# One Cannot Deny the Genius of Wagner



## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius. If you doubt this simply read his letters. The sheer awareness, with which Wagner moved through the world and created his titanic works of art, is hard to fathom. 

"My King, I am not well: life has become a burden for me, and my artistic labours are far from easy. The whole effort, moreover, of reviving so strange a work as Tristan has left me very tired. What depresses me is not the malice of the world -- but the extreme difficulty of working effectively and creatively, so that I feel like a stranger, almost like a fool, in this world of ours, and in this century." Munich, 5 July 1865, to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Berg


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius.


Hmm, a poll not too long ago found that over one-third of us have problems with the term "genius" generally, so yeah, I guess it _is_ possible...
http://www.talkclassical.com/40338-concept-genius-composer-meaningful.html


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

He was a genius at making good music. I clicked on a link in this forum today that led to Die Meistersinger von Nürneberg and I just continued to listen to it for a while that is how good he was.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius. If you doubt this simply read his letters. The sheer awareness, with which Wagner moved through the world and created his titanic works of art, is hard to fathom.
> 
> "My King, I am not well: life has become a burden for me, and my artistic labours are far from easy. The whole effort, moreover, of reviving so strange a work as Tristan has left me very tired. What depresses me is not the malice of the world -- but the extreme difficulty of working effectively and creatively, so that I feel like a stranger, almost like a fool, in this world of ours, and in this century." Munich, 5 July 1865, to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Berg


The problem I have with this is that in Wagner you have music and you have words, and it's hard to separate them. Unfortunately the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that The Ring, Tristan and Parsifal don't make sense at all. And that seems a serious weakness in a with Wagner's vision.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> The problem I have with this is that in Wagner you have music and you have words, and it's hard to separate them. Unfortunately the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that The Ring, Tristan and Parsifal don't make sense at all. And that seems a serious weakness in a with Wagner's vision.


The music enhance the words that is the greatness with opera.
Make sense or not they are exciting and fascinating stories that becomes more exciting through Richard Wagner´s music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius. If you doubt this simply read his letters. The sheer awareness, with which Wagner moved through the world and created his titanic works of art, is hard to fathom.
> 
> "My King, I am not well: life has become a burden for me, and my artistic labours are far from easy. The whole effort, moreover, of reviving so strange a work as Tristan has left me very tired. What depresses me is not the malice of the world -- but the extreme difficulty of working effectively and creatively, so that I feel like a stranger, almost like a fool, in this world of ours, and in this century." Munich, 5 July 1865, to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Berg


The genius demonstrated here is how he managed to read Ludwig so well, play up to him and extract a lifetime's worth of cash out of him.  Well done!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> The problem I have with this is that in Wagner you have music and you have words, and it's hard to separate them. Unfortunately the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that The Ring, Tristan and Parsifal don't make sense at all. And that seems a serious weakness in a with Wagner's vision.


You would probably enjoy Hanslick's critique of Tristan then. If I remember correctly, he had a lot to say about the text.


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2016)

If one cannot deny the genius of Wagner there is no need for this thread, surely?


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2016)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius. If you doubt this simply read his letters.


So, he was not a genius composer, just a genius letter writer?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sloe said:


> The music enhance the words that is the greatness with opera.
> Make sense or not they are exciting and fascinating stories that becomes more exciting through Richard Wagner´s music.


I suppose you're right. They're like religious things - captivating and even inspiring but if you look too hard and ask too many probing questions their meaningfulness and coherence is problematic. I just find that really disappointing, because it reduces Wagner's operas to a sort of entertainment, a diversion, rather than a font of wisdom.

But yes, in that case I agree with the OP. Wagner was a genius entertainer.


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2016)

MacLeod said:


> So, he was not a genius composer, just a genius letter writer?


Not only that, his notes to the milkman were groundbreaking.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> The genius demonstrated here is how he managed to read Ludwig so well, play up to him and extract a lifetime's worth of cash out of him.  Well done!


Mr. EdwardBast what proof do you have that Wagner is not being sincere? Have you read his letters? In another letter to Liszt he expresses his desire to die, is this also manipulation? If Wagner's disposition was anything like his music then his must have been a troubled internal life (as his letters often testify). No one on this thread will ever come close to the genius of Wagner.

I would characterize Wagner as a fighter, as an epic doer. just imagine trying to get the large scale productions he produced performed (_in a primitive time_). Imagine how many people you would have to work with, how many strings you would have to pull, how many doors you would have to open. Wagner's accomplishment is not only his music, but also the performances of his music. Wagner is not just music; he is the full spectrum of art.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius.


I would neither deny nor affirm that Wagner was a genius; it's only opinions. I do think his music is fantastic, and I leave it at that.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> I would neither deny nor affirm that Wagner was a genius; it's only opinions. I do think his music is fantastic, and I leave it at that.


If Wagner was not a genius then there is no such thing as genius.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Klassic said:


> If Wagner was not a genius then there is no such thing as genius.


Does it matter? Putting a label on Wagner doesn't change the music.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> Does it matter? Putting a label on Wagner doesn't change the music.


Very much my friend, words do matter, and especially the word genius as a description of Wagner.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I am perfectly comfortable with the word "genius," and perfectly comfortable with applying it to Wagner, a man of immense, perhaps matchless, imagination and creative power. What we call such a phenomenon doesn't really matter, does it? If we didn't call it genius, we'd just come up with some other word that somebody would dispute.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I am perfectly comfortable with the word "genius," and perfectly comfortable with applying it to Wagner, a man of immense, perhaps matchless, imagination and creative power. What we call such a phenomenon doesn't really matter, does it? If we didn't call it genius, we'd just come up with some other word that somebody would dispute.


Yes, but that we _call it_ does.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> I suppose you're right. They're like religious things - captivating and even inspiring but if you look too hard and ask too many probing questions their meaningfulness and coherence is problematic. I just find that really disappointing, because it reduces Wagner's operas to a sort of entertainment, a diversion, rather than a font of wisdom.
> 
> But yes, in that case I agree with the OP. Wagner was a genius entertainer.


I have found exactly the opposite to be true. Wagner's works are not obvious, but the longer I've lived with them the more sense they've made to me as integrated musical/dramatic conceptions.

I don't intend it as self-advertisement to direct you to some of the Wagner threads on this forum. A number of people, conspicuously including me, have contributed quite a bit of analysis of the philosophical/psychological dimensions of Wagner's operas. Since Wagner's lifetime there have been plenty of interpretations to choose among, some absurd, far-fetched, biased, and even dishonest, but the spurious ones tend to fall away upon further acquaintance with the works. Wagner was as serious an artist as has ever lived, his works are not casually put together, and he knew what he was doing, probably as much as any creator of such immense and multidimensional imagination can.

It's my guess that people who think Wagner's works are incoherent or meaningless are not very interested in investigating them deeply. Of course there's nothing wrong with just regarding his mythical tales as entertaining bedtime stories for grownups, but its hard for me to imagine anyone sensitive to his intense and probing musical language not suspecting that there's a lot more going on in them.

As a lifelong Wagner-lover, I'm always happy to discuss his works with anyone interested.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Genius musician, sure. As a librettist or "philosopher", ugh...


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Very much my friend, words do matter, and especially the word genius as a description of Wagner.


I consider descriptive words about Wagner of minimal significance compared to his music. Same for any other composer.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Modern music in a broad sense started with Wagner's epic operas. Many scholars take on this view. It's a broad view.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Klassic said:


> Mr. EdwardBast what proof do you have that Wagner is not being sincere? Have you read his letters? In another letter to Liszt he expresses his desire to die, is this also manipulation? If Wagner's disposition was anything like his music then his must have been a troubled internal life (as his letters often testify). No one on this thread will ever come close to the genius of Wagner.
> 
> I would characterize Wagner as a fighter, as an epic doer. just imagine trying to get the large scale productions he produced performed (_in a primitive time_). Imagine how many people you would have to work with, how many strings you would have to pull, how many doors you would have to open. Wagner's accomplishment is not only his music, but also the performances of his music. Wagner is not just music; he is the full spectrum of art.


I think you are on to somethings, but you seem to have an axe to grind with much of the forum. Just confidently inform those who don't know, is my advice. However, Edward does have a point because in the case of Ludwig, he did exploit his insanity and homosexual interests. Although I can imagine Wagner did not much respect the aristocracy. He was a revolutionary.

But I have personally, after listening to some of Wagner's music and been deeply moved, been reminded of the probably true idea that many great composers(especially 19th century and early 20th century composers) are perhaps better understood by their music than by what history books say of them or by the letters that most of us know. From listening to his music alone, it does seem that boldness, goal oriented action, and some visionary principles really were deeply integral in his character. I think he had more integrity as a person than people often give him credit for, partly because antisemitism has been so taboo in the wake of what happened in Germany long after his death, and it's easy to vilify him for that. He may have had a nobler soul in many respects than history is yet able to give him credit for, despite some of his exploitations and other crooked things he did.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Another Wagner thread, really.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

The ultimate Paradox of cognitive dissonance: The love of oafs, and the hatred of geniuses. These confounding realities happen on our earth _in abundance_. Irrationality trumps rationality... for something deeper.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> .
> 
> As a lifelong Wagner-lover, I'm always happy to discuss his works with anyone interested.


Good. Can we start with

What did Parsifal learn when he kissed Kundry in Act 2 which turned him into the redeemer in Act 3?

Or

Why did Brunhilde kill herself?


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> The ultimate Paradox of cognitive dissonance: The love of oafs, and the hatred of geniuses. These confounding realities happen on our earth _in abundance_. Irrationality trumps rationality... for something deeper.


I would rather listen to music that I like by an oaf than music I don´t like by a genius.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Wagner is not my favorite composer (far from it). But he wrote some revolutionary music whether or not you call it a product of genius.

The thing that most impresses me is how far he came from his juvenilia -- maybe further than any composer of which we have record. I keep thinking about how absolutely dreadful the overture to his first opera -- Das Liebesverbot" -- is. It would make von Suppe blush!


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> The problem I have with this is that in Wagner you have music and you have words, and it's hard to separate them. Unfortunately the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that The Ring, Tristan and Parsifal don't make sense at all. And that seems a serious weakness in a with Wagner's vision.


Not a fan of Wagner, but I'd say that all artistic visions and realisations have weaknesses.. in mediocre works weaknesses tend to be a weakness, a shortcoming. A weakness in great works is innate part of that vision that makes it great. Probably a result of a genius at work


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

MarkW said:


> Wagner is not my favorite composer (far from it). But he wrote some revolutionary music whether or not you call it a product of genius.
> 
> The thing that most impresses me is how far he came from his juvenilia -- maybe further than any composer of which we have record. I keep thinking about how absolutely dreadful the overture to his first opera -- Das Liebesverbot" -- is. It would make von Suppe blush!


Unfortunately, he kept that mediocrity around for the non-stage works. Stuff like the American Centennial March vies with Richard Strauss's Japanese Festival Music and Beethoven's more dreadful works for the dubious distinction of worst piece by a top ranked composer.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Unfortunately, he kept that mediocrity around for the non-stage works. Stuff like the American Centennial March vies with Richard Strauss's Japanese Festival Music and Beethoven's more dreadful works for the dubious distinction of worst piece by a top ranked composer.


Now hold on! Wagner admitted that the the best thing about the _American Centennial March_ was the money he got for it. It wasn't simple cynicism; he also said that he needed the inspiration of a poetic idea to produce the real stuff. In this he was the quintessential Romantic. When he did have such an idea, the non-stage works could be first-rate: the _Wesendonck Songs_ and the _Siegfried Idyll_ are masterful.


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## Genoveva (Nov 9, 2010)

Klassic said:


> While it is possible to dislike the music of Wagner, it is not possible to deny that Wagner was a genius.


Do you consider each of the most popular composers, say the top 20, to be a genius, and if so where do place the dividing line between genius and non-genius among those below the top 20?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Klassic said:


> Mr. EdwardBast what proof do you have that Wagner is not being sincere? Have you read his letters? In another letter to Liszt he expresses his desire to die, is this also manipulation? If Wagner's disposition was anything like his music then his must have been a troubled internal life (as his letters often testify).* No one on this thread will ever come close to the genius of Wagner*.
> 
> I would characterize Wagner as a fighter, as an epic doer. just imagine trying to get the large scale productions he produced performed (_in a primitive time_). Imagine how many people you would have to work with, how many strings you would have to pull, how many doors you would have to open. Wagner's accomplishment is not only his music, but also the performances of his music. *Wagner is not just music; he is the full spectrum of art.*


*

saying no-one on this thread matches Wagner's genius is pretty self-evident, but if genius was a criterion for giving one's opinion on this forum there would be few contributors. But it does not stop us give ng our opinion.

Certainly Wagner would have us believe that his operas were the full spectrum of art but they simply are not imo. I've just been listening to Gotterdamerung and while the music is magnificent the libretto simply doesn't measure up to it. This is, of course a common problem with opera and Wagner's are certainly no worse than many other libretti. However, he was imo a vastly greater composer than he was a librettist.*


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Good. Can we start with
> 
> What did Parsifal learn when he kissed Kundry in Act 2 which turned him into the redeemer in Act 3?
> 
> ...


These questions go right to the heart of each of these operas, and I'm tempted to give you my phone number so we can really talk. Or I could take the psychiatrist's classic approach and turn the question back on you: "What do _you_ think it means? And how did you _feel_ when Kundry kissed you?" Just kidding, of course - but my point is that attempting a brief answer to either question might get me in so deep I'll regret ever making my offer.

:lol:

What Parsifal learns from Kundry's kiss is that childhood is over: that his mother really is dead, that her seductive embrace is a deadly illusion, that irresponsible, narcissistic, egotistical boyhood must be left behind, and that life now requires him to become a responsible man in a larger world where humanity suffers self-inflicted wounds which he now recognizes as his own, and where, having this insight and the compassion it brings to him, he can make a difference.

What Brunnhilde does in joining Siegfried and the ancient gods in death is bring about the end of the first cycle of human life, a world in which greed and the desire for power held sway, and love, their only antidote, has to undergo tragedy and a purification by fire. Her final act act symbolizes the final letting go of the old world's illusions; in death she returns the ring to the waters from which it came and where it belongs, and this symbolizes the soul returning to itself, now secure beyond illusions of power and ready to try life on a better foundation.

The _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ are both myths of salvation, of spiritual transformation. Their central symbols, the Gold and the Grail, are both manifestations of the "jewel beyond price," the absolute, impersonal center of the soul's being - in Hinduism's term, the _atman_ - the pursuit of which drives the events of both stories. In both, immature illusions about where happiness lies lead to tragedy and must be overcome through insight.

That's the short of it. As for the long of it...


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> What did Parsifal learn when he kissed Kundry in Act 2 which turned him into the redeemer in Act 3?


Come on, that one's obvious: Sex is dirty.



Mandryka said:


> Why did Brunhilde kill herself?


Likewise obvious, because it's grand opera and her boy toy is dead. Though this one is tangential to the more difficult question of why she kills Wotan (answer: he committed race treachery by using the ring).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> These questions go right to the heart of each of these operas, and I'm tempted to give you my phone number so we can really talk. Or I could take the psychiatrist's classic approach and turn the question back on you: "What do _you_ think it means? And how did you _feel_ when Kundry kissed you?" Just kidding, of course - but my point is that attempting a brief answer to either question might get me in so deep I'll regret ever making my offer.
> 
> :lol:
> 
> ...


Thanks for these interesting replies, which I will think about.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I am not Woodduck, but I would like to put in my own 0,02 euro if I may.



Mandryka said:


> Good. Can we start with
> 
> What did Parsifal learn when he kissed Kundry in Act 2 which turned him into the redeemer in Act 3?


He learned compassion for Amfortas by experiencing precisely the same spiritual test he had experienced: the torment of desiring with his whole being something that would enslave and destroy him. But he stood strong where Amfortas had been weak, and thus was able to become the redeemer and the rightful king of the Grail knights.



> Or
> 
> Why did Brunhilde kill herself?


I think many explanations are possible. Because she loved Siegfried and did not want to live without him. Because, wise and strong as she was, she was also a part of the old world that had to perish. Because she had refused to give up the Ring when she could (in Act I where Waltraute entreated her to do it), brought the catastrophe on Siegfried and herself and now had to pay for it. Because it makes such a grand ending to the opera


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Sloe said:


> The music enhance the words that is the greatness with opera.
> Make sense or not they are exciting and fascinating stories that becomes more exciting through Richard Wagner´s music.


Yes, and sometimes the words also become music of their own.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Mr. EdwardBast what proof do you have that Wagner is not being sincere? Have you read his letters? In another letter to Liszt he expresses his desire to die, is this also manipulation? If Wagner's disposition was anything like his music then his must have been a troubled internal life (as his letters often testify). No one on this thread will ever come close to the genius of Wagner.
> 
> I would characterize Wagner as a fighter, as an epic doer. just imagine trying to get the large scale productions he produced performed (_in a primitive time_). Imagine how many people you would have to work with, how many strings you would have to pull, how many doors you would have to open. Wagner's accomplishment is not only his music, but also the performances of his music. Wagner is not just music; he is the full spectrum of art.


I don't think simple qualities like "sincerity" are much use in dissecting human motivation. If I knew a walking anachronism with a vast fortune who was willing to spend great wealth creating a fairy-tale world with castles from another era, I imagine I would find myself quite sincerely feeling like a man born in the wrong century! Sometimes pulling one really big string is easier than pulling a bunch of little ones.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

For some reason I suspect that if it was some other great composer who admitted in his letters to feeling like a stranger in this world, there would not be any doubts about his sincerity


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Because, wise and strong as she was, she was also a part of the old world that had to perish.


She'd ceased to be a God, and so much of the old world survives after the end of act three -- all the people, the Rhinemaidens. The world doesn't end after the opera, though the old world order has ended I guess.

The music and the build up makes her suicide feel like a very important event, as if her immolation reveals the possibility of a better world. What brave new world is Wagner proposing here?



Woodduck said:


> Her final act act symbolizes the final letting go of the old world's illusions;


It seems unnecessary to me unless you read it symbolically like this. I'm really bad at this way of thinking though! It makes me uncomfortable and uncertain how to proceed.

Thank you both, by the way, for the comments on Parsifal. It is such a difficult opera!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> She'd ceased to be a God, and so much of the old world survives after the end of act three -- all the people, the Rhinemaidens. The world doesn't end after the opera, though the old world order has ended I guess.
> 
> The music and the build up makes her suicide feel like a very important event, as if her immolation reveals the possibility of a better world. What brave new world is Wagner proposing here?


The Rhinemaidens are creatures of pristine, uncorrupted nature. They are not involved in the power struggle around the Ring. They guarded the gold it was made of, but never tried to use it for selfish ends. Everyone who was involved in that power struggle, who was touched by the Ring: the gods, the Gibichungs and Siegfried and Brünnhilde - dies. I wonder whether Wagner merely forgot to kill Alberich off or if he wanted him to remain alive, wandering through the world impotently.

It is not only Brünnhilde's suicide, it is the death of the gods that is such a momentous event. As for what new world Wagner proposes: I believe it is a world where people no longer vie for the power that gold/money provides and no longer destroy nature and each other in the process.



> Thank you both, by the way, for the comments on Parsifal. It is such a difficult opera!


For me such discussions on the meaning of Wagner operas are the high point of the entire forum. It is always great when someone brings up this subject.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

My quick 2 cents here. The entire opera is an indictment of organized religion (as far as gods created in the eyes of man) and symbolizes change. That it is still, and perhaps more relevant today than in the 1800s speaks to me of the true genius of Wagner. Yes, God has been dying a long time, whether that's people not needing a god or changing their concept of what a god represents. And the pureness of the Rhinemaidens took a decent hit when their arrogance only led to the entire problem in the first place. If they were truly pure, the opera would have been the greatest 20 min opera in history.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> She'd ceased to be a God, and so much of the old world survives after the end of act three -- all the people, the Rhinemaidens. The world doesn't end after the opera, though the old world order has ended I guess.
> 
> The music and the build up makes her suicide feel like a very important event, as if her immolation reveals the possibility of a better world. What brave new world is Wagner proposing here?


Return to nature - like, not Rousseauian happy-innocent-peasants nature, but primordial nature, which is what the Rhinemaidens are (they're older than the old world). I mean, it doesn't get much more explicit than this - he ends with an image of FIRE AND WATER. (Nobody cares about the Gibichungs.)


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

scratchgolf said:


> And the pureness of the Rhinemaidens took a decent hit when their arrogance only led to the entire problem in the first place.


Nah, they were just doing what amoral elemental fairies do. The problem is (secondarily) Nibelungs can't take a joke and (primarily) Wotan doesn't understand that Gods shouldn't build their power on the works of Nibelungs.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

scratchgolf said:


> My quick 2 cents here. The entire opera is an indictment of organized religion (as far as gods created in the eyes of man) and symbolizes change. That it is still, and perhaps more relevant today than in the 1800s speaks to me of the true genius of Wagner. Yes, God has been dying a long time, whether that's people not needing a god or changing their concept of what a god represents. *And the pureness of the Rhinemaidens took a decent hit when their arrogance only led to the entire problem in the first place.* If they were truly pure, the opera would have been the greatest 20 min opera in history.


There is nothing arrogant about them avoiding a creature that pretty much tried to force himself on them.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> There is nothing arrogant about them avoiding a creature that pretty much tried to force himself on them.


No. The arrogance came when they were charged with one thing only and boasted. They avoided. Then they taunted. Then they boasted. Finally, they got what they deserved. No arguing the dogmatic decisions of Wotan, and after all, the maidens are his offspring. Morality or lack thereof is in the eye of the beholder. Even with all Wotan's contracts and deception, if the maidens kept their mouth's shut, end of opera and story. If they feared his advances, why would they ever boast? If I fight off a burglar at my front door, would it then be wise to scream to him "my safe is in the basement, and the combination is..." as he's running away? Maybe, just maybe, he will give it another go.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There's a moment in the Ring which I've never really understood which maybe is relevant here. In Gotterdammerung Siegfried meets the rhinemaidens and they ask him for the ring. I think -- and I may be wrong - there's a point when he offers it to them and the refuse to take it.

http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/gotterd/e-gott-a3s1.html

SIEGFRIED
(climbing further down)

How can I bear
this back-handed praise?
Shall I let myself be abused?
If they came back
to the water's edge
they could have the ring.

Hey! You merry
water-maidens!
Come quickly! I'll give you the ring!

(He has taken the ring from his finger
and holds it up high)

THE THREE RHINEMAIDENS
(come to the surface again
they are serious and solemn)

Keep it, hero,
and ward it well
until you learn the calamity
that is enclosed in the ring.
Glad will you then feel
if we free you from its curse.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

scratchgolf said:


> Finally, they got what they deserved.


I mean look at how they were dressed!



scratchgolf said:


> No arguing the dogmatic decisions of Wotan, and after all, the maidens are his offspring.


Uhhhhh that isn't anywhere in the libretto.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Why do we need to consider him a genius? He lived, breathed and farted like the rest of us. If people like his music that's great, if not then no biggie. We don't all have to agree ya know, that's what makes life interesting!


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> The genius demonstrated here is how he managed to read Ludwig so well, play up to him and extract a lifetime's worth of cash out of him.


yeah, go and try pull the same trick on someone and see the world hail you as a genius.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Genius of Wagner
Funnier Ego Swag


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> There's a moment in the Ring which I've never really understood which maybe is relevant here. In Gotterdammerung Siegfried meets the rhinemaidens and they ask him for the ring. I think -- and I may be wrong - there's a point when he offers it to them and the refuse to take it.
> 
> http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/gotterd/e-gott-a3s1.html


Note that he keeps coming up with different excuses for why he hasn't yet given it to them:

If I were to waste what I have on you, 
my wife would certainly scold me.

Then:

If they came back
to the water's edge
they could have the ring.

Then:

for the gift of love [für der Minne Gunst]
I gladly reliquish it:
I would give it to you if you granted me love [gönnt ihr mir Lust]

The Rhinemaidens understand the situation:

Only the ring which dooms him to death
the ring alone he seeks to retain!

Unlike the ring's previous owners, Siegfried genuinely doesn't want to use it to gain wealth or power - he simply doesn't care about those things. But the ring still has a kind of power over him - after he steals it from Brünnhilde, he's clearly incapable of actually giving it away to the Rhinemaiders; and presumably to anyone, except maybe to Brünnhilde herself (that's of course never tested). To define the ring's power over him more precisely than that would necessarily be speculative - and probably not worthwhile, because Siegfried isn't a very interesting character.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Dim7 said:


> Genius of Wagner
> Funnier Ego Swag


Coincidence? That's awesome :lol:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

arnerich said:


> Coincidence? That's awesome :lol:


A choosiest new mint? Accede!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> Unlike the ring's previous owners, Siegfried genuinely doesn't want to use it to gain wealth or power - he simply doesn't care about those things. But the ring still has a kind of power over him - after he steals it from Brünnhilde, he's clearly incapable of actually giving it away to the Rhinemaiders; and presumably to anyone, except maybe to Brünnhilde herself (that's of course never tested). To define the ring's power over him more precisely than that would necessarily be speculative - and probably not worthwhile, because Siegfried isn't a very interesting character.


The Ring has the same power over Brünnhilde - she was also incapable of giving it away until it was too late, in spite of her sister's entreaties. She did not use it as a means to gaining wealth either, she rather viewed it as a symbol of Siegfried's love. But Wagner's stage remark in Act I, mentioning Brünnhilde "covering the ring with kisses" does seem somewhat creepy, as if it was the ring itself she was beginning to fall in love with, not memories of Siegfried. It was not until she had lost her beloved that she was ready to renounce the ring - and her own life as well, in an ultimate act of self-denial.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> She'd ceased to be a God, and so much of the old world survives after the end of act three -- all the people, the Rhinemaidens. The world doesn't end after the opera, though the old world order has ended I guess.
> 
> The music and the build up makes her suicide feel like a very important event, as if her immolation reveals the possibility of a better world. What brave new world is Wagner proposing here?
> 
> ...


Would I be presuming to suppose that as a child you didn't spend your time, as I did, eagerly devouring fairy tales, stories from mythology, fantasy literature, and poetry? Maybe you were also not brought up Catholic (neither was I, but among religions I mention Catholicism specifically because of its rich tradition of mythical imagery). I think young children very naturally "understand" such things, even if - or in fact because - they can't translate them into abstract ideas or grasp explicit symbolism. The logical and practical mind required by adult life tends to crowd out the memory of certain primal experiences, which for most of us survive (if at all) only as muted whisperings in art, religion, and dreams.

Wagner, like many artists I think, seems never to have lost a childlike sense of reality, a pre-rational mode of perception which draws no clear line between inner experience and the outer world (a trait which proved to be as problematic in his life as it was advantageous to his art). A hypersensitive, emotionally volatile child with an active imagination, raised in the theater by an actor stepfather, he was poised to plunge into the swelling tide of German Romanticism, with its fascination with the sublime, the magical and the irrational, and his works in some ways epitomize the movement. The idea for the prelude to _Das Rheingold_, those enchanted 136 bars on an Eb triad which depict the beginning of the world of the _Ring_ in the watery depths by stripping music down to its primal harmony, came to Wagner in a dream, and exemplifies the continuing contact with the subrational level of psychological experience which inspired his music and drama. His works prefigure the studies of Freud and Jung - and indirectly helped pave the way for them - in being psychological interpretations of mythology, and they are filled with archetypal images, objects and situations drawn from some of the basic myths of the West: the cursed sailor, the gods of pagan mythology, the holy grail, the impossible ideal of romantic love... It was Wagner's explicit intention to present these images in an artistic form that would make them meaningful to modern society, which he, like a good Romantic, viewed as superficial, corrupted by the pursuit of material gain, and out of touch with its spiritual roots.

You say that thinking "symbolically" makes you uncomfortable and uncertain. Great! Go with it! I have often found Wagner uncomfortable; when I was first getting to know his operas as a teenager I thought at times I was going to be pulled under the water and drowned like Hagen at the end of _Gotterdammerung_. The idea was scary and quite thrilling! I think my "child-mind" was still very active, and that I was still very close to the awesome dreams and nightmares of childhood, which are incomprehensible to a child's mind, yet seem - and are - so important. It was out of that primal, pre-rational level of consciousness that Wagner's artistic inspiration arose; his work is probably the ultimate proclamation of the Romantic concept of music as a language - the ideal language - of subjective emotional experience, and he explicitly aimed his "total art work" directly at the listener's feelings, intending to break through our critical resistance and go right to the heart of some of the most fundamental emotional experiences, even those most repressed and inaccessible to everyday consciousness, that constitute our human psychological makeup. He believed that the symbolic imagery of myth, expressed in dramatic action and above all in music, was the best way to achieve this.

It was an artistic project that was bound to create discomfort and resistance in many people for whom a bit more aesthetic distance, not to mention a clear recognition of the familiar world, is desirable. Not everyone looks at art as an opportunity to be invaded and submerged in incomprehensible feelings, and even in his lifetime some were calling the art of "old Klingsor," the "sorcerer of Bayreuth," unhealthy and dangerous. But beyond the purely emotional resonance, there are layers of meaning in the operas that can keep us occupied for as long as we want to go on discovering them. That's the virtue of mythic archetypes, and of Wagner's brilliance in handling them. No single interpretation will do his works justice: psychology, sociology, philosophy, religion - there are implications spreading outward like ripples in a pond, and people are still cranking out books considering him from this angle or that and proposing interpretations from brilliant to preposterous. We can explore as much or as little of this as we want to: it's fine to take his operas as pure fantastic entertainments expressed in amazing music, and they'll work on that level because his imagery has poetic logic and the music is so potent. But once we get drawn into trying to understand _why_ Wagner's works exert such endless fascination even when, on a superficial level, we find it hard to make sense of them - well, once Pandora's box is open, there may be no closing it again.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

arnerich said:


> Why do we need to consider him a genius? He lived, breathed and farted like the rest of us. If people like his music that's great, if not then no biggie. We don't all have to agree ya know, that's what makes life interesting!


We don't have to consider him at all, in fact. And if the fact that he farted is important to you, you're fully entitled to your own hierarchy of values.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Woodduck, your post No. 57 is amazing. It really speaks to my heart. You have said some of the things that I have been thinking about regarding perception of Wagner's art - but much more eloquently than I am capable of!


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> The idea for the prelude to _Das Rheingold_, those enchanted 136 bars on an Eb triad which depict the beginning of the world of the _Ring_ in the watery depths by stripping music down to its primal harmony, came to Wagner in a dream


Yeah, a dream of last night's all-Mendelssohn concert.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> Yeah, a dream of last night's all-Mendelssohn concert.


:lol: Yes, it was one of his most inspired quotes. He was even inspired to give Melusine two companions.

Of course the tune isn't the concept. Wagner's Rhine is quite a different body of water.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> For some reason I suspect that if it was some other great composer who admitted in his letters to feeling like a stranger in this world, there would not be any doubts about his sincerity


I think you are absolutely right!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Once again, we take for granted the art, because we have such easy access to it, and so many things have changed as a result, things whose origins we have now lost trace. 

At the time, Wagner's unified vision was unlike anything before it, in which the viewer was immersed, and the music was a very direct, intuitive expression of moods, emotions, and states of being, not a choppy, controlled dramatic rendering of the idea of what "music was supposed to be" or do. 

Wagner thought outside the box, and opened up a world of music that was totally expressive and meaningful. It was connected to emotions and states of being, and for that, we now we take Mahler for granted, Schoenberg for granted, in that they were expressing in the same way. Think of cinema, and the great influence this Wagnerian thinking had on that.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> At the time, Wagner's unified vision was unlike anything before it, in which the viewer was immersed, and the music was a very direct, intuitive expression of moods, emotions, and states of being, not a choppy, controlled dramatic rendering of the idea of what "music was supposed to be" or do.
> 
> Wagner thought outside the box, and opened up a world of music that was totally expressive and meaningful. It was connected to emotions and states of being, and for that, we now we take Mahler for granted, Schoenberg for granted, in that they were expressing in the same way.


You misspelled "Berlioz."


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> These questions go right to the heart of each of these operas, and I'm tempted to give you my phone number so we can really talk. Or I could take the psychiatrist's classic approach and turn the question back on you: "What do _you_ think it means? And how did you _feel_ when Kundry kissed you?" Just kidding, of course - but my point is that attempting a brief answer to either question might get me in so deep I'll regret ever making my offer.
> 
> :lol:
> 
> ...


Interpretation is a highly specialised art/science form in itself - one open to endless analyses, conjecture and speculation. I used to believe we were locked in all such attempts in a hermeneutical circle, until someone pointed out that it is in fact a hermeneutical _spiral_. You are a bold man indeed for wading into such dangerous waters Woodduck.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KRoad said:


> Interpretation is a highly specialised art/science form in itself - one open to endless analyses, conjecture and speculation. I used to believe we were locked in all such attempts in a hermeneutical circle, until someone pointed out that it is in fact a hermeneutical _spiral_. You are a bold man indeed for wading into such dangerous waters Woodduck.


Once you wade into Wagner's waters you either start paddling fiercely in a hermeneutical spiral or you drown. The literature on Wagner is awash in bloated scholarly corpses.

Are any two human expressions less constraining to the imagination than music and myth? Experience Western man's basic myths speaking through music of unlimited expressive ambition and insidious impact, and be prepared to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where...well, in some cases, where we've _all_ gone before, but may not yet have been conscious enough to know it.

I've had Wagner on the brain for 50 years, so I know how many worlds his works can open up. I don't feel bold, though. I just know that resistance is futile.

:tiphat:


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

I read G.B.Shaw's take on the Ring a while back, it was an interesting read but one naturally influenced by the ideologically charged climate of the day. A compounding difficulty with any spin we wish to put on explaining what a given text may or may not mean is that we bring in any such undertaking all our cultural, social, political and (dare I say it) mythological presuppositions to bare at/on the point of interpretation. This makes of necessity any understanding of a text at best highly individual. Ergo, one man's circle may be another man's spiral.

Beam me up, Scotty...


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Actually, one can in fact deny the genius of Wagner. But then, one can also deny that the earth is a sphere. 

Personally, I don't like his music much (part of my general dislike of opera, and he did little else). But I don't think there is much denying his influence or achievement. 

Plus, Wagner could easily give Donald Trump a run for his money when it comes to ego, and he could do it without an orange wig. :devil:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I've had Wagner on the brain for 50 years, so I know how many worlds his works can open up. I don't feel bold, though. I just know that resistance is futile.


You will be assimilated...


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> We don't have to consider him at all, in fact. And if the fact that he farted is important to you, you're fully entitled to your own hierarchy of values.


Proves he was only human like all of us. Again , he was entitled to his opinion like everyone else!!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KRoad said:


> I read G.B.Shaw's take on the Ring a while back, it was an interesting read but one naturally influenced by the ideologically charged climate of the day. A compounding difficulty with any spin we wish to put on explaining what a given text may or may not mean is that we bring in any such undertaking all our cultural, social, political and (dare I say it) mythological presuppositions to bare at/on the point of interpretation. This makes of necessity any understanding of a text at best highly individual. Ergo, one man's circle may be another man's spiral.
> 
> Beam me up, Scotty...


"Spin" - "text" - "_highly_ individual" - "of _necessity_" - "at _best_" - _"at/on"?!_ 

Am I getting a faint whiff of a postmodernist deconstructionist relativist nihilist "nothing means anything and don't even ask the author because he's dead so everyone's exegetical parade should be pooped on and I'm going to prove that I can do it" project here?

Sorry. Maybe your verbal sledge hammer has me imagining things. Maybe you're not one of those Derridean people. Please say you're not! 

Anyway... let's see... What I get out of your statement (correct me if I'm wrong) is that we all have our personal perspectives on things - with which I do of course agree - and that no person's perspective has, or can be shown to have, any more objective validity than any other (and maybe there's no such thing as objective validity) - with which I emphatically disagree. Certainly the first proposition, a commonsense truism, needn't imply the second.

Layers and multiplicities of meaning are to be expected in looking at art and myth, and no one (certainly not I) is claiming to have exhausted or limited the possibilities. Wagner built art out of myth, and did it with such imagination, keenness of perception and expressive power that the scholarly literature continues to proliferate and to add layer upon layer. Shaw can give us partial insight into Wagner; so can Freud, Jung, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Joseph Campbell, Jessie Weston, Robert Donington, Bryan Magee, et al. - and then there's the composer himself, who had plenty to say about what he was up to, but who also said (in a letter to his friend August Roeckel) that an artist's work may contain meanings of which even he is unaware.

One interpretation, then, need not invalidate another. But some interpretations are definitely invalid. It would seem worth our while to identify spurious interpretations and to try to understand why they're wrong. Consider, for example, Robert Gutman's infamous portrayal of _Parsifal_ as a tale of racial supremacy in which the knights of the Grail are a bunch of homosexual vegetarian Darwinian Nazi eugenicists whose pure Aryan blood is being polluted by a Jewish magician and seductress... The sloppy - or outright dishonest - scholarship Gutman adduces to support his "interpretation" is easily exposed by a cursory glance at the timeline of the opera's conception and completion, which Gutman had no excuse for getting wrong. But then he got so many things wrong - fundamental things about both the composer and the work - that his hostile agenda was obvious to me even at the age of 16, when I held his perverse book in one hand and my recording of _Parsifal_ in the other and got my first lesson in the reality of scholarly hypocrisy, along with confirmation of the principle that truth and falsehood are frequently distinguishable and that making the effort to tell them apart is a necessity, a responsibility, and a pleasure.

There have been many such lessons since - if you investigate Wagner they come at you in volleys - and they leave me with zero tolerance for any theory of interpretation which derides (Derrides?) the beliefs that "texts" may embody objective meanings which can be discovered, that an author may have useful insights to impart about the meaning of his own work, and that not every interpretation is an equally insupportable, arbitrary cluster of mental associations conjured out of the brain of some isolated creature gazing at his own navel.

Really, isn't it more fun to look at a work of art and see how many dimensions of life it can speak to, than it is to try to undermine such efforts and the enthusiasm of those who make them?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

brianvds said:


> Actually, one can in fact deny the genius of Wagner. But then, one can also deny that the earth is a sphere.
> 
> Personally, I don't like his music much (part of my general dislike of opera, and he did little else). But I don't think there is much denying his influence or achievement.
> 
> *Plus, Wagner could easily give Donald Trump a run for his money when it comes to ego, and he could do it without an orange wig.* :devil:


Of course RW, unlike DT, actually had something to be egotistical about.


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## Guest (Aug 21, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Of course RW, unlike DT, *actually had something to be egotistical about*.


His satin underwear and cushions?


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

TalkingHead said:


> His satin underwear and cushions?


They both seemed to relish running up unconscionable amounts of debt which they gleefully ran out on.

We may need a poll... :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

You people are almost as funny as Anna Russell. But I'll always love her more. :kiss:


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Really, isn't it more fun to look at a work of art and see how many dimensions of life it can speak to, than it is to try to undermine such efforts and the enthusiasm of those who make them?


Woodduck,

You seem to take offence at what was simply an observation concerning some of the more obvious epistemological considerations involved in any act of interpretation - your own included. It was never intended to undermine your efforts and enthusiasm in this regard.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Really, isn't it more fun to look at a work of art and see how many dimensions of life it can speak to, than it is to try to undermine such efforts and the enthusiasm of those who make them?


I dunno, is it?



Woodduck said:


> Maybe my mass consciousness isn't working the way it should, but the only thing I find hard hard to absorb in that piece is the fact that it's five hours long, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here for that long listening to some guy with an enormous bladder noodle around with a few notes on a twangy piano. I have an (untwangy) piano of my own, and I can do my own noodling, and take a bathroom break, any time I feel like it.





Woodduck said:


> You must realize, MacLeod, that the transcendence achieved through listening to five notes manipulated for five hours is not your garden variety of transcendence. Some transcendences are more transcendent than others. I think it's becoming clearer, as music progresses along its inevitable path, that the next phase will be the transcendence of transcendence itself. Perhaps that will require only three notes and nine hours, or maybe - hey, I think I've got it! - an eternity of silence.
> 
> Heh heh. You're a has-been, La Monte.


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## Miles120 (Aug 11, 2016)

Wodduck i really do not think he meant any offence. Offering a critique of something is not an attempt to undermine it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KRoad said:


> Woodduck,
> 
> You seem to take offence at what was simply an observation concerning some of the more obvious epistemological considerations involved in any act of interpretation - your own included. It was never intended to undermine your efforts and enthusiasm in this regard.


Thanks for reassuring me of your benign intentions, but my reaction really wasn't primarily to what I perceived as throwing a wet blanket on anyone's enthusiasm. I merely had a feeling - a strong one - that you were expressing a radical view of the subjectivity of interpretation of the sort I've encountered among fans of Barthes, Derrida and all those pompous and unreadable postmodernists who imagine that the grain of commonsense truth they've rediscovered is the whole ear of corn. I'd be happy to be wrong in that assessment.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Really, isn't it more fun to look at a work of art and see how many dimensions of life it can speak to, than it is to try to undermine such efforts and the enthusiasm of those who make them?


I dunno, is it?



Woodduck said:


> I merely had a feeling - a strong one - that you were expressing a radical view of the subjectivity of interpretation of the sort I've encountered among fans of Barthes, Derrida and all those pompous and unreadable postmodernists who imagine that the grain of commonsense truth they've rediscovered is the whole ear of corn.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

And seriously, a Wagner fan complaining about pomposity?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> And seriously, a Wagner fan complaining about pomposity?


I haven't listened to classics much in a long while, but my impression is Wagner is less often anything like 'pompous' than, say, Beethoven. He's certainly no more so than any other post-Baroque classic. Do you actually know his music or are you just recalling a popular misconception about it?

A misconception, by the way, that has more to do with how Wagner has been performed than how Wagner intended it to be performed.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Chordalrock said:


> I haven't listened to classics much in a long while, but my impression is Wagner is less often anything like 'pompous' than, say, Beethoven.


I'd say it's about even.



Chordalrock said:


> He's certainly no more so than any other post-Baroque classic.


Mmmkay. (Wagner less pompous than Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy... well you did say you haven't listened in a long while...)



Chordalrock said:


> Do you actually know his music or are you just recalling a popular misconception about it?


I can sing (badly) Tristan's second act 3 monolog by heart. Good enough?



Chordalrock said:


> A misconception, by the way, that has more to do with how Wagner has been performed than how Wagner intended it to be performed.


Okay, sure, but that happens to all composers. With Wagner you're still starting from a pretty darn high base level.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> And seriously, a Wagner fan complaining about pomposity?


if you see Wagner as a pompous composer, then you got it all wrong.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> I'd say it's about even.


So why even mention it, as though it's something peculiar to Wagner?

Also, 'pompousness', or whatever it should be called, is just another valid mood or atmosphere that a piece of music can express - there is no mood that isn't valid ground for musical expression. The same can't be said of academic or intellectual essays: the point of music is to create moods and aesthetic impressions - it can't deviate from its purpose by portraying a mood that you don't like (it is just a mood you happen not to like). On the other hand, an essay that has such affected prose that it gets in the way of communication is bad, because the point of an essay is to communicate ideas.

So it's perfectly valid to criticise writers for being pompous and obscure, but it's hardly appropriate to criticise music for being something you happen not to like, or to draw parallels between the two.



Hildadam Bingor said:


> With Wagner you're still starting from a pretty darn high base level.


You mean he has too many climaxes, or...? I'm not quite following you here.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Chordalrock said:


> So why even mention it, as though it's something peculiar to Wagner?


Because somebody was complaining about pomposity and I know from other posts I've seen that they're a big Wagner fan. If I knew they were an even bigger Beethoven fan, then I might've said "A Beethoven fan complaining about pomposity?" Conservely, if I knew they were an even bigger Debussy fan, I might not have said anything, but silently thought to myself "Yeah, that makes sense."



Chordalrock said:


> Also, 'pompousness', or whatever it should be called, is just another valid mood or atmosphere that a piece of music can express - there is no mood that isn't valid ground for musical expression. The same can't be said of academic or intellectual essays: the point of music is to create moods and aesthetic impressions - it can't deviate from its purpose by portraying a mood that you don't like (it is just a mood you happen not to like). On the other hand, an essay that has such affected prose that it gets in the way of communication is bad, because the point of an essay is to communicate ideas.


The point of an essay is to accomplish whatever that essay accomplishes (if anything).


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> So why even mention it, as though it's something peculiar to Wagner?


It's not exclusive to Wagner, but I think it's a fair description.



> Also, 'pompousness', or whatever it should be called, is just another valid mood or atmosphere that a piece of music can express - there is no mood that isn't valid ground for musical expression. The same can't be said of academic or intellectual essays: the point of music is to create moods and aesthetic impressions - it can't deviate from its purpose by portraying a mood that you don't like (it is just a mood you happen not to like). On the other hand, an essay that has such affected prose that it gets in the way of communication is bad, because the point of an essay is to communicate ideas.


But by the same token, art can be mannered or affected, to the point that it distracts from the enjoyment of it. Some Brahms is like that.



> So it's perfectly valid to criticise writers for being pompous and obscure, but it's hardly appropriate to criticise music for being something you happen not to like, or to draw parallels between the two.


I can't agree with that.



> You mean he has too many climaxes, or...? I'm not quite following you here.


Too much brass, for starters. It's a stylistic thing.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I can listen to _Tristan_ from one end to the other and "pomposity" never appears. In _Meistersinger,_ the masters are pompous, and that's a good thing; they enjoy their pomposity, it's their pride, and it's fun to hear it marching along all brassy and contrapuntal. In the_ Ring,_ the gods can be pompous, and that's not such a good thing for them, but it's part of why they get a "Dammerung," and so it's good in the end. In _Parsifal_ only the knights of the Grail exhibit what some may consider pomposity, but I'd just call it ceremonial dignity.

Wagner's music is pompous like nobody's business when his stories require it, and a thousand other non-pompous things, also like nobody's business, when he needs _those_ things. Maybe his silk jackets and berets are pompous, but who the hell cares? Let a man have his pleasures.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Wow, all this talk about pomposity makes me think of pots and kettles. :devil:


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Strange, I do not find pomposity in Wagner's music. There are parts of the drama that may require such and Wagner wrote it. There is much more pomposity in beautiful High Baroque music.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> if you see Wagner as a pompous composer, then you got it all wrong.


Well he wasn't exactly a shrinking violet, was he?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

One cannot deny two things about Wagner:

1. He was one of music's greatest geniuses, with the scores to prove it for all the world to hear.

2. He was one of history's most rabid anti-semites with writings to prove it for all the world to read.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

hpowders said:


> One cannot deny two things about Wagner:
> 
> 1. He was one of music's greatest geniuses, with the scores to prove it for all the world to hear.
> 
> 2. He was one of history's most rabid anti-semites with writings to prove it for all the world to read.


An anti-semite yes, but one of history's most rabid ones? All he did was write a nasty pamphlet as opposed to others who actually committed acts of violence against Jews.


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## majlis (Jul 24, 2005)

Everyone who deny the genius of Wagner, will be delivered to the Gestapo for free lessons. In a short time, he/she will shout that adore Wagner, and he was the greatest composer that ever exists.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Dim7 said:


> An anti-semite yes, but one of history's most rabid ones?


Cosima and Liszt were arguably more anti-semitic than Wagner himself. Perhaps there's a "rabidity" scale we could use?


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Now hold on!* Wagner admitted that the the best thing about the American Centennial March was the money he got for it*. It wasn't simple cynicism; he also said that he needed the inspiration of a poetic idea to produce the real stuff. In this he was the quintessential Romantic. When he did have such an idea, the non-stage works could be first-rate: the _Wesendonck Songs_ and the _Siegfried Idyll_ are masterful.


:lol: Funny stuff


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

You don't think Wagner was pompous? interesting. 

I think genius is not an out of bounds description. But I tend to balk at anyone who tell me I "have" to believe something. It's probably what took me so long to coming around to his music in the first place. Well one of the reasons.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> One cannot deny two things about Wagner:
> 
> 1. He was one of music's greatest geniuses, with the scores to prove it for all the world to hear.
> 
> 2. He was one of history's most rabid anti-semites with writings to prove it for all the world to read.


One also cannot deny that most people who talk about Wagner's antisemitism haven't bothered to investigate what it actually consisted of and how his expression of it fit into the widespread antisemitism of his culture. If they did they would discover that Wagner's prejudices didn't stand in the way of his having productive personal and professional associations with Jews, and that those prejudices did not lead him to advocate any political action to abridge the rights of Jewish citizens. In fact, he was definite in his refusal to be associated with such movements, which were gaining momentum late in his lifetime at the initiative of antisemites obviously more "rabid" than himself.

Another thing one cannot deny is that it's easy to beat up on people from eras long past, and neither can one deny that it remains fashionable to single out Wagner for beating. It's his misfortune, but not his fault, that Hitler liked his operas and got cozy with his descendents, and that the association has resulted in a popular perception, shamelessly fed by bogus, "politically correct" scholarship and popular media, that Wagner's own art is pervaded by proto-Nazi propaganda. It's difficult to find a film about the Third Reich that doesn't use Wagner's music in the soundtrack.

My guess is that there are more people who "cannot deny" assertion #2 above than have any conception of assertion #1. I hope I live to see that situation reversed, but I'm not counting on it.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

I initially entered a response here that was clearly a result of my having mis-read Woodduck's post.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

KRoad said:


> Have you considered that Hitler interpreted Wagner operated purely within the historical context of anti-semitism that prevailed internationally at this time and linked this to his political ambitions to further the aims of German nationalism


I suspect that Hitler was drawn, first and foremost, to the splendour of Wagner's sound and the rollicking great tunes. It's perhaps significant that Hitler's first love among Wagner's operas was _Rienzi_, which indeed has its fair share of grandiosity, but is also chock full of sweeping and/or rum-ti-tum melodies of the most straightforward kind. These qualities may be discerned, in greater or lesser degree, in the music of Hitler's other favourite composers; these included Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Emmerich Kalmán and (reputedly) Franz Léhar. The latter two were, of course, Jewish. On this evidence, at least, Hitler's taste in music hardly seems to have been directly guided by his nationalist bigotry; he might simply have been attracted to certain kinds of tunes.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I suspect that Hitler was drawn, first and foremost, to the splendour of Wagner's sound and the rollicking great tunes. It's perhaps significant that Hitler's first love among Wagner's operas was _Rienzi_, which indeed has its fair share of grandiosity, but is also chock full of sweeping and/or rum-ti-tum melodies of the most straightforward kind. These qualities may be discerned, in greater or lesser degree, in the music of Hitler's other favourite composers; these included Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Emmerich Kalmán and (reputedly) Franz Léhar. The latter two were, of course, Jewish. On this evidence, at least, Hitler's taste in music hardly seems to have been directly guided by his nationalist bigotry; he might simply have been attracted to certain kinds of tunes.


What an interesting historical fact. It shows that enjoyment of art can be separated from the artist himself/herself.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I suspect that Hitler was drawn, first and foremost, to the splendour of Wagner's sound and the rollicking great tunes. It's perhaps significant that Hitler's first love among Wagner's operas was _Rienzi_, which indeed has its fair share of grandiosity, but is also chock full of sweeping and/or rum-ti-tum melodies of the most straightforward kind. These qualities may be discerned, in greater or lesser degree, in the music of Hitler's other favourite composers; these included Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Emmerich Kalmán and (reputedly) Franz Léhar. The latter two were, of course, Jewish. On this evidence, at least, Hitler's taste in music hardly seems to have been directly guided by his nationalist bigotry; he might simply have been attracted to certain kinds of tunes.


That's an interesting point. Hitler's musical tastes were quite diverse. It's also true (I've read) that he liked Italian opera and that Verdi's operas were performed more often than Wagner's in Germany during that time.

Hitler's understanding of Wagner was superficial, and there's no evidence in his writings or elsewhere that he ever read Wagner's essay "Das Judentum in der Musik." His ideology of world domination by an Aryan/German super race and the oppression and extermination of inferior races was never advocated (and actually rejected when encountered) by Wagner, whose basic "solution" to the "Jewish problem" - eventual assimilation through the renunciation of Judaism - was distasteful, impractical, and absurd, but not violent.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

You're right. I can't. Don't want to either. Gee, that was simple.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> One also cannot deny that most people who talk about Wagner's antisemitism haven't bothered to investigate what it actually consisted of and how his expression of it fit into the widespread antisemitism of his culture. If they did they would discover that Wagner's prejudices didn't stand in the way of his having productive personal and professional associations with Jews, and that those prejudices did not lead him to advocate any political action to abridge the rights of Jewish citizens. In fact, he was definite in his refusal to be associated with such movements, which were gaining momentum late in his lifetime at the initiative of antisemites obviously more "rabid" than himself.
> 
> Another thing one cannot deny is that it's easy to beat up on people from eras long past, and neither can one deny that it remains fashionable to single out Wagner for beating. It's his misfortune, but not his fault, that Hitler liked his operas and got cozy with his descendents, and that the association has resulted in a popular perception, shamelessly fed by bogus, "politically correct" scholarship and popular media, that Wagner's own art is pervaded by proto-Nazi propaganda. It's difficult to find a film about the Third Reich that doesn't use Wagner's music in the soundtrack.
> 
> My guess is that there are more people who "cannot deny" assertion #2 above than have any conception of assertion #1. I hope I live to see that situation reversed, but I'm not counting on it.


Wagner may have been an anti-semite, but he was also an anarchist vegetarian, so that gets him points in my book.

They should play his music for documentaries about animal rights instead.

"This is a cow"

*The opening of Tristan and Isolde starts to play*

He lives in a factory farm....


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> Wagner may have been an anti-semite, but he was also an anarchist vegetarian, so gets him points in my book.
> 
> They should play his music for documentaries about animal rights instead.
> 
> ...


:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> Emmerich Kalmán and (reputedly) Franz Léhar. The latter two were, of course, Jewish. On this evidence,.


Franz Lehar was not jewish. 
His wife was.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> Wagner may have been an anti-semite, but he was also an anarchist vegetarian, so that gets him points in my book.
> 
> They should play his music for documentaries about animal rights instead.
> 
> ...


By the way, all cows are girls.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> By the way, all cows are girls.


Are you denying cows the right of determining their own their gender preferences?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> By the way, all cows are girls.


Eww... I mean, some girls may be cows, but it doesn't follow that cows are girls.

Girl:










Cow:










Let's not confuse the two more than we have to.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Are you denying cows the right of determining their own their gender preferences?


No, only the right to use the rest room of their choice.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Chordalrock said:


> Eww... I mean, some girls may be cows, but it doesn't follow that cows are girls.
> 
> Girl:


You got it wrong - that's a woman, not a girl. A girl by definition has a beard:


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## Guest (Aug 26, 2016)

One can of course deny the genius of Wagner. Whether one can substantiate a denial is another matter, depending as it does on definitions of 'genius' and the correlation of that definition with the facts of Wagner's lett- sorry, music.

(I am still in the thread on this subject? You know how you can flit from one to another looking at pictures of bearded ladies and cows and not be sure where you are...?)

A small point about definitions, given the revisiting of the issue by mmsbls and Mahlerian over what is a melody: if a component of a definition of a melody is that it is 'pleasing' then any melody that fails to please must fail, regardless of its meeting other components (and the displeasure this might cause to those who find the displeasing, pleasing). The implication is that either the definition is wrong (since it excludes things that might otherwise belong to that category); or its application is wrong (the comparing of the components of the definition to a particular melody is flawed).

There are those who hate semantic debates, yet use words in ways that demand challenge for their assertions about music to be tested. No one _wants _yet another debate about the meaning of the word 'genius', yet some - in this thread, the OP at least - expect to be able to make an unchallengeable claim about a composer without elaborating beyond, "Just look...go on, it's self-evident!"

Now, I'm not going to offer a definition and start the process of checking each component against Wagner, the man or his output. But I am going to draw attention to what Oxford has to say. It offers four meanings, and the most strking for me was:



> 3A person regarded as exerting a powerful influence over another for good or evil:


http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/genius

It seems that whatever one thinks of his music, one cannot deny that Wagner has exerted a powerful influence over others.

Well, one can of course deny this, though I think it would be even harder to substantiate that denial than the one I opened my post with!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> *One can of course deny* the genius of Wagner.
> 
> It seems that whatever one thinks of his music, *one cannot deny* that Wagner has exerted a powerful influence over others.
> 
> ...


You are in denial.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

The 19th century called, it want's this topic back. Incidentally, a transmission interferred with the call, something about a banana.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Aside from his other issues, Richard Wagner is suspected of killing Natalie Wood. Wait a moment...yes…OK. They tell me that’s the wrong Wagner. Never mind.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Sloe said:


> Franz Lehar was not jewish. His wife was.


Thanks for the correction.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Nobody in his right mind would deny that Wagner was a musical mega-genius.

It's just as a human being that he was a major disappointment.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Nobody in his right mind would deny that Wagner was a musical mega-genius.
> 
> It's just as a human being that he was a major disappointment.


Yeah, wasn't it a relief when the little creep kicked the bucket?

Guess we have no one to be disappointed in now but ourselves.


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## Guest (Aug 27, 2016)

hpowders said:


> Nobody in his right mind would deny that Wagner was a musical mega-genius.


Actually, I'm quite sane thank you.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Aside from his other issues, Richard Wagner is suspected of killing Natalie Wood. Wait a moment...yes…OK. They tell me that's the wrong Wagner. Never mind.


But it's possible. Natalie could have been listening to Tristan on her portable cassette player and, thus, drunk and distracted, tripped and fell off that rowboat. Natalie and Robert were great Richard Wagner fans, Richard being Robert's great grandfather.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DaveM said:


> But it's possible. Natalie could have been listening to Tristan on her portable cassette player and, thus, drunk and distracted, tripped and fell off that rowboat. Natalie and Robert were great Richard Wagner fans, Richard being Robert's great grandfather.


...and Lindsay's great-great-grandfather.

One cannot deny the genealogy of Wagner.


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