's clearly also not the end of Mahler's Sixth.*


Heh heh. I think you're restricting the question so as to set up false alternatives.

All I'm doing is analyzing the question so as to understand what the _Ring_ is actually telling us. Feel free to disagree with my conclusions.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> If religion is about projection, the projection of man-made ideals & emotions on divine beings in a divine setting, than opera is about projection in an even more intensive degree: if you want optimism, you get optimism, and pessimists will get what they want. Whether Wagner projected an optimistic or pessimistic message into the Ring? I would say, *he was typically opportunistic, if you want: a-moral.*


Wagner is never amoral. But he is a transvaluator of values.

Nietzsche would hate me for that.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner is never amoral.


So sayeth the Woodduck

View attachment 91593


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A further thought...

That musical motif has a definite referent: it belongs to Brunnhilde. It was she who, prophesying the "free" hero, inspired Sieglinde to sing it, and she who in turn sings it in mounting waves of ecstasy as she greets her hero in death. But Siegfried proved unfree and failed, while Brunnhilde freely defied Wotan and now, alone in understanding the tragic events that have transpired, freely gives the ring back to the Rhinemaidens, joins Siegfried in death, and sets Walhall alight. Brunnhilde is the embodiment of free humanity whom Wotan, ironically, punished, but who alone can intiate the New World Order, in which Wotan's spear with its runes is thrown upon the pyre and superseded by the New Testament of Love.

I think Wagner's use of the motif, in Brunnhilde's immolation scene and as a final gesture, is less a look at the future - hopeful or not- than a tribute to the character and achievement of Brunnhilde, the real hero of the _Ring._


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> So sayeth the Woodduck
> 
> View attachment 91593


A beautiful creature, yes?


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> A further thought...
> 
> That musical motif has a definite referent: it belongs to Brunnhilde. It was she who, prophesying the "free" hero, inspired Sieglinde to sing it, and she who in turn sings it in mounting waves of ecstasy as she greets her hero in death. But Siegfried proved unfree and failed, while Brunnhilde freely defied Wotan and now, alone in understanding the tragic events that have transpired, freely gives the ring back to the Rhinemaidens, joins Siegfried in death, and sets Walhall alight. Brunnhilde is the embodiment of free humanity whom Wotan, ironically, punished, but who alone can intiate the New World Order, in which Wotan's spear with its runes is thrown upon the pyre and superseded by the New Testament of Love.
> 
> I think Wagner's use of the motif, in Brunnhilde's immolation scene and as a final gesture, is less a look at the future - hopeful or not- than a tribute to the character and achievement of Brunnhilde, the real hero of the _Ring._


Another thought about Brunnhilde after relistening to ending a few times

There could also be a metaphysical "Tristan and Isolde" union of lovers here like the ending of liebestod, Brunnhilde of her own free will joins her love Siegfried on the burning pyre, after the Rheinmaidens theme (return of the ring) and some brass fanfares the beautiful final string sections remind me of Isolde's spiritual union with her true love, a blissful peaceful joy beyond this troubled world.....listen to video from 5:50 to end, very similar treatment






Back to the actual Gotterdammerung ending music composed by wagner, whatever we read into it, positive hopeful things are referenced


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> A beautiful creature, yes?


I took pictures of the wood ducks on a recent (2 months ago? Argh) trip but my SD card failed and I lost everything.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner is never amoral. But he is a transvaluator of values.
> 
> Nietzsche would hate me for that.


Wotan, the commander-in-chief, steals the Ring and you say... The Ring is about a-morality and we like the smearing & pestering from the top downwards and from the bottom upwards. Come up with the payment for Walhalla!


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

During SFO's 2017-18 season announcement press conference, general director Matthew Shilvock asked "What do you hope audiences will take away as the curtain comes down on Gotterdammerung?"

Francesca Zambello, who is directing her production of the Ring again replied "For me the Ring is ultimately a positive story in the end. I do believe in regeneration and renewal. I do believe that Brunhilde is the true hero that Wotan could never accept in his daughter."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Wotan, the commander-in-chief, steals the Ring and you say... The Ring is about a-morality and we like the smearing & pestering from the top downwards and from the bottom upwards. Come up with the payment for Walhalla!


I didn't say "Wotan is never immoral." I said "Wagner is never amoral."


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I didn't say "Wotan is never immoral." I said "Wagner is never amoral."


Wagner wants us to admire Wotan, especially in his sneaky abuse of power: his aesthetics are a-moral. Wotan's immorality is not his concern, he's a god and gods do want they want... But the a-morality of his aesthetics is new. For example Don Giovanni remains a moral drama, even when hell receives his soul..


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## interestedin (Jan 10, 2016)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner wants us to admire Wotan, especially in his sneaky abuse of power: his aesthetics are a-moral. *Wotan's immorality is not his concern, he's a god and gods do want they want*... But the a-morality of his aesthetics is new. For example Don Giovanni remains a moral drama, even when hell receives his soul..


And look how that turns out for Woty....


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner wants us to admire Wotan, especially in his sneaky abuse of power: his aesthetics are a-moral. Wotan's immorality is not his concern, he's a god and gods do want they want... But the a-morality of his aesthetics is new. For example Don Giovanni remains a moral drama, even when hell receives his soul..


Do you attend seances where Wagner tells you what he wants? I don't, but from where I'm standing, it seems rather significant that once Wotan has sneakily abused his power, Wagner puts him through rending agonies of soul, humiliation by his wife, the loss of his daughter, the shattering of his spear (symbol of his power) by his grandson, weary retirement from the world, and final destruction. Wagner then celebrates, in music, the yielding of the godly order to human freedom and love.

"Amoral aesthetics"? Pfui!


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## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

Excellent thread! I love this web site!


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Do you attend seances where Wagner tells you what he wants? I don't, but from where I'm standing, it seems rather significant that once Wotan has sneakily abused his power, Wagner puts him through rending agonies of soul, humiliation by his wife, the loss of his daughter, the shattering of his spear (symbol of his power) by his grandson, weary retirement from the world, and final destruction. Wagner then celebrates, in music, the yielding of the godly order to human freedom and love.
> 
> "Amoral aesthetics"? Pfui!


A-moral aesthetics means there is no moral message ('positive', 'optimistic') in the end. No catharsis. Your hallowing of 'the yielding of the godly order to human freedom and love' reminds me of the way Obama talks: Warmongering sweet nothings talk. You still think that there's someone human in the Ring? Please, you make me want to believe in Donald Duck. The Ring is a fantasy operacyclus based on the pre-christian _Nibelungenlied_. When you project humans into it, it is your projection, your religion. I do not believe that.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

znapschatz said:


> Excellent thread! I love this web site!


Me too, even with the sometimes heated debates.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Even if you don't have the faintest clue about redemption themes, or remember the reference back to Die Walküre, or even understand the words at all and have no libretto in front of you, I don't see how you listen to that sublimely beautiful and positive music on the last few pages--especially the last eight bars--of Götterdämmerung and conclude that it's anything other than hopeful and optimistic, despite all the mayhem that has gone on before. Even though the gods are burned to a crisp, their world remains for us to make our own future.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

gardibolt said:


> Even if you don't have the faintest clue about redemption themes, or remember the reference back to Die Walküre, or even understand the words at all and have no libretto in front of you, I don't see how you listen to that sublimely beautiful and positive music on the last few pages--especially the last eight bars--of Götterdämmerung and conclude that it's anything other than hopeful and optimistic, despite all the mayhem that has gone on before. Even though the gods are burned to a crisp, their world remains for us to make our own future.


What you're telling me is that Wagner has failed: he's just like the others, lulling you into sweet humanist dreams. My Wagner remains true to Nietzsches a-moralism. You may have your straws to cling to, I rather look with David Friedrich into the abyss:








In what way the gods of the _Götterdämmerung_ are differing from man made idols, including the idols made by humanism? As soon as you recognise yourself in these gods, what "remains for us to make our own future"? The funeral pyre that Wagner has set to fire is much bigger than you think.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> A further thought...
> 
> That musical motif has a definite referent: it belongs to Brunnhilde. It was she who, prophesying the "free" hero, inspired Sieglinde to sing it, and she who in turn sings it in mounting waves of ecstasy as she greets her hero in death. But Siegfried proved unfree and failed, while Brunnhilde freely defied Wotan and now, alone in understanding the tragic events that have transpired, freely gives the ring back to the Rhinemaidens, joins Siegfried in death, and sets Walhall alight. Brunnhilde is the embodiment of free humanity whom Wotan, ironically, punished, but who alone can intiate the New World Order, in which Wotan's spear with its runes is thrown upon the pyre and superseded by the New Testament of Love.
> 
> I think Wagner's use of the motif, in Brunnhilde's immolation scene and as a final gesture, is less a look at the future - hopeful or not- than a tribute to the character and achievement of Brunnhilde, the real hero of the _Ring._


Thanks for posting this interesting thought.

Did Siegfried really fail to make a good life because he wasn't free? He was duped, drugged, by an evil person. I always thought that the moral of the Siefried/Brunhilde story is that human love is fragile, it's too risky to build a society or anything else on the basis of love. I don't see any hope in the opera.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Thanks for posting this interesting thought.
> 
> Did Siegfried really fail to make a good life because he wasn't free? He was duped, drugged, by an evil person. I always thought that the moral of the Siefried/Brunhilde story is that human love is fragile, it's too risky to build a society or anything else on the basis of love. I don't see any hope in the opera.


I agree with you in part. Siegfried's "unfreedom" was in his naivete. Despite the hopeful transformation of his exuberant horn call into a heroic fanfare, he didn't have a chance to mature. He was a hero only as that word could be understood under the "ancien regime" or "old testament" of Wotan's reign. You are absolutely right: "love," as Siegfried understood it, is not a foundation for living. Wagner, who in his revolutionary years had championed free love - emphatically entailing erotic love - as the insignia of personal and social liberation, came up against reality and embodied his confrontation with it in the tragedy of _Tristan_, after which Walther von Stolzing, Siegfried and, finally, Parsifal would have to understand love and heroism in new ways or else perish.

Brunnhilde was always greater than this primitive idea of "hero": her loving nature was not limited to egocentric passion. She begins to show in what sense love may be a foundation for life, but not before even she is caught up in the delusions of a broken world. She learns enough to consign that world joyfully to the flames, knowing that she too must pay the price for her sins but hoping (more implicitly than explicitly) for a better world to come.

The mere fact that Wagner knew that the old order had to pass away, and ended his score with the music of Brunnhilde's supreme act of sacrifice in the service of a new birth, is a sufficient expression of hope. Of course, we don't get to see what follows the cataclysm, but Wagner wasn't finished with this saga of death and rebirth: he re-enacts it in _Parsifal,_ reshaping the ring into the Holy Grail, relocating the _Gotterdammerung_ to the Grail's sacred but oppressive and troubled precincts, embodying the temptations of regressive, egotistical love in Kundry, and giving us finally a hero who puts childhood and childish egotism decisively away and assumes the mantle of maturity.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Thanks for posting this interesting thought.
> 
> Did Siegfried really fail to make a good life because he wasn't free? He was duped, drugged, by an evil person. I always thought that the moral of the Siefried/Brunhilde story is that human love is fragile, it's too risky to build a society or anything else on the basis of love. I don't see any hope in the opera.


Siegfried and Brünnhilde were targeted not because of their love, but because of the ring. Mime was after the ring. Hagen was after the ring.

Siegfried and Brünnhilde were also not willing to give up the ring, mostly because they cling to the old gods and the rituals that surround them. Waltraute advises Brünnhilde; the latter says she is unwilling to give up "Siegfrieds Liebespfand?" (Siegfried's love-pledge). Later, the Rheintöchtern ask Siegfried to give the ring back, but he won't. "Verzehrt' ich an euch mein Gut, des zürnte mir wohl mein Weib." (If I were to waste what I have on you, my wife would certainly scold me). The ring has become a representation of marriage, as overseen by Fricka (though of course at this point Siegfried is thinking of Gutrune as his wife). If they were free from the constraints of the old gods, they might have realized that the moral thing to do was to return the ring (just as Wotan should have returned it rather than using it to pay for Valhalla (choosing his lust for power over doing the moral thing)). Brünnhilde eventually realizes this, but not until after Siegfried is dead.

This all fits with the history of the ring. Alberich was spurned by the Rheintöchtern so he renounced love, stole the gold, and forged the ring. Of the giants, Fasolt was the one more interested in Freia; Fafner was more free and killed Fasolt and took the ring for himself. Wotan's next plan to regain the ring involved Siegmund and Sieglinde, but that went against the nature of the gods and their necessary support for marriage, so it failed and Siegmund had to die. Siegfried knews nothing of love, and was able to take the ring from Fafner.

Siegfried, however, was not actually after power. And as soon as he finds love, he gives up the ring to Brünnhilde as a symbol of that love. Their problems get going when - first, Brünnhilde refuses to give it up, and second, when Siegfried returns and steals it from Brünnhilde.

Possessing the ring is incompatible with love. You can lust after great power, or you can live your life for love; try to do both and things get complicated.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> In what way the gods of the _Götterdämmerung_ are differing from man made idols, including the idols made by humanism? As soon as you recognise yourself in these gods, what "remains for us to make our own future"? The funeral pyre that Wagner has set to fire is much bigger than you think.


The Gods make absolute rules, which if even they can not violate (Wotan) necessarily doom them to restricting their own power until they themselves become doomed, trapped in their own web of obligation and contradiction, unable to save themselves.

Humanism is not of the same doomed paradigm, since it roots itself in philosophy and science, which are recognized as processes to be refined, old ideas giving way to new, rather than the bedrock of religion - inviolable divinely revealed dogmas.

I think the ending is cautiously optimistic. We are free to craft a new morality to serve us better than the Gods, but we are free to mess it up real bad too.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Couchie said:


> The Gods make absolute rules, which if even they can not violate (Wotan) necessarily doom them to restricting their own power until they themselves become doomed, trapped in their own web of obligation and contradiction, unable to save themselves.
> 
> Humanism is not of the same doomed paradigm, since it roots itself in philosophy and science, which are recognized as processes to be refined, old ideas giving way to new, rather than the bedrock of religion - inviolable divinely revealed dogmas.
> 
> I think the ending is cautiously optimistic. We are free to craft a new morality to serve us better than the Gods, but we are free to mess it up real bad too.


So you interpret the Gods not humanistic  Gods are man made projections) as I do, but religiously as if they always were there or fell out of the blue. I would say that this dogmatic atheism or atheistic dogmatism is contradicting itself.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> So you interpret the Gods not humanistic  Gods are man made projections) as I do, but religiously as if they always were there or fell out of the blue. I would say that this dogmatic atheism or atheistic dogmatism is contradicting itself.


Not sure if I follow. Just saying that an ethical/legal framework in order to cover all the complexities of life must necessarily be complex itself, but complexities entail that the framework will be full of contradictions and exceptions, which is a challenge to the claim by the religious that they are absolute and as revealed by the Gods. This is why we have libraries full of religious apologetics, but arguably the more and more we have to pile on there, the less satisfying it all becomes (Nietzsche - "God is Dead"). Wotan unknowingly gets trapped by his own treaties - in order to preserve his power, he would have had to violate the very treaties from which his power is derived. It's all very damning of absolutism.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Not sure if I follow. Just saying that an ethical/legal framework in order to cover all the complexities of life must necessarily be complex itself, but complexities entail that the framework will be full of contradictions and exceptions, which is a challenge to the claim by the religious that they are absolute and as revealed by the Gods. This is why we have libraries full of religious apologetics, but arguably the more and more we have to pile on there, the less satisfying it all becomes (Nietzsche - "God is Dead"). Wotan unknowingly gets trapped by his own treaties - in order to preserve his power, he would have had to violate the very treaties from which his power is derived. It's all very damning of absolutism.


Strange to take over religious thinking & suppositions in such an uncritical manner...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The gods represent a primitive conception of morality, one based on law. Law inevitably comes to grief on the fluid seas of reality: laws will always be broken - they _must_ be broken in order not to oppress and destroy us - and so long as no higher conception of morality supervenes, hypocrisy will reign and general destruction will ensue. Wotan glimpses this but is trapped in the power structure which undergirds him. Brunnhilde dares to defy the law in the name of compassionate, and later passionate, love, which enables her to become the agent by which the old moral order is ended.

Wagner's desire to find and show an alternative to the primitive morality of law (and its uncodified parents, convention and tradition) - which, by the way, he saw (rightly or wrongly) as the essential characteristic of Judaism (which ought to give pause to those who claim to know how his antisemitism plays into his art!) - was a principal leitmotif which he developed through successive works. In his prose writings he deplores the tyrannical, jealous, bloodthirsty Jehovah and contrasts with him the humane Jesus, motivated entirely by compassion. The conflict between these moral universes is dramatized in _Tannhauser, Tristan,_ the _Ring,_ and _Parsifal,_ more and more succinctly as Wagner's art matures.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Not sure if I follow. Just saying that an ethical/legal framework in order to cover all the complexities of life must necessarily be complex itself, but complexities entail that the framework will be full of contradictions and exceptions, which is a challenge to the claim by the religious that they are absolute and as revealed by the Gods. This is why we have libraries full of religious apologetics, but arguably the more and more we have to pile on there, the less satisfying it all becomes (Nietzsche - "God is Dead"). Wotan unknowingly gets trapped by his own treaties - in order to preserve his power, he would have had to violate the very treaties from which his power is derived. It's all very damning of absolutism.


Heh heh. I see we're saying much the same thing, and more or less at the same moment.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Richard Wagner is a subversive revolutionary, who uses the Ring to infest people's minds with heroes that are crooks. Later on he starts on Parsifal and all of a sudden everyone thinks the old fox has unlearned his tricks.... Well, _Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur_ : "The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Richard Wagner is a subversive revolutionary, who uses the Ring to infest people's minds with heroes that are crooks. Later on he starts on Parsifal and all of a sudden everyone thinks the old fox has unlearned his tricks.... Well, _Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur_ : "The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."


I might ask who those "hero crooks" are, but I'm afraid of what you'll come up with next.

_Parsifal_ was not conceived "all of a sudden" - it gestated for as long a period as the _Ring_, about 25 years, concurrently with it and with _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_ - and is not a reversal but a development in the evolution of Wagner's thinking. Nietzsche misunderstood both works; he didn't like Wagner's Schopenhauerian sympathies, among other things, and was too attached to the Wagner of his youthful imaginings to see what the composer was really doing. I've been pointing out the inner consistency and logical succession of Wagner's artistic vision on this forum for two years, and I can assure you that my mind is not "infested."

Spend fifty years looking at Wagner's works as I have, and then get back to us.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Someone should compile Woodduck's musings on Wagner into a book. Always fascinating and thoughtful.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> The gods represent a primitive conception of morality, one based on law. . .
> 
> Wagner's desire to find and show an alternative to the primitive morality of law (and its uncodified parents, convention and tradition) - which, by the way, he saw (rightly or wrongly) as the essential characteristic of Judaism (which ought to give pause to those who claim to know how his antisemitism plays into his art!) - was a principal leitmotif . . .


I remember a lecture by Slavoj Zizek where he argued that Wotan was a Jewish stereotype.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

gardibolt said:


> Someone should compile Woodduck's musings on Wagner into a book. Always fascinating and thoughtful.


________

Yes, I agree.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> I remember a lecture by Slavoj Zizek where he argued that Wotan was a Jewish stereotype.


This is a fascinating idea to entertain, at least for as long as it takes us to set it to one side. The generally encountered view among those looking for "Jews" in Wagner's operas is that his villains - usually Alberich, Mime, Beckmesser and Klingsor - are intended as embodiments of Jewish stereotypes. I've always argued against this interpretation (and it is nothing more than an interpretation) on the basis of several convictions: that Wagner's antisemitism, as he expressed it in writing, was not concerned with stereotypical notions of Jewishness but with the Jews' cultural influence and the philosophical and psychological implications of Judaism; that his artistic sensibility and vision were focused on deeper, more universal issues; that the"heroes" and "villains" in his operas are too ambiguous and mixed in their motives and behavior to be assigned to simplistic, stereotypical categories; that his works, and the characters in question, are thoroughly comprehensible with no reference whatever to Jews; that Wagner, as voluble as he was, never said or wrote one word indicating representations of Jews in his works; and that he actually stated an aversion to the idea of portraying Jews in works for the stage.

With all this in mind, it's worth noting that _if_ we want to find Jews or Jewishness on Wagner's stage, the characters of Wotan in the _Ring_ (more than Alberich) and Titurel in _Parsifal_ (more than Klingsor) are the prime representatives of the "old order" of authoritarianism and legalism which Wagner saw as the sins of Judaism to which Christianity (as he conceived it in his nonsupernatural, Feuerbachian way) was a corrective and a way forward to a freer, fuller humanity. It isn't Alberich and Klingsor who are the real enemies to be obliterated, but Wotan and Titurel, in relation to whom the former pair are mere "wannabes," seeking power but finally impotent to achieve or hold it.

Ultimately, the fact that we can find Jewish stereotypes as easily - or more easily - in the father of Brunnhilde or the founder of the Knights of the Grail as in a love-deprived dwarf or a castrated sorcerer indicates to me that all the gleeful "Jew spotting" indulged in by certain scholars and the popular press that parrots them is foolish and futile.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> With all this in mind, it's worth noting that _if_ we want to find Jews or Jewishness on Wagner's stage, the characters of Wotan in the _Ring_ (more than Alberich) and Titurel in _Parsifal_ (more than Klingsor) are the prime representatives of the "old order" of authoritarianism and legalism which Wagner saw as the sins of Judaism to which Christianity (as he conceived it in his nonsupernatural, Feuerbachian way) was a corrective and a way forward to a freer, fuller humanity. It isn't Alberich and Klingsor who are the real enemies to be obliterated, but Wotan and Titurel, in relation to whom the former pair are mere "wannabes," seeking power but finally impotent to achieve or hold it.


Interesting: You offer a Wagnerian witness, why Germany under Hitler went on the road to genocide against the Jews: the eradication of the Jews would mean the radical end of the '_"old order" of authoritarianism and legalism_'. From the corrective, Christianity, he only accepted the version that equated it to a holy fool, Parsifal.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Interesting: You offer a Wagnerian witness, why Germany under Hitler went on the road to genocide against the Jews: the eradication of the Jews would mean the radical end of the '_"old order" of authoritarianism and legalism_'. From the corrective, Christianity, he only accepted the version that equated it to a holy fool, Parsifal.


I question your concept of Nazism. There was no Jewish "order of authoritarianism and legalism" in Europe. That is my designation for Wagner's dramatization of moral, psychological and social repressiveness and violence, which he felt Judaism embodied in its theology, but which in real life he also recognized in the non-Jewish civilizations he hoped, at least as a young man, could be replaced by a freer culture. Hitler wasn't trying to obliterate an "order of authoritarianism and legalism," but a race, based on a concept of race not yet current in Wagner's day, and not entertained by Wagner until it was presented to him by its early advocate Gobineau - and rejected by Wagner when it was - in the years after _Parsifal_ was completed. Thus, race isn't what the _Ring_ or _Parsifal_ are about, however strenuously the "Jew-spotters" try to rationalize Wagner's work to accord with their theories of a Wagner-Hitler lineage.

Wagner's conception of Christianity and of Jesus, as expressed in _Parsifal_ and adumbrated in both the _Ring_ and _Meistersinger,_ was Feuerbachian (non-supernatural, a-theistic) to begin with, and infused with Schopenhauer's quasi-Buddhist ethics. It does not "equate" to the character of Parsifal in particular. He is simply a particular character with a story - a character essentially reincarnating Siegfried, Wagner's failed "hero" whom the composer now sees as capable of choosing a radically different path - the Buddha's path of awakening to suffering and compassion - and thus saving both himself and others.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

i see Der Ring as a prediction of how the Apocalypse brought about & explanation of technologies behind it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> i see Der Ring as a prediction of how the Apocalypse brought about & explanation of technologies behind it.


Could you elaborate? What apocalypse and what technologies are you referring to?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Could you elaborate? What apocalypse and


the end of the world, that is.



Woodduck said:


> what technologies are you referring to?


dealing in shares symbolised by the ring.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I question your concept of Nazism. There was no Jewish "order of authoritarianism and legalism" in Europe. That is my designation for Wagner's dramatization of moral, psychological and social repressiveness and violence, which he felt Judaism embodied in its theology, but which in real life he also recognized in the non-Jewish civilizations he hoped, at least as a young man, could be replaced by a freer culture. Hitler wasn't trying to obliterate an "order of authoritarianism and legalism," but a race, based on a concept of race not yet current in Wagner's day, and not entertained by Wagner until it was presented to him by its early advocate Gobineau - and rejected by Wagner when it was - in the years after _Parsifal_ was completed. Thus, race isn't what the _Ring_ or _Parsifal_ are about, however strenuously the "Jew-spotters" try to rationalize Wagner's work to accord with their theories of a Wagner-Hitler lineage.
> 
> Wagner's conception of Christianity and of Jesus, as expressed in _Parsifal_ and adumbrated in both the _Ring_ and _Meistersinger,_ was Feuerbachian (non-supernatural, a-theistic) to begin with, and infused with Schopenhauer's quasi-Buddhist ethics. It does not "equate" to the character of Parsifal in particular. He is simply a particular character with a story - a character essentially reincarnating Siegfried, Wagner's failed "hero" whom the composer now sees as capable of choosing a radically different path - the Buddha's path of awakening to suffering and compassion - and thus saving both himself and others.


OK, let us distinguish between Gobineau with his concept of race and Wagner with his linking of Judaism to "the old order". Whatever one may think in relation with the Jews, they are to be classified as obsolete, out-of-date, in short: Old Testament relics. Up to the middle of the 19th century Jews & Judaism existed for the intellectual elite of Europe only as such a theological concept. They didn't exist for them as real people of flesh and blood. Feuerbach's philosophy however exposed theological concepts and theology as such as highly questionable. Because of the attacks from the philosopher Feuerbach and the theologian David Friedrich Strauss theological thought underwent an implosion of credibility. In its wake Christianity was discredited. And all of a sudden the Jews were discovered as real, being flesh and blood, and even Jesus was discovered as being a Jew. In this turmoil Richard Wagner tried to save Christianity with Parsifal. You still try to save Wagner from plotting against the Jews as if Richard kept belonging to the old school theologians. I tell you he was in the forefront of subversive attack on the suddenly really existing scapegoats of a Christianity that itself became obsolete, out-of-date.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> OK, let us distinguish between Gobineau with his concept of race and Wagner with his linking of Judaism to "the old order". Whatever one may think in relation with the Jews, they are to be classified as obsolete, out-of-date, in short: Old Testament relics. Up to the middle of the 19th century Jews & Judaism existed for the intellectual elite of Europe only as such a theological concept. They didn't exist for them as real people of flesh and blood. Feuerbach's philosophy however exposed theological concepts and theology as such as highly questionable. Because of the attacks from the philosopher Feuerbach and the theologian David Friedrich Strauss theological thought underwent an implosion of credibility. In its wake Christianity was discredited. And all of a sudden the Jews were discovered as real, being flesh and blood, and even Jesus was discovered as being a Jew. In this turmoil Richard Wagner tried to save Christianity with Parsifal. You still try to save Wagner from plotting against the Jews as if Richard kept belonging to the old school theologians. I tell you he was in the forefront of subversive attack on the suddenly really existing scapegoats of a Christianity that itself became obsolete, out-of-date.


How do you know that "up to the middle of the 19th century Jews & Judaism existed for the intellectual elite of Europe only as such a theological concept. They didn't exist for them as real people of flesh and blood"? And what's the significance of that for the matter at hand? For that matter, what _is_ the matter at hand? If we're talking about Wagner and his work, I doubt that he imagined he was "saving Christianity" just by writing an opera. Wouldn't it be simpler and more reasonable just to say that in _Parsifal_ he was embodying his concept of a viable Christianity in a story in which rigid, authoritarian, supernatural, literalistic religion is shown to be repressive, destructive and doomed?

I am not trying to "save Wagner from plotting against the Jews," because Wagner didn't plot against the Jews. He griped about them constantly (while offering them employment, hospitality, shelter, and praise), but to my knowledge no plots have been uncovered. Are you privy to something the rest of us aren't?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

it is necessary to point out, Wagners and most other peoples antisemitism has nothing to do with said 20th century events, which in fact had nothing to do with antisemitism as such but a dissent in the ranks of Jewish world; all this Holocaust business stems from the Zionists based in the US ordering to punish European Jews for their leaning towards Bolshevism instead of Yahwe and force them emigrate to America and Palestine (and bring there money with themselves).


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> How do you know that "up to the middle of the 19th century Jews & Judaism existed for the intellectual elite of Europe only as such a theological concept. They didn't exist for them as real people of flesh and blood"? And what's the significance of that for the matter at hand? For that matter, what _is_ the matter at hand? If we're talking about Wagner and his work, I doubt that he imagined he was "saving Christianity" just by writing an opera. Wouldn't it be simpler and more reasonable just to say that in _Parsifal_ he was embodying his concept of a viable Christianity in a story in which rigid, authoritarian, supernatural, literalistic religion is shown to be repressive, destructive and doomed?
> 
> I am not trying to "save Wagner from plotting against the Jews," because Wagner didn't plot against the Jews. He griped about them constantly (while offering them employment, hospitality, shelter, and praise), but to my knowledge no plots have been uncovered. Are you privy to something the rest of us aren't?


Read about Moses Mendelssohn in the middle of the 18th century and about his grandson, who was baptised. Before that baptism (according to Heinrich Heine who was baptised in 1825: "the ticket of admission to European culture") they were treated as non-existent nobodies who were shut out from making a career inside European culture.

Wagner's Parsifal is based on catholic legends & myths, not on the Bible itself. Why? Because the Bible itself became suspect as a Jewish book. I find Parsifal an attempt to create a sterile Christianity, sterilised & cut off from all references to its roots. Your validation of Parsifal is truly Wagnerian in spirit, but please, wouldn't it be simpler and more reasonable to call it Bavarian or Bavarian catholic than 'Christian'? Or even more simple: Wagnerian?


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## cheftimmyr (Oct 28, 2015)

A simple answer, to a complex work: The Ring ends with an optimistic aura (for me)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Read about Moses Mendelssohn in the middle of the 18th century and about his grandson, who was baptised. Before that baptism (according to Heinrich Heine who was baptised in 1825: "the ticket of admission to European culture") they were treated as non-existent nobodies who were shut out from making a career inside European culture.
> 
> Wagner's Parsifal is based on catholic legends & myths, not on the Bible itself. Why? Because the Bible itself became suspect as a Jewish book. I find Parsifal an attempt to create a sterile Christianity, sterilised & cut off from all references to its roots. Your validation of Parsifal is truly Wagnerian in spirit, but please, wouldn't it be simpler and more reasonable to call it Bavarian or Bavarian catholic than 'Christian'? Or even more simple: Wagnerian?


I haven't tried to "validate" _Parsifal_ - it needs no validation - _or_ to argue that Wagner's Christianity is Biblical. Wagner didn't approve of _any_ religious orthodoxy, including Christianity. I have never called _Parsifal_ a "Christian" work, at least not without acknowledging or explaining its peculiarities. But no, it is not "Catholic" either.

Yes, the Bible is in part a Jewish book, and Wagner, like many others, liked to think of Christ as non-Jewish and Christianity as a correction, rather than an outgrowth, of Judaism. The beginning of that debate appears in the Bible itself, in the arguments between Paul and the Jerusalem church. No need to go over it here. Wagner, a thoroughgoing eclectic driven by artistic need, took what he wanted from Christianity, as he did from whatever other sources appealed to him. He almost composed a Buddhist opera (_Die Sieger_), but that source found its way into _Parsifal._ The synthesis is indeed "Wagnerian." The opera is unique - powerfully so - and it transcends any label we can apply to it. Best not to label it at all.

To get back to the OP: is _Parsifal_ optimistic or pessimistic? Nietzsche would have said the latter. I'll say: more optimistic than the _Ring_.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

If Parsifal is Bavarian Buddhistic I would say: slightly more pessimistic than the Ring. In Buddhism for the individual there is no escape possible out of the cycle of suffering. In the Ring however there is cold comfort: the suffering of the individual is being shared with Walhalla going down as well... 

The Bible is Jewish in all its parts. Saul the pharisee just remained the same pharisee, when his name became Paul. His way of thinking is thoroughly rabbinical & Jewish. All attempts to project 'Christianity' or 'Christian' back on the authors & books of the New Testament are anachronistic. St Augustine is Christian.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> If Parsifal is Bavarian Buddhistic I would say: *slightly more pessimistic than the Ring. In Buddhism for the individual there is no escape possible out of the cycle of suffering.* In the Ring however there is cold comfort: the suffering of the individual is being shared with Walhalla going down as well...
> 
> *The Bible is Jewish in all its parts.* Saul the pharisee just remained the same pharisee, when his name became Paul. His way of thinking is thoroughly rabbinical & Jewish. All attempts to project 'Christianity' or 'Christian' back on the authors & books of the New Testament are anachronistic. St Augustine is Christian.


I understand the Buddhist cycle of suffering, and the nature of release from it, differently. But then, _Parsifal_ is not a dramatization of Buddhism any more than it's a dramatization of Christianity, so you can't point to either religion as a basis for judging the opera's "optimism" or "pessimism." I'll say again what I've said before on these threads: look first to the work itself, not to its sources, to theories about it, to history in its aftermath, or to Wagner's presumed character or intentions. Those things are potentially useful, but only in the light of the work's music, text, and mise en scene.

If you think _Parsifal_ is less optimistic than the _Ring,_ what is the internal evidence? In the _Ring_ the hoped-for "hero" is murdered, and the work ends with a cataclysm and no more than a hope of better things to come. In _Parsifal_ the hero learns compassion, enacts a healing, and reunites the Grail with the Spear. A similar evolution of consciousness is implicit in the _Ring _(Brunnhilde, gaining wisdom, returns the ring to the Rhine), but in _Parsifal_ the path to maturity is explicitly and sharply drawn.

(The Bible is not Jewish - i.e. Judaic - in all its parts. Yeah, Paul [Saul] was a Jew, but incarnational theology, the death and rebirth of a god, human sacrifice, and the eating and drinking of a god's flesh and blood, derive from the mystery religions and are distinctly pagan. Christianity is a syncretic religion, not a branch of Judaism. But this is a music thread!)


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I understand the Buddhist cycle of suffering, and the nature of release from it, differently. But then, _Parsifal_ is not a dramatization of Buddhism any more than it's a dramatization of Christianity, so you can't point to either religion as a basis for judging the opera's "optimism" or "pessimism." I'll say again what I've said before on these threads: look first to the work itself, not to its sources, to theories about it, to history in its aftermath, or to Wagner's presumed character or intentions. Those things are potentially useful, but only in the light of the work's music, text, and mise en scene.
> 
> If you think _Parsifal_ is less optimistic than the _Ring,_ what is the internal evidence? In the _Ring_ the hoped-for "hero" is murdered, and the work ends with a cataclysm and no more than a hope of better things to come. In _Parsifal_ the hero learns compassion, enacts a healing, and reunites the Grail with the Spear. A similar evolution of consciousness is implicit in the _Ring _(Brunnhilde, gaining wisdom, returns the ring to the Rhine), but in _Parsifal_ the path to maturity is explicitly and sharply drawn.
> 
> (The Bible is not Jewish - i.e. Judaic - in all its parts. Yeah, Paul [Saul] was a Jew, but incarnational theology, the death and rebirth of a god, human sacrifice, and the eating and drinking of a god's flesh and blood, derive from the mystery religions and are distinctly pagan. Christianity is a syncretic religion, not a branch of Judaism. But this is a music thread!)


Parsifal is the product of Richard Wagner's spinning with religious references and reminds in that way quite of Schopenhauer's way of thinking, not Feuerbach's. It ends up into a solipsism that is in a closed loop, cycling round & round within itself:

PARSIFAL

Ich wusste sie nicht.

GURNEMANZ

Wo bist du her?

PARSIFAL

Das weiss ich nicht.

GURNEMANZ

Wer ist sein Vater?

PARSIFAL

Das weiss ich nicht.

GURNEMANZ

Wer sandte dich dieses Weges?

PARSIFAL

Das weiss ich nicht.

GURNEMANZ

Dein Name denn?

PARSIFAL

Ich hatte viele,
doch weiss ich ihrer keinen mehr.

All these questions from Gurnemanz are unable and not intended to open up Parsifal. Especially "Wer ist *sein* Vater?" reveals that Wagner didn't *want* to say "Wer ist *dein* Vater?", what would really *reveal* who is Parsifal. No, Wagner chooses on purpose the in German weird, distant & unnatural sounding "sein" because he doesn't want a revelation to happen. Instead of revealing Parsifal to you and me the libretto spins on with the repetition of "Das weiss ich nicht" and keeps the solipsistic loop closed, mulling on and on. For some this dummy talk inside a bubble of foolishness is perhaps very interesting, who knows very religious, my attention is already turned away from the humbugging libretto towards the music, that is truly great. I'm not interested in _nicht-Wissen_, nor in _Wissen_, but in the *revelation* of a real human (or if you want: a real God) in front of me. Wagner however doesn't allow any revelation to happen in his libretto. But he's the almighty boss and he's a Buddhist.

(The Bible is about revelation, but this is a music thread!)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Parsifal is the product of Richard Wagner's spinning with religious references and reminds in that way quite of Schopenhauer's way of thinking, not Feuerbach's. It ends up into a solipsism that is in a closed loop, cycling round & round within itself:
> 
> PARSIFAL
> 
> ...


How do you think of this stuff?

"Sein" is a misprint. I don't know where or when it first appeared, but most translations, including the Schott score on my piano and all my recordings, have, properly, "dein." "Sein" is not "weird, distant and unnatural-sounding"; it's just wrong. Your whole argument is based on a printer's error - and on a lack of understanding, both of Wagner's dramatic methods and of his intentions in this particular opera.

Everything in your post tells me that you don't know what Wagner is doing in _Parsifal_ - and, possibly, in his work as a whole. It appears that you're just fishing for ways to insult a work of art you don't understand, and your past comments on Wagner and his work make me more than suspect that you're more interested in remaking him to fit your theories than in actual understanding. Well, fine. If you're happy with your view of _Parsifal_ as "humbugging," a "closed solipsistic loop," "mulling on and on," "dummy talk inside a bubble of foolishness" - well, not everyone is capable of appreciating everything. But then, not everyone feels the need to disparage what they can't appreciate, especially when the thing they can't appreciate is an acknowledged monument of Western culture which millions of people have found to be a profound experience.

In my approximately two years on this forum, I have spent many hours putting down thousands of carefully considered words exploring the meaning of this opera. Many other members have also contributed valuable thoughts. In the wider world, people are still writing books on it, attempting to go deeper through the layers of meaning they keep finding. "Dummy talk inside a bubble of foolishness" doesn't have that kind of power. And it's no answer to say that Wagner's music is great enough to save a nonsensical libretto, or that so many perceptive people can be fooled by it.

Wagner's works have always out-argued their detactors. They will continue to do so. The only "solipsistic bubbles of foolishness" are in the minds of those who keep trying to destroy the indestructible.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> How do you think of this stuff?
> 
> "Sein" is a misprint. I don't know where or when it first appeared, but most translations, including the Schott score on my piano and all my recordings, have, properly, "dein." "Sein" is not "weird, distant and unnatural-sounding"; it's just wrong. Your whole argument is based on a printer's error - and on a lack of understanding, both of Wagner's dramatic methods and of his intentions in this particular opera.
> 
> ...


Wagner's libretti are worlds apart from his music.

I've checked a lot of German editions and they all have "*sein*". You are bettering Wagner, but I stick to the telling text. Proof it with a critical edition.

Does there exist a critical edition of Parsifal? In 2016 still not according to one source on the internet. Any autographs of the Master himself?


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

The full scores available on IMSLP say "dein." I've only checked on two of the vocal scores, but they also say "dein."

I also don't understand how "Wer ist dein Vater?" would reveal who Parsifal is. Or what Gurnemanz is supposed to mean by "Wer is sein Vater?" Is the story that Gurnemanz asks Parsifal for the identity of the father of one of the squires? Are you creating an alternate story where Parsifal knows who his father is but doesn't tell Gurnemanz because that isn't quite the question that was asked?

Parsifal doesn't know who his father is. He had no connection to the world, no empathy. He shot the swan without thinking of it as a separate being. But that's starting to change, as Gurnemanz tells him about the swan, Parsifal starts to show remorse.

The opera is about his awakening, about his learning to care for others, and, eventually, to do something about that.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

This thread is hilarious although now a million miles away from the O.P. Keep it coming guys. I'm having a great time laughing at the back and forth. It seems like advantage Woodduck but Txllxt may serve an ace with his next riposte. Who knows, but I for one sit here agog with anticipation.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> The full scores available on IMSLP say "dein." I've only checked on two of the vocal scores, but they also say "dein."
> 
> I also don't understand how "Wer ist dein Vater?" would reveal who Parsifal is. Or what Gurnemanz is supposed to mean by "Wer is sein Vater?" Is the story that Gurnemanz asks Parsifal for the identity of the father of one of the squires? Are you creating an alternate story where Parsifal knows who his father is but doesn't tell Gurnemanz because that isn't quite the question that was asked?
> 
> ...


This is so clear right on the surface (and "Wer ist _sein_ Vater?" so obviously senseless) that it's hard to fathom anyone missing or evading it. But _Parsifal_ has meanings less obvious, and some quite subtle and even subversive. Wagner's deeper meanings don't contradict or invalidate his surface meanings. They merely cast a different, sometimes surprising light upon them, and show how fundamental the matters with which his poetic imagination was grappling and how precise he was in translating those matters into symbolic imagery.

_Parsifal_ repays study. Whatever we may think of Wagner's literary skills (opinions may differ), the libretto to _Parsifal_ is quite purposeful and can't be separated from the music which illuminates it. By the time he wrote his last opera, Wagner was a master of his craft, and _Parsifal_ is his most tightly constructed work.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Wagner's Ring is about how the powerful (gods) indulge in deception & destruction. If you tend towards stoicism or skepticism, the message may sound familiar and even likeable...

Wagner's Parsifal is the echo chamber of religion turning nuts. If you think it's about 'redemption', you have swallowed the pill that Wagner prepared for you. I just listen to the music, not to the ragbag of High Priest-slick. But of course, I'm like Parsifal, not understanding a syllable of this deep throttling (I love the basses!) sound of _Wissen_...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner's Ring is about how the powerful (gods) indulge in deception & destruction. If you tend towards stoicism or skepticism, the message may sound familiar and even likeable...
> 
> Wagner's Parsifal is the echo chamber of religion turning nuts. If you think it's about 'redemption', you have swallowed the pill that Wagner prepared for you. I just listen to the music, not to the ragbag of High Priest-slick. But of course, I'm like Parsifal, not understanding a syllable of this deep throttling (I love the basses!) sound of Wissen...


You oversimplify. That message (which, by the way, is not _all_ the _Ring_ is about), ought to sound familiar to any observer of politics or religion, but likeable only to those who practice, or aspire to, power over others. (Why, btw, should it be likeable to a stoic or a skeptic?)

The destructiveness of power is also a major theme in _Parsifal._ Don't let the sanctimony of Titurel and his minions fool you. Klingsor is Titurel's unacknowledged alter-ego - in Jungian terms, his shadow - just as Alberich is the shadow side of Wotan. The high priest and the sorcerer are both motivated by the same patriarchal will to dominion over the life-giving, "feminine" Grail, and they both have to die. Titurel's rule is as unsustainable as Wotan's, Klingsor is ultimately as impotent as Alberich. And just as only the defiantly loving Brunnhilde can effect the end of the gods, only a "fool" - that part of the psyche uncorrupted by politics/religion - can redeem overweening masculine power (effected by the return of the Spear to the feminine Grail's side) and bring about Titurel/Klingsor's end. _"Nicht soll der mehr verschlossen sein."_ The implication is ambiguous: is the Grail now to be left permanently uncovered, no longer a fetish but a constant fountain of life?

Wagner's operas illuminate each other in fundamental ways. Wagner never spelled out the parallels between the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_, but certain comments we have indicate that he was aware of them. _Parsifal_ was no renunciation, as Nietzsche thought it was. But of course you can ignore all this and just go on finding clever phrases with which to insult it. Does that feel good?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

You guys are making my brain hurt.:lol: I'm just going to enjoy the operas and not think too much about what they mean.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> You oversimplify. That message (which, by the way, is not _all_ the _Ring_ is about), ought to sound familiar to any observer of politics or religion, but likeable only to those who practice, or aspire to, power over others. (Why, btw, should it be likeable to a stoic or a skeptic?)
> 
> The destructiveness of power is also a major theme in _Parsifal._ Don't let the sanctimony of Titurel and his minions fool you. Klingsor is Titurel's unacknowledged alter-ego - in Jungian terms, his shadow - just as Alberich is the shadow side of Wotan. The high priest and the sorcerer are both motivated by the same patriarchal will to dominion over the life-giving, "feminine" Grail, and they both have to die. Titurel's rule is as unsustainable as Wotan's, Klingsor is ultimately as impotent as Alberich. And just as only the defiantly loving Brunnhilde can effect the end of the gods, only a "fool" - that part of the psyche uncorrupted by politics/religion - can redeem overweening masculine power (effected by the return of the Spear to the feminine Grail's side) and bring about Titurel/Klingsor's end. _"Nicht soll der mehr verschlossen sein."_ The implication is ambiguous: is the Grail now to be left permanently uncovered, no longer a fetish but a constant fountain of life?
> 
> Wagner's operas illuminate each other in fundamental ways. Wagner never spelled out the parallels between the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_, but certain comments we have indicate that he was aware of them. _Parsifal_ was no renunciation, as Nietzsche thought it was. But of course you can ignore all this and just go on finding clever phrases with which to insult it. Does that feel good?


Of course it feels good that I can enjoy Wagner's operas purely because of its musical merits. With the quality of his libretti however the most famous Shakespeare quote from Hamlet comes to my mind. Is it insulting to complain about that?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Florestan said:


> You guys are making my brain hurt.:lol: I'm just going to enjoy the operas and not think too much about what they mean.


That is the right course. One problem with Wagner is that his admirers want to read huge profundities into his operas which perhaps even Wagner didn't know were there. Its is Norse mythology - and pretty muddled at that. The libretti aren't actually that good - though it must be said that they are no worse than a lot of operas. I often wonder what Wagner would have done if he had had a librettist of the quality of da Ponte or Boito. But he didn't. So just quit worrying and pontificating about profundities and enjoy the music!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner's Ring is about how the powerful (gods) indulge in deception & destruction. If you tend towards stoicism or skepticism, the message may sound familiar and even likeable...
> 
> Wagner's Parsifal is the echo chamber of religion turning nuts. If you think it's about 'redemption', you have swallowed the pill that Wagner prepared for you. I just listen to the music, not to the ragbag of High Priest-slick. But of course, I'm like Parsifal, not understanding a syllable of this deep throttling (I love the basses!) sound of _Wissen_...


One problem with Parsifal is that the music is so utterly transcendent we assume the opera must have a profound meaning. The libretto is actually a muddle of religious and philosophical ideas. Some have read an even darker message into it. But the music kids us into thinking this is a work with a hugely profound message that only the enlightened can understand. Now Die Zauberflote is one of my favourite operas but Mozart's heavenly music isn't going to his me that the ragbag of a libretto has any great profound meaning. Neither is Wagner's music going to similarly kid me about Parsifal.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

DavidA said:


> One problem with Wagner is that his admirers want to read huge profundities into his operas which perhaps even Wagner didn't know were there.


Why is that a problem? Who are you to tell others what they should and shouldn't find to be profound? Myself and others don't find it to be a muddle of ideas at all, but a cohesive synthesis.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

DavidA said:


> One problem with Parsifal is that the music is so utterly transcendent we assume the opera must have a profound meaning. The libretto is actually a muddle of religious and philosophical ideas. Some have read an even darker message into it. But the music kids us into thinking this is a work with a hugely profound message that only the enlightened can understand. Now Die Zauberflote is one of my favourite operas but Mozart's heavenly music isn't going to his me that the ragbag of a libretto has any great profound meaning. Neither is Wagner's music going to similarly kid me about Parsifal.


Wagner and Schopenhauer actually have a lot in common: both are German, both lack humour and with every single word that ponderously is being ventilated both expect nothing less than total submission & adoration. I just want to enjoy Wagner (and Schopenhauer) light-heartedly.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Faustian said:


> Why is that a problem? Who are you to tell others who they should and shouldn't find to be profound? Myself and others don't find it to be a muddle of ideas at all, but a cohesive synthesis.


Like everyone else on TC I am merely giving my opinion. The problem is that Wagner's libretto does not in any way match the genius of the music. If it were not for the music I doubt whether people would give the libretto a second thought.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner and Schopenhauer actually have a lot in common: both are German, both lack humour and with every single word that ponderously is being ventilated both expect nothing less than total submission & adoration. I just want to enjoy Wagner (and Schopenhauer) light-heartedly.


I'll agree with that about Wagner. How anyone could enjoy Schopenhauer's mass of pessimism is beyond me!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Like everyone else on TC I am merely giving my opinion. The problem is that Wagner's libretto does not in any way match the genius of the music. If it were not for the music I doubt whether people would not give it a second thought.


Nobody gives _any_ opera a second thought without the music. What do you think opera is supposed to be?

If you were only "giving your opinion" no one would give a fig. Unfortunately you like to use words like "actually" and to assure your fellow debunkers that their resolute desire to be ignorant of Wagner's dramatic meanings represents "the right course." It may indeed be the right course for you. But in telling generations of musicians, music lovers, scholars, thinkers and writers - not to mention the composer himself - that the "right course" would be to deny their own insights, you are being overtly and inexcusably insulting. It is quite possible, David, that the vast accumulation of literature on the psychological, philosophical and political implications of Wagner's operas is not a total waste of ink, and that we are not wasting our time reading and contributing to it. Can you conceive of that possibility?

The only honest course for you is to admit that you, DavidA, are personally unable to see in Wagner's works what millions of other people do see. Why can't you just say that? Let me guess why: because when you do find a writer whose interpretation of Wagner strikes your fancy - I refer to Barry Millington and his ilk, whose desperate (and ludicrous) references to Beckmesser's "Jewish speech patterns" and attempts to read Wagner's plots as racist tracts, as if his operas were blackface minstrel shows - well, with that sort of "deeper meaning" you're gleefully on board!

Hear this: after two years of watching you enter discussion after discussion of Wagner for the sole purpose of snickering about how fundamentally meaningless his operas are and spitting on other people's attempts to understand them, with the result - no doubt desired by you - that the conversation is trivialized and the thread derailed, I (along with others, I can assure you) am sick to death of the game.

Really, can't you find something more constructive to do? Like telling us for the _n_th time how perfect the Divine Mozart is? And doing it on a Mozart thread, instead of here? I promise you, I will not show up there to snort at you and your fellow lovers of that composer for imagining that his work is worth talking about.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Nobody gives _any_ opera a second thought without the music. What do you think opera is supposed to be?
> 
> If you were only "giving your opinion" no one would give a fig. Unfortunately you like to use words like "actually" and to assure your fellow debunkers that their resolute desire to be ignorant of Wagner's dramatic meanings represents "the right course." It may indeed be the right course for you. But in telling generations of musicians, music lovers, scholars, thinkers and writers - not to mention the composer himself - that the "right course" would be to deny their own insights, you are being overtly and inexcusably insulting. It is quite possible, David, that the vast accumulation of literature on the psychological, philosophical and political implications of Wagner's operas is not a total waste of ink, and that we are not wasting our time reading and contributing to it. Can you conceive of that possibility?
> 
> ...


You sound like a crusader. Why this fanaticism with _ad hominem_ rancour? Wagner composed operas with libretti, that are weirdly uneconomical in the use of words. Moreover, the Ring and Parsifal are full of sermonising, that doesn't enchant me. But I notice that you endorse this spell.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> You sound like a crusader. Why this fanaticism with _ad hominem_ rancour? Wagner composed operas with libretti, that are weirdly uneconomical in the use of words. Moreover, the Ring and Parsifal are full of sermonising, that doesn't enchant me. But I notice that you endorse this spell.


To be frank, with the way you continuously twist the words of his librettos, place them in incomprehensible contexts, and cherry pick elements from them to fit your preconceived ideas of what they mean, I'm not surprised you find them "weirdly uneconomcial". Because they strike me as incredibly economical, and incredibly effective for the purpose they serve. And it also mystifies me the way you speak of the librettos and the music as if they are two separate, unconnected entities, when in fact they reinforce one another on all levels, and to try to understand the drama without taking into account the music, which fills in and clarifies the meanings of the words and action, is going to necessarily lead to a deficient interpretation.

But here's the thing. No one is criticizing you, or anyone else, for engaging and enjoying the works on whatever level they wish. Or not all. You're certainly not the first, or the last, who admire the music but find little to sympathize with or care about in terms of the dramatic aspects of the works. Such notables as Anton Bruckner were right there with you. However, when you start making statements that make the dramas out to be sinister, amoral, and imply that those who enjoy them on a deeper level are some how "under a spell", or being corrupted, or as DavidA says, flat out engaging in folly, you can expect to be challenged on that. And it does not make one fanatical to express as Woodduck has done over and over again, in an incredibly level-headed and eloquent manner, how the works can be understood as penetrating and insightful explorations into the human condition, and consummate journeys of reconciliation and self-understanding. In fact, far from amoral, I see Wagner as a great moralist, someone who is able to express profound questions and provide thoughtful answers on how exactly we can find meaning in our world, and in the things we do. So you don't agree. Great. Wonderful. Let's move on.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> You sound like a crusader. Why this fanaticism with _ad hominem_ rancour? Wagner composed operas with libretti, that are weirdly uneconomical in the use of words. Moreover, the Ring and Parsifal are full of sermonising, that doesn't enchant me. But I notice that you endorse this spell.


My only crusade is against the trivialization of greatness committed by people infatuated with their own ignorance.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Faustian said:


> To be frank, with the way you continuously twist the words of his librettos, place them in incomprehensible contexts, and cherry pick elements from them to fit your preconceived ideas of what they mean, I'm not surprised you find them "weirdly uneconomcial". Because they strike me as incredibly economical, and incredibly effective for the purpose they serve. And it also mystifies me the way you speak of the librettos and the music as if they are two separate, unconnected entities, when in fact they reinforce one another on all levels, and to try to understand the drama without taking into account the music, which fills in and clarifies the meanings of the words and action, is going to necessarily lead to a deficient interpretation.
> 
> But here's the thing. No one is criticizing you, or anyone else, for engaging and enjoying the works on whatever level they wish. Or not all. You're certainly not the first, or the last, who admire the music but find little to sympathize with or care about in terms of the dramatic aspects of the works. Such notables as Anton Bruckner were right there with you. However, when you start making statements that make the dramas out to be sinister, amoral, and imply that those who enjoy them on a deeper level are some how "under a spell", or being corrupted, or as DavidA says, flat out engaging in folly, you can expect to be challenged on that. And it does not make one fanatical to express as Woodduck has done over and over again, in an incredibly level-headed and eloquent manner, how the works can be understood as penetrating and insightful explorations into the human condition, and consummate journeys of reconciliation and self-understanding. In fact, far from amoral, I see Wagner as a great moralist, someone who is able to express profound questions and provide thoughtful answers on how exactly we can find meaning in our world, and in the things we do. So you don't agree. Great. Wonderful. Let's move on.


Guiseppe Verdi's Nabucco did offer meaning to the Italians in uniting them as a people. The moral message is clear: those Hebrew slaves on the stage, that are we, the Italian people! In Richard Wagner the German people found the meaning for their being German & uniting them as a people. You hover with your 'moralism' high above the real world in which we live, so high that no answer is allowed to be offered why there exists an undeniable link between Wagner's operas and the history of Germany, just as there exist a undeniable link between Nabucco and the history of Italy. Face it: Wagner's genius in the Ring & Parsifal did cast a spell over the German people. Quite as strong as Verdi did enchant the Italians with Nabucco. Perhaps even stronger.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Guiseppe Verdi's Nabucco did offer meaning to the Italians in uniting them as a people. The moral message is clear: those Hebrew slaves on the stage, that are we, the Italian people! In Richard Wagner the German people found the meaning for their being German & uniting them as a people. You hover with your 'moralism' high above the real world in which we live, so high that no answer is allowed to be offered why there exists an undeniable link between Wagner's operas and the history of Germany, just as there exist a undeniable link between Nabucco and the history of Italy. Face it: Wagner's genius in the Ring & Parsifal did cast a spell over the German people. Quite as strong as Verdi did enchant the Italians with Nabucco. Perhaps even stronger.


What are you talking about?

Wagner has "cast a spell" over people worldwide, and not the same "spell" in every case. But this is just verbal fog: your statement says nothing concrete, about either Wagner's appeal or his cultural importance and influence.

What's your purpose in perpetuating vague associations between Wagner and "the history of Germany"? - by which I assume you mean Nazi Germany, since that's what people who make these occult statements usually mean. Yes, Hitler, the individual, loved Wagner's operas for their music and for what he thought he saw in them. To most of "the German people" Wagner was, at most, a composer of long, strange, intermittently enjoyable operas based on forgotten fairy tales.

The idea that "in Richard Wagner the German people found the meaning for their being German & uniting them as a people" is absurd beyond belief.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

DavidA said:


> How anyone could enjoy Schopenhauer's mass of pessimism is beyond me!


It's beyond most of us, which is why it took Nietzsche to come along with his antidote of "self-overcoming"


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> The problem is that Wagner's libretto does not in any way match the genius of the music.


they match alright, so let's not make up things.



DavidA said:


> How anyone could enjoy Schopenhauer's mass of pessimism is beyond me!


what you enjoy or not is of little importance when talk concerns Wagner and Schopenhauer.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> What are you talking about?
> 
> Wagner has "cast a spell" over people worldwide, and not the same "spell" in every case. But this is just verbal fog: your statement says nothing concrete, about either Wagner's appeal or his cultural importance and influence.
> 
> ...


Interesting how you turn away from historical truth into a mythical _L'art pour l'art_ escapism. Are you telling me the German people were not proud of Richard Wagner? Especially in opposition with Guiseppe Verdi, the pride of the Italians? I'm not pushing Wagner & his oeuvre into Nazi hands, but you cannot deny that Nazi hands pulled Wagner & his oeuvre into their legacy. Wagner's obsession with death and sacrifice was too complicated for dumbo's like Hitler & co. to understand, but that doesn't mean that Wagner's genius didn't have a sinister influence on them. If you do not wish or want that Wagner's greatness is being trivialised, than please, don't sanitise him.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Interesting how you turn away from historical truth into a mythical _L'art pour l'art_ escapism. *Are you telling me the German people were not proud of Richard Wagner? *Especially in opposition with Guiseppe Verdi, the pride of the Italians? I'm not pushing Wagner & his oeuvre into Nazi hands, but *you cannot deny that Nazi hands pulled Wagner & his oeuvre into their legacy. Wagner's obsession with death and sacrifice was too complicated for dumbo's like Hitler & co. to understand, but that doesn't mean that Wagner's genius didn't have a sinister influence on them.* If you do not wish or want that Wagner's greatness is being trivialised, than please, *don't sanitise him.*


As always, what you're claiming I'm doing and saying is not what I'm doing and saying.

I have not said that "the German people" are not "proud" of Wagner. Many no doubt are, and should be, in the sense that people everywhere are proud of the great contributors to their culture. So what? That is a far cry from what I objected to, namely your statement that _"in Richard Wagner the German people found the meaning for their being German & uniting them as a people."_ I called that statement absurd because it is absurd. The congealing of the German people into a nation was not induced by any "spell" cast by Wagner's operas, and as for his rambling and convoluted writings on "Germanness," nobody was reading them.

I have never said that "the Nazis" didn't make some symbolic use of Wagner (or, if you insist on another creepily vague formulation, "pull him into their legacy"). But by "the Nazis" we have to understand mainly Hitler. "The Nazis," by and large, couldn't have cared less about those long spectacles in which singers uttering archaic German spend long periods of time doing incomprehensible things or nothing at all (even the spiritually stunted Hitler didn't really understand them and preferred Lehar); the rank and file did not relish sitting through _Tristan, Parsifal_ or the _Ring _to please _Der Fuehrer,_ and Wagner's genius, far from having a "sinister influence on them," was quite beyond their comprehension and probably sent them directly to the nearest beer hall for an antidote.

In light of Wagner's actual significance for Nazism - the ideology of which depended on neither his operas nor his writings (to which Hitler never refers and may never even have read), and could have done perfectly well (or ill) without him - my plea for a balanced evaluation of his place in German culture is hardly "sanitization." You seem a member in good standing of That Big Spooky Wagner The Proto-Nazi Society. You're going to have to come up with better stuff than you have to attract members to that club.

I find that those who repeat the clicheed meme about Wagner's influence on Nazism tend to be awfully vague about just what it was, and they usually single out ("cherry-pick,"as Faustian says) those elements in Wagner's works which they can interpret as supporting their biases. There are some pretty contrived interpretations out there (from _"sein"_ versus _"dein"_ to Millington's Jewish Beckmesser to Gutman's homoerotic-racist _Parsifal_).

(BTW - _Sinister?_ _Sanitize?_ Words like that positively drip with prejudice and sensationalism. And you talk about my "crusade"...)


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> they match alright, so let's not make up things.
> 
> what you enjoy or not is of little importance when talk concerns Wagner and Schopenhauer.


This is the problem we have. Wagner's music kids us the libretti are somehow profound.

Because frankly the respective philosophies of both Wagner and Schopenhauer are of no importance to me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ...I find that those who repeat the cliched meme about Wagner's influence on Nazism tend to be awfully vague about just what it was, and they usually single out ("cherry-pick,"as Faustian says) those elements in Wagner's works which they can interpret as supporting their biases...


Then how do you explain that Nazi obersturmbannführer uniform found in Wagner's closet when he passed away? Huh?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Saying 'Wagner has "cast a spell" over people worldwide' is really overestimating his cultural importance. Let's face it outside the circles of opera even in the West most people have never heard of Wagner apart from the Ride of the Valkyries. Let alone his operas. We have to come out from our ivory tower and realised that opera is a very minority taste enjoyed by a few people, myself included. Even in Nazi Germany Wagner might of been a favourite with Adolf but most of his goons were bored stiff. You only have to look at the photos of them going to Bayreuth to see they were like people going to the dentist!


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> As always, what you're claiming I'm doing and saying is not what I'm doing and saying.
> 
> I have not said that "the German people" are not "proud" of Wagner. Many no doubt are, and should be, in the sense that people everywhere are proud of the great contributors to their culture. So what? That is a far cry from what I objected to, namely your statement that _"in Richard Wagner the German people found the meaning for their being German & uniting them as a people."_ I called that statement absurd because it is absurd. The congealing of the German people into a nation was not induced by any "spell" cast by Wagner's operas, and as for his rambling and convoluted writings on "Germanness," nobody was reading them.
> 
> ...


We agree about Wagner's greatness, that shouldn't be trivialised. But this is striking: as soon as this greatness is being acknowledged, Richard must be glorified in one single way: the same way as the Dalai Lama, Gandhi or Tolstoy are being glorified *uncritically*. No, Richard Wagner's greatness is different, is *dangerous*. I listen to the Ring and I notice a warmongering spirit, a disturbing glorification of war & going to war. No other composer has shown his genius in relation to this in such an unrestrained manner. Well, I do not like to trod on downtrodden paths, but when a bunch of dressed up military have to sit in Bayreuth through one of Wagner's Ring operas, they for sure will applaud to that. They do not understand much, but this they do. This doesn't mean, that I anachronistically want to label & decorate the Ring with Buddhist swastikas, but I do want to point out the sinister quality of Wagner's greatness.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

You mean Hermann Goering didn't go to the opera? He's got ring in his name!


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> I listen to the Ring and I notice a warmongering spirit, a disturbing glorification of war & going to war. No other composer has shown his genius in relation to this in such an unrestrained manner.


Well my goodness, apparently you've never encountered the stirring music and _actual_ cries for war of "Guerra! Guerra!" in Norma that can inflame the emotions:






Or the Triumphal March fro Aida, glorifying the spoils of victory in war:






Bellini and Verdi, now there were some wicked dudes.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> I listen to the Ring and I notice a warmongering spirit, a disturbing glorification of war & going to war.


Where? How?
xxxxxxxxxxx


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

amfortas said:


> Where? How?
> xxxxxxxxxxx


Well obviously watching those Valkyries scooping up those dead heroes on horseback and carrying them to the paradise of Valhalla drove those Nazi soldiers to sacrifice their lives so they could share in the same riches. Duh. Where have you been? I just thank my lucky stars every day that I'm not imbued with the German spirit that could be corrupted and persuaded by such a display!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Faustian said:


> Well obviously watching those Valkyries scooping up those dead heroes on horseback and carrying them to the paradise of Valhalla drove those soldiers to sacrifice their lives so they could share in the same riches. Duh. Where have you been? I just thank my lucky stars every day that I'm not imbued with the German spirit that could be corrupted and persuaded by such a display!


LOL. All kidding aside, the Valkyries are a good example. You'd have to take a very skewed view of The Ring to think Wagner intends to glorify these figures and their warlike ways.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

amfortas said:


> Where? How?
> xxxxxxxxxxx


You haven't listened to Götterdämmerung yet? Hagen calling for war.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> You haven't listened to Götterdämmerung yet? Hagen calling for war.


Um . . . can we agree Hagen is the villain of that piece?

It's not enough to point out warlike passages in a work. Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ has plenty of carnage. Does HE glorify war?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Faustian said:


> Well my goodness, apparently you've never encountered the stirring music and _actual_ cries for war of "Guerra! Guerra!" in Norma that can inflame the emotions:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You want to say that Bellini and Verdi are on par with Wagner's genius? That's what I call: trivialising.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

We've been through this before:



TxllxT said:


> Just let the music do its work: isn't this beautiful? Isn't Hagen's call to arms exciting (is there something in _this world_ that can match this excitement?) ? Doesn't it make your blood boil? Wagner's music is making one able to enjoy war. This is what I mean with the hailing of immorality; it means that something one normally would disapprove (like enjoying war, blood shedding) is shown in an artistic context to be beautiful & acceptable. Well, I for one *adore* this part of Götterdämmerung because it does make my blood boil, but at the same time I know it's immoral.
> Your praise of the good things this world has to offer doesn't mention that Wagner went far beyond the love of nature, the love of other human beings. He wants you to feel as a god, to become a god and go down fullbloodedly into the _Götterdämmerung_.





mountmccabe said:


> War? You do understand that Hagen is calling the vassals to prepare for a _wedding_, not war, right?
> 
> Hagen talks of sacrifices to Wotan, Froh, Donner, and Fricka, but this is showing the cycle of the gods. In _Das Rheingold_ they are powerful and important; by _Götterdämmerung_ they are gone, or at least entirely offstage. Rather than building castles and raging and adventuring they are hiding away in that castle, waiting to die. All that's left are the rituals of the humans who have taken over.
> 
> Hagen isn't calling anyone to war, and neither is Wagner. Hagen _is_ calling the people to perform rituals to the gods, but Wagner is showing us how these gods have fallen and that they are powerless.





TxllxT said:


> From Wikipedia:
> "_Hagen summons the Gibichung vassals to welcome Gunther and his bride. He does this by sounding the *war-alarm*. The vassals are surprised to learn that the occasion is not battle, but their master's wedding and party_."
> 
> You don't hear the call to war? Hear, hear!!!!!
> ...





mountmccabe said:


> To be fair, it is not a happy call. Hagen has no friendly wishes for those to be married. This is all about manipulation. Hagen is the villain of the piece, everything he does is deception, with ulterior motives. The music here does not make war sound enjoyable; Hagen could not have approached this in such a way; that would in no way serve his purpose. Yes, his literal call is to war:
> 
> "Waffen! Waffen! Waffen durchs Land! Gute Waffen! Starke Waffen! Scharf zum Streit. Not ist da!"
> (To arms! To arms! All take up your weapons, good weapons! Strong weapons, sharpend for battle! There is danger!)
> ...


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

I discover Wagner's greatness more in his exploration of a-morality than in his explorations of love, redemption, sacrifice etc.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> I discover Wagner's greatness more in his exploration of a-morality than in his explorations of love, redemption, sacrifice etc.


And that's fine. I would only submit, respectfully, that *all* of those elements are very much in play in this complex work.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

amfortas said:


> Um . . . can we agree Hagen is the villain of that piece?
> 
> It's not enough to point out warlike passages in a work. Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ has plenty of carnage. Does HE glorify war?


Yes, and the villain is being vindicated. In _War and Peace_ you will not find that. I'm not booing Wagner, I want to show what he's exploring: *feel* like a villain.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> You want to say that Bellini and Verdi are on par with Wagner's genius? That's what I call: trivialising.


Yes, you are trivializing the genius of Verdi and Bellini.



TxllxT said:


> Yes, and the villain is being vindicated. In _War and Peace_ you will not find that. I'm not booing Wagner, I want to show what he's exploring: *feel* like a villain.


How exactly is he being vindicated? I would concede the point that Wagner had a masterly way of providing a window into the minds of his characters, and allowing us the audience to _understand_ and _feel_ their motivations in a unique way due to the power of the music, and that includes the "villains" in all their spite and resentment. But they are never vindicated by the course of the narrative.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Faustian said:


> Yes, you are trivializing the genius of Verdi and Bellini.
> 
> How exactly is he being vindicated? I would concede the point that Wagner had a masterly way of providing a window into the minds of his characters, and allowing us the audience to _understand_ and _feel_ their motivations in a unique way due to the power of the music, and that includes the "villains" in all their spite and resentment. But they are never vindicated, and this behavior is never condoned by the course of the drama.


Another example: a god (Wotan) behaving like a villain, stealing, cheating etc. and *feel* how it is to be a god, who is above morality...

I think Wagner is greater than all Italian composers together...


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> Another example: a god (Wotan) behaving like a villain, stealing, cheating etc. and *feel* how it is to be a god, who is above morality...


None of those actions are vindicated, or endorsed, either. But I see the drama from a angle. Instead of looking at Wotan as a "God" who is "above morality" (which he's not, that's kind of the point), try looking at how Wotan is _us_, humanity, symbolizing our existential dillemmas, writ large, depicted on the stage.

But anyways. You didn't answer my question regarding how Hagen is vindicated.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> Yes, and the villain is being vindicated. In _War and Peace_ you will not find that. I'm not booing Wagner, I want to show what he's exploring: *feel* like a villain.


No doubt, Wagner provides a visceral thrill with Hagen's call to arms. Villains, and villainy, are always seductive in works of art--that's why some have called Satan the true hero of _Paradise Lost_, and Blake could maintain that Milton "was of the Devil's party without knowing it."

In Wagner's Ring, I think it's indisputable, not only that love, sacrifice, and compassion are the overt "meaning" of the work, but that those themes receive at least as powerful a musical evocation as the warlike elements.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Faustian said:


> None of those actions are vindicated, or endorsed, either. But you didn't answer my question regarding how Hagen is vindicated.


Hagen receives admiration from all these small Hagens around him and Wagner's music is whippingly strong here. Wotan is a god, who shambles the shackles of morality. Of course it's only happening on stage, it's contained, but still it's an exploration of what would happen if there is no morality anymore. This fired Nietzsche's interest in Wagner's operas and explains his disillusion with Parsifal.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> Hagen receives admiration from all these small Hagens around him and Wagner's music is whippingly strong here.


I would say his music is whippingly strong throughout the entire Ring, while depicting a whole range of conflicts, as amfortas pointed out. Still, that doesn't amount to a vindication of Hagen's trickery and villainy.



> Of course it's only happening on stage, it's contained, but still it's an exploration of what would happen if there is no morality anymore.


Not if there is _no_ morality, but if the foundations for our old morality had been usurped. What do we replace it with?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Faustian said:


> Not if there is _no_ morality, but if the foundations for our old morality had been usurped.


Now just track this borderline of old and new, that you distinguish, and let Wagner move you - moved by his music - into the abyss of a-morality: that's were Wotan resides, and Hagen, and Alberich etc.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Now just track this borderline of old and new, that you distinguish, and let Wagner move you - moved by his music - into the abyss of a-morality: that's were Wotan resides, and Hagen, and Alberich etc.


If you feel "moved into the abyss of a-morality" by characters like Wotan and Hagen, no one is likely to stop your downward slide. Me, I've never been so moved. But wouldn't it be the sensible thing to attribute this feeling to some susceptibility in yourself, and not blame a composer who at every juncture in his work is critical of those who live in that abyss, who shows the destruction which they bring upon others and themselves, and who is always seeking salvation? Whether he succeeds in finding salvation may be debated, but his quest is unremitting from _Der Fliegende Hollander_ to _Parsifal._


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> You want to say that Bellini and Verdi are on par with Wagner's genius? That's what I call: trivialising.


Verdi's final two operas are certainly on a par with Wagner's best. Falstaff is a work of breathtaking genius, the only opera imo to rival Mozart


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> If you feel "moved into the abyss of a-morality" by characters like Wotan and Hagen, no one is likely to stop your downward slide. Me, I've never been so moved. But wouldn't it be the sensible thing to attribute this feeling to some susceptibility in yourself, and not blame a composer who at every juncture in his work is critical of those who live in that abyss, who shows the destruction which they bring upon others and themselves, and who is always seeking salvation? Whether he succeeds in finding salvation may be debated, but his quest is unremitting from _Der Fliegende Hollander_ to _Parsifal._


My quest into Wagner's operas resembles Nietzsche's quest. Nietzsche found salvation wherever & whenever he could liberate himself from Christian morality. Your 'always seeking salvation' is blurring Wagner's (Nietzsche's) explorations outside Christianity. Or do you mean 'always seeking salvation' as it is meant in the traditional Christian manner?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Verdi did ascend to the heights at the end of a long composing career, and I can agree in finding his last two operas as fine as any ever written. He may well be thought comparable to Mozart in this, but I wouldn't say that he's easily comparable to Wagner, who differs from all previous, and most subsequent, composers in the mythic/symbolic nature of his music dramas. It isn't that his operas are "better" than all others, but that his artistic goals were highly original and, I believe, beyond the capacity of any other composer, no matter how accomplished, to equal either in the imagining or in the execution. Others may express with great poignancy the emotions of people as we know them; Wagner routinely burrows into places we rarely glimpse in others or in ourselves, places often terrifying and ecstatic from the terrain of our unconscious lives which, if we can contact them, can change and expand our sense of what we are as humans. Those places are not always pleasurable, and part of Wagner's genius is to make us enjoy (some would say "seduce us into enjoying") the journey. Of other works for the lyric stage, only a few have similarly explored such brave new worlds.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> My quest into Wagner's operas resembles Nietzsche's quest. Nietzsche found salvation wherever & whenever he could liberate himself from Christian morality. Your 'always seeking salvation' is blurring Wagner's (Nietzsche's) explorations outside Christianity. Or do you mean 'always seeking salvation' as it is meant in the traditional Christian manner?


Not sure what you mean by "the traditional Christian sense." Christianity isn't monolithic. Wagner's characters are always seeking to heal themselves of some deep wound or curse, often self-inflicted, and reach some higher, freer level of being, but Wagner's idea of what that was and how it was to be found evolved. It's the dynamic, not the substance, which I'm referring to, but the substance is spiritual, in the broad sense of pertaining to consciousness and its evolution. What other opera composer is so concerned with this universal quest, or with exploring its meaning? It was a great project, no matter how we judge its success.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> My quest into Wagner's operas resembles Nietzsche's quest. Nietzsche found salvation wherever & whenever he could liberate himself from Christian morality. Your 'always seeking salvation' is blurring Wagner's (Nietzsche's) explorations outside Christianity. Or do you mean 'always seeking salvation' as it is meant in the traditional Christian manner?


Sounds as if you need to find salvation by doing what Wagner's heros / heroines had the habit of doing - dying! Have a true lve-death - ride a horse into a bonfire! :lol:


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> Verdi's





DavidA said:


> Falstaff


it's exactly where the libretto doesn't go well with the music.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> it's exactly where the libretto doesn't go well with the music.


Oh come on! I find that statement incomprehensible
To quote
Did The Merry Wives of Windsor, flimsiest of farces and one of the Bard's weaker plays (written, it would seem, in a hurry) have sufficient dramatic conflict and character interest for the master musical dramatist? When we come out of the cinema or switch off the TV after watching a disappointing adaptation, we often hear someone say, 'nothing like as good as the book'. Boito, with Verdi's help, provided a rare exception: a libretto that was better than the play. He achieved this in a number of ways. First, by condensing Shakespeare's plot and tightening the structure: for example, the Fat Woman of Brentford episode, the second of Falstaff's 'trials', is excised; the Fenton-Anne love story is dispensed in brief snatches (Boito wrote to Verdi, 'I should like, as one sprinkles sugar on a tart, to sprinkle the whole comedy with that gay love, without collecting it together at any one point'). Secondly, Boito introduces in a masterly way glimpses of the great Falstaff from Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 by lifting at least eight passages from the earlier plays, most notably the famous soliloquy about honour. Finally, Verdi, the astute and experienced man of the theatre, having realised that the linen basket scene in Act 2 was the dramatic high point of the piece and that Act 3 might prove to be an anticlimax, cleverly overcame this by ensuring that the music rose to ever more impressive heights: the enchanting fairies' music, the love music, and culminating in the great fugal finale, 'Tutto nel mondo è burla' ('Everything in the world's a jest') - a joyful rejoinder to the pessimism of Jacques' 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It.

The music actually fits the libretto perfectly. It reflects the rumbustious nature of Shakespeare's play. Unless, of course, you have the Victorian view of Shakespeare as 'the heavenly bard'.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Oh come on! I find that statement incomprehensible
> To quote
> Did The Merry Wives of Windsor, flimsiest of farces and one of the Bard's weaker plays (written, it would seem, in a hurry) have sufficient dramatic conflict and character interest for the master musical dramatist? When we come out of the cinema or switch off the TV after watching a disappointing adaptation, we often hear someone say, 'nothing like as good as the book'. Boito, with Verdi's help, provided a rare exception: a libretto that was better than the play. He achieved this in a number of ways. First, by condensing Shakespeare's plot and tightening the structure: for example, the Fat Woman of Brentford episode, the second of Falstaff's 'trials', is excised; the Fenton-Anne love story is dispensed in brief snatches (Boito wrote to Verdi, 'I should like, as one sprinkles sugar on a tart, to sprinkle the whole comedy with that gay love, without collecting it together at any one point'). Secondly, Boito introduces in a masterly way glimpses of the great Falstaff from Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 by lifting at least eight passages from the earlier plays, most notably the famous soliloquy about honour. Finally, Verdi, the astute and experienced man of the theatre, having realised that the linen basket scene in Act 2 was the dramatic high point of the piece and that Act 3 might prove to be an anticlimax, cleverly overcame this by ensuring that the music rose to ever more impressive heights: the enchanting fairies' music, the love music, and culminating in the great fugal finale, 'Tutto nel mondo è burla' ('Everything in the world's a jest') - a joyful rejoinder to the pessimism of Jacques' 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It.
> 
> The music actually fits the libretto perfectly. It reflects the rumbustious nature of Shakespeare's play. Unless, of course, you have the Victorian view of Shakespeare as 'the heavenly bard'.


Not sure whom you're quoting, but I agree with all of this.

Now if we could just get you to appreciate Wagner.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> The music actually fits the libretto perfectly. It reflects the rumbustious nature of Shakespeare's play.


nope, in effect it kills the play. Otello is where Verdi was spot on. Falstaff is just music, though a masterpiece, but not up to Shakespeare mood.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

much better was Salieri's take on Falstaff -


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Not sure what you mean by "the traditional Christian sense." Christianity isn't monolithic. Wagner's characters are always seeking to heal themselves of some deep wound or curse, often self-inflicted, and reach some higher, freer level of being, but Wagner's idea of what that was and how it was to be found evolved. It's the dynamic, not the substance, which I'm referring to, but the substance is spiritual, in the broad sense of pertaining to consciousness and its evolution. What other opera composer is so concerned with this universal quest, or with exploring its meaning? It was a great project, no matter how we judge its success.


So Wotan needs to heal himself and reach a higher, freer level of being? He's a god, who is defined with having the attribute of immortality: so any 'healing' is fake like the titan Prometheus, who is daily being visited by a vulture. And what is higher, freer than being a god? Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity aims at its hypocrisy, its double-dealing and double-facedness. So if the talk is about 'salvation' and other high spiritual thoughts, beware, beware: look at those who are making their profit out of it. My admiration for Wagner is based on his awareness of this hypocrisy. His characters are *no* saints. Your interpretation of Wagner shows a blind eye for wickedness and an unexpected naivety.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> So Wotan needs to heal himself and reach a higher, freer level of being? He's a god, who is defined with having the attribute of immortality: so any 'healing' is fake like the titan Prometheus, who is daily being visited by a vulture. And what is higher, freer than being a god?


Wagner's gods are very human and, as it turns out, very mortal. And surely the entire Ring hinges around a Wotan who is *not* free.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> So Wotan needs to heal himself and reach a higher, freer level of being? He's a god, who is defined with having the attribute of immortality: so any 'healing' is fake like the titan Prometheus, who is daily being visited by a vulture. And what is higher, freer than being a god? Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity aims at its hypocrisy, its double-dealing and double-facedness. So if the talk is about 'salvation' and other high spiritual thoughts, beware, beware: look at those who are making their profit out of it. My admiration for Wagner is based on his awareness of this hypocrisy. His characters are *no* saints. Your interpretation of Wagner shows a blind eye for wickedness and an unexpected naivety.


Your consistent need to criticize the interpretations of others regarding the work and accusations that they have a "blind eye" towards it strikes me as especially odd considering you yourself have admitted that your appreciation of Wagner lies in his exploration of the amoral and wicked, while themes of love, redemption, sacrifice and others hold no appeal to you. However the point is all of these themes exist _together_ in the work, and those who wish to understand the work on _it's terms_ have to understand the way these elements are presented and relate to one another throughout the Ring. No one here has exhibited a blind-spot of the portrayal of wickedness in the drama, or made any of the characters out to be saints, however they understand the greater context these things exist in. Wickedness and amorality do not exist in a vacuum in this universe, and are not glorified or vindicated in anyway whatsoever.

Even your understanding of Wotan's character is incredibly limited, because you insist on focusing on certain aspects of his character, like his immortality and hypocrisy, while completely ignoring others, such as his eventual _mortality_, his lawfulness, his renouncement of power and bequeathing the world to Brunnhilde and Siegfried. Yes, he _is_ trying to heal himself and reach a higher, freer level of being! That's a large part of what the work is about! Perhaps you would see that if you took a step back, and stop trying to turn the narrative into some sort of proto-Nietzschean tract, which it most certainly is not.

As I suggested before, if you insist on trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, it's no wonder you consider the libretto, and the work as a whole, as some sort of unintelligible hodgepodge. Enjoy the work on whatever level you wish. But to criticize it, Wagner, and others for the ways it does not adhere to the ideas you have of what the work should be about, or the ways it differs from Nietzsche's philosophy, is not only highly unfair but shortsighted.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> So Wotan needs to heal himself and reach a higher, freer level of being? He's a god, who is defined with having the attribute of immortality: so any 'healing' is fake like the titan Prometheus, who is daily being visited by a vulture. And what is higher, freer than being a god? Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity aims at its hypocrisy, its double-dealing and double-facedness. So if the talk is about 'salvation' and other high spiritual thoughts, beware, beware: look at those who are making their profit out of it. My admiration for Wagner is based on his awareness of this hypocrisy. His characters are *no* saints. Your interpretation of Wagner shows a blind eye for wickedness and an unexpected naivety.


An _unexpected naivete?_ Well, I suppose I should feel complimented that you didn't expect it. If you get to call me naive, what do I get to call _you_ without being reported for insulting you?

Yes, Wotan does need to heal himself, and makes the best effort he can. Unlike his dark brother Alberich, he comes to see the consequences of his crimes. He tries to redeem the situation. That it proves unredeemable without his own death is his tragedy and the whole significance of the character, who, along with Brunnhilde, is the central character of the _Ring_. If you think that Wotan's significance stops with his "wickedness," you're missing the point of it all.

To your strangely disconnected collection of remarks:

1.) Wotan is not immortal. Immortality is not part of the "definition" of a god. You're importing Christian theology where it's irrelevant.

2.) What is "fake healing," and what does Prometheus have to do with it?

3.) Nietzsche's views on Christian morality or hypocrisy have no relevance to the _Ring_ or to Wagner in general.

4.) No one is "profiting" from Wotan's efforts to redeem himself and leave behind a better world.

5.) No one has called Wagner's characters "saints." I said in my last post that his protagonists are "seeking to heal themselves of some deep wound or curse, often self-inflicted, and reach some higher, freer level of being." That is not a description of saintliness, but of man's universal struggle to overcome his shortcomings and his woundedness and find fulfillment in life. I have to ask whether you've ever engaged in that struggle, since you can't (or won't) recognize it in Wagner, and are more attuned to the portrayals of wickedness and hypocrisy for which you admire him. But Wagner's genius at portraying wickedness is only powerful to the extent to which the yearning for an alternative is important and prominent. It's Wagner's driving passion as a dramatist, embodied in the struggles of his protagonists and even of his villains, to express and fulfill that yearning.

Honestly, I can't quite figure out what you're up to (maybe because I'm "naive"). To the extent that you appreciate Wagner, you seem to do so by chopping him to bits and taking the bits out of context, applying to them whatever associations they suggest to you. But if you're missing, and refuse to consider, the overarching themes that give the "bits" coherent meaning, you will never have a comprehensive view of Wagner's art, or a true appreciation of it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> nope, in effect it kills the play. Otello is where Verdi was spot on. Falstaff is just music, though a masterpiece, but not up to Shakespeare mood.


It is Shakespeare personified as Shakespeare would have seen it`. Visit the Globe Theatre some time

Otello iOS actually better than Shakespeare's original which always bores me to tears. Verdi's music makes it into a masterpiece.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> much better was Salieri's take on Falstaff -


Oh please! :lol:


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

My true appreciation of Wagner's operas begins and ends with the music. The central character of the _Ring_ is not Brunnhilde, nor Wotan, but *the music* he composed in a _Gesamtkunstwerk_ interwoven with other themes. Wotan and Brunhilde are presented in music, for the rest they do not exist, or exist solely in a mythological context that ought not to be taken too seriously. In Wagner's days mythology was hot, but I'm not heating up with a stupendous display of fetishism, nor do I get enthralled with the cult of _Wissen_. I take the libretti of the _Ring_ & _Parsifal_ with a big mythical grain of salt.

„Den Ring muss ich haben!" I always must laugh because of the fetish...


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> It is Shakespeare personified as Shakespeare would have seen it


bold statement.



DavidA said:


> Shakespeare's original which always bores me to tears.


and that is *your* problem.



DavidA said:


> Verdi's music makes it into a masterpiece.


i did not say Verdi's Otello not a masterpiece; its in fact one of my favorite operas.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> *My true appreciation of Wagner's operas begins and ends with the music.* The central character of the _Ring_ is not Brunnhilde, nor Wotan, but the music he composed in a _Gesamtkunstwerk_ interwoven with other themes. Wotan and Brunhilde are presented in music, for the rest they do not exist, or exist solely in *a mythological context that ought not to be taken too seriously. *In Wagner's days mythology was hot, but *I'm not heating up with a stupendous display of fetishism, nor do I get enthralled with the cult of Wissen*. I take the libretti of the _Ring_ & _Parsifal_ with a big mythical grain of salt.
> 
> „Den Ring muss ich haben!" *I always must laugh because of the fetish*...


Well, finally. A clear statement of where you stand. Thank you.

Now that you've been willing to drop your scattershot pseudo-analysis and to state plainly that you don't take Wagner's dramatic ideas seriously - just as DavidA tells us, over and over - would you have the good grace to stop telling those who _do_ take Wagner's art seriously that they don't know what it's about? It's been my suspicion - no, actually a pretty strong conviction - that you are more interested in generating heat than shedding light, more interested in making an effect (preferably an irritating effect) than in having a constructive conversation. Am I correct?

Speaking for myself, I am here to share an understanding of, and an enthusiasm for, the works of an artist I consider one of the greatest creative minds in human history. I have lived with these operas for half a century, I have found them extraordinary not merely as music but as integrated and trenchant musico-dramatic conceptions, and they continue to reveal fresh nuances of meaning to me (as they do to the world at large) as the years pass. I therefore do not appreciate being told that my interest, my understanding, and my carefully thought-out verbal expression of my thinking on Wagner, constitute a _"stupendous display of fetishism."_

You're smart enough to know when you're insulting people, and not mentioning names does not excuse it. For you, who now admit plainly to caring so little about this subject, to use such language of those from whom you might actually learn something if you weren't so busy throwing wrenches into the spokes of dialogue, constitutes a stupendous display of something worse than fetishism. Only the constraints of this "family-oriented" forum prevent me from saying what it is.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Well, finally. A clear statement of where you stand. Thank you.
> 
> Now that you've been willing to drop your scattershot pseudo-analysis and to state plainly that you don't take Wagner's dramatic ideas seriously - just as DavidA tells us, over and over - would you have the good grace to stop telling those who _do_ take Wagner's art seriously that they don't know what it's about? It's been my suspicion - no, actually a pretty strong conviction - that you are more interested in generating heat than shedding light, more interested in making an effect (preferably an irritating effect) than in having a constructive conversation. Am I correct?
> 
> ...


You're dogmatic. Please, allow other people to be different, think differently, appreciate differently. How come that I like Da Ponte libretti even without Mozart's music? Wagner's greatness is musical. But I see, you do not laugh at all with Wagner? All these fetishes, like ring, spear, Tarnkappe...:lol: Compare that with Mozart & Da Ponte!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> You're dogmatic. Please, allow other people to be different, think differently, appreciate differently. How come that I like Da Ponte libretti even without Mozart's music? Wagner's greatness is musical. But I see, you do not laugh at all with Wagner? All these fetishes, like ring, spear, Tarnkappe...:lol: Compare that with Mozart & Da Ponte!


So now I'm "dogmatic"? You're insulting.

Wagner has enough facets to support many interpretations, and these don't necessarily contradict one another. What I object to is people who condemn and mock things they don't even care enough about to try to understand. I've encountered this attitude not only with regard to Wagner but in recent threads about Beethoven, where people feel entitled to say ignorant, ridiculous and inflammatory things and succeed not in advancing the conversation but in tying it in knots. I call this trolling - trolling that disguises itself as "thinking differently." I can tell the difference, and I find it contemptible.

You've admitted that Wagner impresses you only for his music. Great. How long does it take to make that point? So why go on spinning off-the-wall theories about "sein" versus "dein," Wagner's incitement to war, etc. (none of which are based on real study of the operas), pretending that you know something about Wagner's dramatic intentions when you admit to not even finding them interesting or valuable, provoking thoughtful people to mount careful counterarguments, and then continuing to throw out expressions of scorn for the whole endeavor? If this isn't deliberate provocation, I don't know what is.

You claim to "see that I do not laugh at all with Wagner." Um...who knows what the hell _that_ means? But if you would look more carefully, what you would see is people who have a depth of understanding of a subject that you admit to despising and are concerned only to mock. And I have news for you: when you ignorantly mock something that has been the passion of innumerable serious scholars and music lovers for the last century and a half, you offend people who share that passion and you look ridiculous doing it. You either don't know that, or don't care. But I'm not on this forum to be mocked, or to indulge people who are here to spit on things I care about.

You've made your point. You think Wagner's works, beyond their music, are not worth your time. Fine. Please abide by that conviction, put your time into something that seems to you more worthwhile, and allow others to enjoy constructive dialogue about these rich and fascinating works of art. That, as I understand the matter, is what we're supposed to be here for.


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## ma7730 (Jun 8, 2015)

I'll be honest in that the _Ring_ does not have the same effect on me as other Wagner works, partially because of how "distant" the characters in it seem. Personally, I find it far easier to relate to Tristan's longing or Parsifal's desire for meaning than Siegfried's lust for his aunt.
However, having said this, I don't think the "unbelievable" aspects of the Ring hinder my enjoyment whatsoever. I have found the ability to enjoy the _Ring_ by entering its world in its own terms, as opposed to forcing it to ascribe to our (post-)modern standards of what people feel and say. And to say that these richly crafted characters do not exist because of the so-called ridiculous precepts of the story is to unjustly dismiss a central part of the work.
The characters of the Ring are not two dimensional. In many ways, they are far more realistic than the "everyday" characters of other operas. Yes, perhaps you have never been condemned to slumber by your father, but have you not gone against an authority, but realize you truly are powerless. These characters, just because they are distant (and symbolic) in some ways, are still some of the most compelling in the entire repetoire.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ma7730 said:


> I'll be honest in that the _Ring_ does not have the same effect on me as other Wagner works, partially because of how "distant" the characters in it seem. Personally, I find it far easier to relate to Tristan's longing or Parsifal's desire for meaning than Siegfried's lust for his aunt.
> However, having said this, I don't think the "unbelievable" aspects of the Ring hinder my enjoyment whatsoever. I have found the ability to enjoy the _Ring_ by entering its world in its own terms, as opposed to forcing it to ascribe to our (post-)modern standards of what people feel and say. And to say that these richly crafted characters do not exist because of the so-called ridiculous precepts of the story is to unjustly dismiss a central part of the work.
> *The characters of the Ring are not two dimensional. In many ways, they are far more realistic than the "everyday" characters of other operas. Yes, perhaps you have never been condemned to slumber by your father, but have you not gone against an authority, but realize you truly are powerless. These characters, just because they are distant (and symbolic) in some ways, are still some of the most compelling in the entire repetoire.*


A lot of operatic characters are rather "stock" types, defined mainly by a predominant trait or emotion (the nasty villain, the amorous suitor, the perky chambermaid, the philandering husband, the betrayed and melancholy lady). Corresponding characters in Wagner are generally more original and more complex in their motivations, and often ambivalent in character. As villains, Ortrud and Telramund, Alberich and Klingsor are interesting and distinctive characters who at certain moments can elicit sympathy and even achieve a kind of grandeur in their deluded malevolence; they ask us to contemplate, not just evil, but the nature of evil. The melancholy and deeply conflicted Tristan is anything but a conventional operatic hero/lover - we are induced to feel his frustration, and ultimately he allows us to see the primal loneliness and woundedness that drove him to try to escape into love's illusory world. Similarly, Isolde is not the typical betrayed operatic noblewoman, standing around passively bemoaning her fate. Other characters in Wagner are even more original, culminating in the enigmatic Kundry, whose multifaceted nature - seductress, seer, servant, medicine woman, mother - led Leonie Rysanek to call her "all women."

Wagner's characters may not look like the people next door, but they express with sometimes uncomfortable clarity and focus things the people next door harbor within themselves but may express rarely or repress altogether. When it comes to showing us what humanity is made of, Wagner is not satisfied with the tip of the iceberg, and he reveals that what lies below the surface can be dangerous. Tristan's delirious outpourings may be the world's first psychotherapy session, and Kundry may be the first example of multiple personality disorder.

I don't think any other composer has given us such a fascinating and original gallery of characters, honing in with unsparing intensity on basic aspects of human nature rarely explored before, and certainly never in opera.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> You're dogmatic. *Please, allow other people to be different, think differently, appreciate differently. *How come that I like Da Ponte libretti even without Mozart's music? Wagner's greatness is musical. But I see, you do not laugh at all with Wagner? All these fetishes, like ring, spear, Tarnkappe...:lol: Compare that with Mozart & Da Ponte!


Here! Here! :lol:


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

ma7730 said:


> I'll be honest in that the _Ring_ does not have the same effect on me as other Wagner works, partially because of how "distant" the characters in it seem. Personally, I find it far easier to relate to Tristan's longing or Parsifal's desire for meaning than Siegfried's lust for his aunt.
> However, having said this, I don't think the "unbelievable" aspects of the Ring hinder my enjoyment whatsoever. I have found the ability to enjoy the _Ring_ by entering its world in its own terms, as opposed to forcing it to ascribe to our (post-)modern standards of what people feel and say. And to say that these richly crafted characters do not exist because of the so-called ridiculous precepts of the story is to unjustly dismiss a central part of the work.
> The characters of the Ring are not two dimensional. In many ways, they are far more realistic than the "everyday" characters of other operas. Yes, perhaps you have never been condemned to slumber by your father, but have you not gone against an authority, but realize you truly are powerless. These characters, just because they are distant (and symbolic) in some ways, are still some of the most compelling in the entire repetoire.


It's not the realistic nature of the characters but whether or not you can associate with them and sympathise with their predicament. I can (eg) with Rigoletto and his daughter even though Rig is obviously a toe rag. But I can't with Wotan in the same situation because he's such a dumbcluck.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> You're dogmatic. Please, allow other people to be different, think differently, appreciate differently.


I'm not sure I've ever seen someone on TC tell others not to be different, not to think differently, or not to appreciate differently. People certainly are free to criticize one's arguments. If I say that I like Mozart more than Beethoven, people can ask me why but ought not criticize my taste. If I say Mozart's Marriage of Figaro contains no humor, people are free to take issue with that view and give arguments to the contrary.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure I've ever seen someone on TC tell others not to be different, not to think differently, or not to appreciate differently. People certainly are free to criticize one's arguments. If I say that I like Mozart more than Beethoven, people can ask me why but ought not criticize my taste. *If I say Mozart's Marriage of Figaro contains no humor,* people are free to take issue with that view and give arguments to the contrary.


You would need a pretty good argument to prove your case! :lol:


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure I've ever seen someone on TC tell others not to be different, not to think differently, or not to appreciate differently. People certainly are free to criticize one's arguments. If I say that I like Mozart more than Beethoven, people can ask me why but ought not criticize my taste. If I say Mozart's Marriage of Figaro contains no humor, people are free to take issue with that view and give arguments to the contrary.


At the risk of another infraction, sometimes I wish we had a "thumbs-down" option.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

I really like the answers & true believing Wagnerian analysis of Woodduck and I notice similarities between his taking stand and the way Wagner stood in life... :tiphat:


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Here! Here! :lol:


Hear, hear! :lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Here is an interesting note:



> Without a doubt the highest achievement in the musical drama repertoire of all times. and an essential philosophical and sociological essay of the modern age, Der Ring des Nibelungen is and will always be a contemporary testament of Man's ethics and revolutionary spirit.
> 
> Because, first and foremost, Wagner's titanic saga is not about Gods or mythological figures, but solely about Man. Humanity is there depicted in all of its morality, passions, deeds, intrigues, evil, compassion, ambitions, subjugation, power struggles and class wars, racism, faithfulness, deception and love.


From: Man Explained--Wagner's Ring


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I have always thought that the overall message of Wagner's Ring Cycle is all lives, even for the gods, will be filled with tragedy and end in death, all struggles will eventually come to pointless failure, and life goes on without us all the same . . . if you are lucky enough to find love, enjoy it while you can.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2017)

Enjoy it while you can...........


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

> Here is an interesting note:
> 
> Without a doubt the highest achievement in the musical drama repertoire of all times. and an essential philosophical and sociological essay of the modern age, Der Ring des Nibelungen is and will always be a contemporary testament of Man's ethics and revolutionary spirit.
> 
> ...


I do not get this reduction stress on "solely about Man", because if Gods are Man's projections (according to Feuerbach), than in the Ring these projections happen to be very much alive, stealing, cheating, killing etc. like real mafiosi. The Godfather or Ringleader Wotan is a God and the story is about how deceptive our own projections, our myth-makings are.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

JAS said:


> I have always thought that the overall message of Wagner's Ring Cycle is all lives, even for the gods, will be filled with tragedy and end in death, all struggles will eventually come to pointless failure, and life goes on without us all the same . . . if you are lucky enough to find love, enjoy it while you can.


I think this is too pessimistic. The Ring begins with the Rhinemaidens being wooed by Alberich. Well, do you let yourself go on slippery roads in real life or not? Always there's a decision to be made between wise & unwise in real life. In the Ring the plot is that the protagonists mostly take unwise decisions with crooked intentions. Be happy: We are not like them.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2017)

Thats the capital question is it not,are we not like them,hidden in dark corners waiting to come out when the conditions are right?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Traverso said:


> Thats the capital question is it not,are we not like them,hidden in dark corners waiting to come out when the conditions are right?


Wagner's operas are exploring these hidden dark corners, so that we get educated to recognise them in time and act & think differently.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2017)

So it is not all rubbish ?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

TxllxT said:


> I think this is too pessimistic. The Ring begins with the Rhinemaidens being wooed by Alberich. Well, do you let yourself go on slippery roads in real life or not? Always there's a decision to be made between wise & unwise in real life. In the Ring the plot is that the protagonists mostly take unwise decisions with crooked intentions. Be happy: We are not like them.


While it is certainly true that the operas are replete with characters who make bad decisions (with useful results in terms of drama), I think this is too aphoristic an answer. What were the wise decisions that might have been made to avoid the whole mess? Don't have giants build Valhalla? Don't promise to pay them with the goddess who helps you to stay young? These are obviously decisions that are fraught with future pain and problems, but what are the wise choices that we would be taught?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

JAS said:


> While it is certainly true that the operas are replete with characters who make bad decisions (with useful results in terms of drama), I think this is too aphoristic an answer. What were the wise decisions that might have been made to avoid the whole mess? _*Don't have giants build Valhalla? Don't promise to pay them with the goddess who helps you to stay young?*_ These are obviously decisions that are fraught with future pain and problems, but what are the wise choices that we would be taught?


But if these mythological gods don't make these unwise decisions, the opera becomes very boring.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> In the Ring the plot is that the protagonists mostly take unwise decisions with crooked intentions. Be happy: We are not like them.


We also see characters make decisions--some wiser than others--with the best of intentions. In that sense, we *are* like them.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

JAS said:


> I have always thought that the overall message of Wagner's Ring Cycle is all lives, even for the gods, will be filled with tragedy and end in death, all struggles will eventually come to pointless failure, and life goes on without us all the same . . . if you are lucky enough to find love, enjoy it while you can.


Yeah. I feel at one level the Ring is the story of Wotan's search for self-knowledge, including the knowledge that law without self-sacrificing love brings only an illusory freedom, and only an empty joy. But Wotan's self knowledge is also man's knowledge of his own predicament, projected onto the screen of Valhalla. Wotan's anxiety for the future is our anxiety, and peace can be bestowed on the gods only when we find peace, through accepting our mortality, renouncing the will to power, and devoting ourselves to those whose love we have consciously or unconsciously counted on. This is what could be meant by Brunnhilde's "Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott!", which puts not only the gods but the world to rest. And the musical culmination at the end of the opera resolves the dissonance caused by the intervention of will, or consciousness, in the flow of nature with the theme of Sieglinde's blessing -- a blessing conferred by a mortal on a god.

The story of Wotan shows a willful and dominant personality whose acts are constrained by justice, the source of his power. Gradually Wotan is overcome by the weariness of living within this constraint, with the knowledge that the price of his original sin has not been paid, and with the recognition that the joys of immortality are more illusory than the tender love of mortals. It's a beautiful portrait of a being wrestling spiritually with himself on the way to renunciation.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

TxllxT said:


> Wagner's operas are exploring these hidden dark corners, so that we get educated to recognise them in time and act & think differently.


Wagner presented his operas as works of art not education. He had plenty of hidden dark corners himself so he obviously didn't take too much notice of his own educating.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

amfortas said:


> We also see characters make decisions--some wiser than others--with the best of intentions. In that sense, we *are* like them.


I think this is backwards. It isn't that we are like them, but that they are fundamentally like us, just bigger, louder, more powerful and written on a broader scale. They have all of our faults, and possibly some of our virtues, magnified 10x. This was always the curious thing about the Norse gods (and the Romans, and many of the mythological systems). Their gods were very human, with limited judgement, jealousy and spite, playfulness and childish fits of temper. They just had the power to cause particular suffering as a result. It reminds me of something someone once told me, that suddenly having a lot of money doesn't make you a different person, it just reveals who you really are.

(By the way, I would be happy to test that final statement, if anyone would like to give me a large enough amount of money. But please, no Faustian bargains . . .)


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

JAS said:


> While it is certainly true that the operas are replete with characters who make bad decisions (with useful results in terms of drama), I think this is too aphoristic an answer. What were the wise decisions that might have been made to avoid the whole mess? Don't have giants build Valhalla? Don't promise to pay them with the goddess who helps you to stay young? These are obviously decisions that are fraught with future pain and problems, but what are the wise choices that we would be taught?


Absolutely. The promise of Wotan to the giants encapsulates the promise made from the beginning of time by the gods that we mortals conjure from our deepest longings. Wotan promises them the goddess of love, Freia, who is also the purveyor of the apples of immortality. But if we really possessed the gifts of Freia -- if we were immortal and swimming forever in a bath of love -- what need would we have of the gods? And if we no longer need them, the gods must die. Hence, Freia cannot be shared by us and the gods: either we have her, or they do. Yet it is only because the gods promise such things that we are prepared to erect in their honor the temples from which they govern us. What the gods promise, therefore, they must also withhold. A trick is needed, and on that trick depends the rule of law whereby all such tricks are forbidden. Such is the paradox of justice: that it depends upon the arts that it forbids. And this paradox is built into the personality of Wotan at every level, as it is built into all forms of historical legitimacy.

Here we see a _similarity_ between Wotan and Alberich, which is also the greatest difference. If Wotan's promise to the Giants had been honored, then Wotan would have done exactly what Alberich did -- he would have exchanged love for domination. He only avoids Alberich's sin against himself by adding another sin on top of it, the sin of a dishonored promise. And yet, as Fasolt reminds Wotan, "what you are, you are through treaties". It is only because Wotan avoids this additional sin that he has any power at all. But justice requires law, which needs power, and power needs legitimacy, the throne of Valhalla, which is exactly what Wotan has striven to achieve. If a trick is necessary to gain this result, so be it. For it is only through lawful government that we mortals are able to protect ourselves from tricks at all.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2017)

For it is only through lawful government that we mortals are able to protect ourselves from tricks at all. 

How very true.:tiphat:


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Traverso said:


> For it is only through lawful government that we mortals are able to protect ourselves from tricks at all.
> 
> How very true.:tiphat:


And how very difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Traverso said:


> For it is only through lawful government that we mortals are able to protect ourselves from tricks at all.
> 
> How very true.:tiphat:


And I think it's worth keeping in mind that the action of Götterdämmerung takes place after the defeat, or capitulation, of Wotan, and the splintering of his spear. Wagner is telling us to take seriously what happens when the twilight really comes. No longer does the guardian of oaths and treaties preside over the world. However urgently we bind ourselves with vows and oaths and contracts, there is no power beyond ourselves that can enforce these things, and all trust is jeopardized by our own enlightened consciousness. So Siegfried's smashing of Wotan's spear has brought into being a world in which Siegfried, the truest of heroes, as Brunnhilde ultimately describes him, will be false to all his vows.

So just as the opera Siegfried unfolds as a series of awakenings, Götterdämmerung unfolds as a series of betrayals.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Wagner presented his operas as works of art not education. He had plenty of hidden dark corners himself so he obviously didn't take too much notice of his own educating.


I agree. Wagner's protagonists need a lot of text. Look at the movies: the baddies are doing better than the goodies, because the scriptwriter can spin out more text for the baddies. I'm enjoying Wagner mostly for art's sake.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Wagner presented his operas as works of art not education.


Why the dichotomy? Great works of art can provide some of the most valuable education.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

amfortas said:


> Why the dichotomy? Great works of art can provide some of the most valuable education.


Difficult to judge whether the _Ring_ teaches one the trades of the underworld or the 'upper-world' ....


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> Why the dichotomy? Great works of art can provide some of the most valuable education.


Like em Shakespeare's history plays?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Wagner presented his operas as works of art not education. He had plenty of hidden dark corners himself so he obviously didn't take too much notice of his own educating.


How incredibly presumptuous. Here you sit, in in 2017, telling us how "hidden" were the "dark corners" of a man who died in 1883 and whose "notice of his own educating" you have little concept of and are in no position to judge.

How about spending more time educating yourself about Wagner, a man of enormous erudition, and less time sitting in judgment of someone whom you've never met or spoken with, whose life you cannot imagine living, and whose shoes you couldn't begin to fill? A little self-educating might reveal to you just how aware Wagner was of his various "corners," dark and bright, and how much, and what extensive, self-educating he engaged in over the course of his life.

Question: what is the source of your compulsion, expressed in virtually identical terms whenever you see a thread about Wagner, to condemn the man for his personal faults, as if it were news, or the juicy "dish" of the moment? Why is this so exciting and necessary to you, regardless of the tone or direction of the discussion? Can you answer that in a manner that reasonable minds can comprehend? Or is this, like so many other appeals to reason here, a pointless inquiry?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> How incredibly presumptuous. Here you sit, in in 2017, telling us how "hidden" were the "dark corners" of a man who died in 1883 and whose "notice of his own educating" you have little concept of and are in no position to judge.
> 
> How about spending more time educating yourself about Wagner, a man of enormous erudition, and less time sitting in judgment of someone whom you've never met or spoken with, whose life you cannot imagine living, and whose shoes you couldn't begin to fill? A little self-educating might reveal to you just how aware Wagner was of his various "corners," dark and bright, and how much, and what extensive, self-educating he engaged in over the course of his life.
> 
> Question: what is the source of your compulsion, expressed in virtually identical terms whenever you see a thread about Wagner, to condemn the man for his personal faults, as if it were news, or the juicy "dish" of the moment? Why is this so exciting and necessary to you, regardless of the tone or direction of the discussion? Can you answer that in a manner that reasonable minds can comprehend? Or is this, like so many other appeals to reason here, a pointless inquiry?


There was a time that Richard Wagner was a revolutionary, wasn't there? Later on he became befriended with a king, and you want to maintain that the newborn monarchist lost all revolutionary zeal? You really think Wagner was artless?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> There was a time that Richard Wagner was a revolutionary, wasn't there? Later on he became befriended with a king, and *you want to maintain* that the newborn monarchist lost all revolutionary zeal? *You really think *Wagner was artless?


This response apparently has no relation to my post, which was addressed to someone else anyway.

If you'd stop putting words in other people's mouths - I do not "want to maintain" anything except what I actually said, and you obviously have no idea what I "really think," despite my stating what I think quite clearly - you might convince us all that you're here for some purpose other than sowing confusion. Or is it just that you yourself are confused? What part of my post do you not understand?

Hard to say whether you or DavidA is better at wrecking discussions of Wagner and derailing threads about him. Little wonder that most potential contributors have fled the premises. The subject matter - that terrible fellow - deserves better.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> This response apparently has no relation to my post, which was addressed to someone else anyway.
> 
> If you'd stop putting words in other people's mouths - I do not "want to maintain" anything except what I actually said, and you obviously have no idea what I "really think," despite my stating what I think quite clearly - you might convince us all that you're here for some purpose other than sewing confusion. Or is it just that you yourself are confused? What part of my post do you not understand?
> 
> Hard to say whether you or DavidA is better at wrecking discussions of Wagner and derailing threads about him. Little wonder that most potential contributors have fled the premises. The subject matter - that terrible fellow - deserves better.


Richard Wagner the faking revolutionary = Richard Wagner the faking monarchist. With the protagonists in his operas you never can be sure what they are at; the same applies to the composer-librettist. All these intriguing layers of understanding together make Wagner's works so outstanding, so sinister. I do not follow why we have to smooth out these Wotanesque qualities of Wagner. Don't worry, Wagner was much too intelligent to be put on par with would-be-Nazis.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Like em Shakespeare's history plays?


Why not? Along with his best comedies and tragedies.

Shakespeare got history wrong, but human nature right. And as his contemporary Sir Philip Sidney pointed out in his _Apology for Poetry_, while history gives us the raw data of human action without any underlying principles, and philosophy gives us ethical principles without any real-world application, fiction bridges the divide by presenting the specificity of human behavior from a discerning moral perspective.

In that sense, Shakespeare and Wagner can both be educational.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TxllxT said:


> Richard Wagner the faking revolutionary = Richard Wagner the faking monarchist. With the protagonists in his operas you never can be sure what they are at; the same applies to the composer-librettist. All these intriguing layers of understanding together make Wagner's works so outstanding, so sinister. I do not follow *why we have to smooth out* these Wotanesque qualities of Wagner.* Don't worry,* Wagner was much too intelligent to be put on par with would-be-Nazis.


It's very clear to me what Wagner's characters are "at." Obviously it's unclear to you, no matter how patiently others have tried to explain it to you. You are wedded to some odd personal view of Wagner's works, and will just go on throwing it, like spaghetti at the wall, no matter how much knowledge and insight others try to impart. But since it's only the music that you're able to enjoy - or so you've said - why not just go off and listen to it and stop imagining you have something to tell me about the rest? I can assure you: you don't.

P.S. "We" don't have to "smooth out" anything, nor is anyone smoothing out anything. And I am not "worried."


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

I think the ending can be seen as hopeful; yet to me this doesn't mean the overarching story of the Ring is optimistic.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck and TxllxT actually agreed in liking my last post.

Should I be worried?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

http://www.klassikinfo.de/Originelle-Wagner-Buecher.1824.0.html

http://www.dw.com/en/inside-the-maze-of-wagner-literature/a-16602550

For those who want to search the holy grail: Wagner's humour. His best friend was his Newfoundland dog Robber who ate him (being a vegetarian) poor. His wife Cosima didn't like jokes at all, because that might harm his fame & reputation. Now who on TC is so concerned about Wagner's fame & reputation?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Woodduck and TxllxT actually agreed in liking my last post.
> 
> Should I be worried?


No. It's a possible sign of progress and incipient sanity. Not saying whose.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> No. It's a possible sign of progress and incipient sanity. Not saying whose.


You're so diplomatic. Or self-deprecating. Not sure which.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> You're so diplomatic. Or self-deprecating. Not sure which.


Oh yes you are.


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