# Wagner on Brahms



## RichardWagnerOfficial (Sep 11, 2021)

This is going to be quite long but I'd like to know what you make of these passages written in 1879 between two articles, On Poetry and Composition and On the Application of Music to Drama:



> Music is the most witless thing conceivable, and yet we now have wellnigh naught but witty composition. I suppose that this has come about for love of our dear littérateurs, Herr Paul Lindau in particular, who only asks amusement from all Art, as I am told, since otherwise it bores him. But strange to say, it is precisely our amusing music that is the greatest bore of all (just think of a piece entitled a "Divertissement" at any of our concerts), whereas-say what you will-a completely witless Symphony of Beethoven's is always too brief for every hearer. Methinks, at bottom lies a fatal error of our newspaper-reporters' system of Æsthetics. It is not to be expected that we shall win over our champions of musical amusement to another taste; nevertheless, quite among ourselves, we will once more devote a few words to the un-witty side of Music.
> 
> Have not the results of many an inquiry already plainly taught us that Music indeed has nothing to do with the common seriousness of life; that its character, on the contrary, is sublime and grief-assuaging radiance (Heiterkeit); ay-that it smiles on us, but never makes us laugh? Surely we may call the A-major Symphony of Beethoven the brightest thing that any art has e'er brought forth: but can we imagine the genius of this work in any but a state of loftiest transport? Here is held a Dionysos-feast such as only on the most ideal of suppositions can the Greek have ever celebrated: let us plunge into the rushing tumult, the frenzy of delight, we never leave the realm of lofty ecstasy, high as heaven above the soil where Wit rakes up its meagre fancies. For here we are in no masquerade, the sole amusement of our leathern world of Progress; here we accost no privy-councillor dressed up as a Don Juan, whose recognition and dismasking causes boundless fun: no, here appear those truthful shapes that shewed themselves in moving ranks of heroes to blind Homer, in ranks which now deaf Beethoven makes call aloud the mind's enraptured eye to see them once again
> 
> ...


And from the second article:



> That Programme-music, on which "we" looked with timid glances from the corner of our eye, had imported so much novelty in harmonisation, theatrical and landscape effects, nay, historical painting; and had worked it all out with such striking brilliance, in power of an uncommonly virtuosic art of instrumenting, that to continue in the earlier style of Classic Symphony one lacked alas! the Beethoven who would have known how to make the best of it. "We" held our tongues. When at last we took heart to open our symphonic mouth again, just to show what still was in us, we found we had grown so turgid and wearisome that there was nothing for it but to deck ourselves with fallen feathers from the Programme petrel. In our symphonies, and that sort of thing, all now goes world-distraught and catastrophic; we are gloomy and grim, then mettlesome and daring; we yearn for the fulfilment of youthful dreams; dæmonic obstacles encompass us; we brood, we even rave: and then the world-ache's tooth is drawn; we laugh, and humorously shew the world its gaping gum; brisk, sturdy, blunt, Hungarian or Scotch; -alas! to others dreary. To be serious: we cannot believe that a happy future has been secured to instrumental music by the creations of its latest masters; above all, it must be bad for us to recklessly tack on these works to the legacy of Beethoven, in view of the utter un-Beethovenism which we ought, on the contrary, to be taught to discern in them-a lesson that should not come so very hard in the matter of kinship to the Beethovenian spirit, in spite of all the Beethovenian themes we here meet once again; though in the matter of form it could scarcely be easy to the pupils of our Conservatoires, as under the rubric of "Æsthetic Forms" they are giving nothing but a list of different composers' names, and left to form a judgment for themselves without further comparison.
> 
> The said symphonic compositions of our newest school-let us call it the Romantic-classical-are distinguished from the wild-stock of our so-called Programme-music not only by the regretted absence of a programme, but in especial by a certain clammy cast of melody which its creators have transplanted from their heretofore retiring "Chamber-music." To the "Chamber," in fact, one had withdrawn. Alas! not to the homely room where Beethoven once poured into the ears of few and breathless friends all that Unutterable he kept for understanding here alone, instead of in the ample hall-space where he spoke in none but plastic masses to the Folk, to all mankind: in this hallowed "chamber" silence long had reigned; for one now must hear the master's so-called "last" Quartets and Sonatas either badly, as men played them, or not at all-till the way at last was shewn by certain outlawed renegades, and one learnt what that chamber-music really said. No, those had already moved their chamber to the concert-hall: what had previously been dressed as Quintets and the like, was now served up as Symphony: little chips of melody, like an infusion of hay and old tea-leaves, with nothing to tell you what you are swallowing but the label "Best"; and all for the acquired taste of World-ache.-On the whole, however, the newer tendency to the eccentric, the requiring-a-programme, retained the upper hand. With fine discernment Mendelssohn had gone to Nature for his subjects, and executed them as a kind of landscape epic: he had travelled much, and brought home many a thing that others could not lightly come by. But the latest phase, is to take the cabinet-pictures of our local Exhibitions and set them to music straightway; enabling one to seize those quaint instrumental effects which are now at everyone's command, disguise embezzled melodies in harmonisations that are a constant surprise, and play the outcome to the world as Plastic music.
> 
> ...


This is far from everything he said about Brahms, he was notably much nicer before the publication of his first symphony. I think Wagner made the mistake of evaluating Brahms only insofar as he did or didn't resemble Beethoven, just like the conservatives, which was apparently something that Brahms resented. But a mistake Brahms' isn't devoid of blame from when he let himself be used by the conservative movement.

Do you agree with any of his criticisms?


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

I think anyone who ploughs through Wagner’s tedious prose deserves a medal. Brahms made his point rather more succinctly by falling asleep when Liszt was playing the piano! Wagner should have stuck to what he was good at - writing music!


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Brevity is the soul of wit...


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

RichardWagnerOfficial said:


> I think Wagner made the mistake of evaluating Brahms only insofar as he did or didn't resemble Beethoven


Wagner is criticising 'Romantic classical music' for its tendency to take one of two (or both) approaches in place of artistry: crudely incorporating either a) the innovations of an essentially foreign musical form: programme music, or b) chamber music techniques. The former gives rise to fake emotional posturing, and the latter to a focus on technique over content. He compares the byzantine phrases of Brahms with something as 'crude', but moving, as the fate motif in beethoven's fifth - so here there is indeed a comparison with beethoven but that comparison is not the be-all and end-all of the critiques.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

marlow said:


> I think anyone who ploughs through Wagner's tedious prose deserves a medal. Brahms made his point rather more succinctly by falling asleep when Liszt was playing the piano! Wagner should have stuck to what he was good at - writing music!


Truth is overrated. Now relevance, for that I'd pay a hefty sum.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Highwayman said:


> Brevity is the soul of wit...


As I recall that was Shakespeare.....


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

"Music is the most witless thing conceivable, ..."

Before I move on deeper into the articles, I must ponder that opening assertion. If I conclude as I am now leaning that the statement is pure balderdash, I shall not read on. For even if the statement _hints_ at a modicum of truth, there is certainly something at least conceivably _more_ witless, and that is to assert that music is the most foolish and stupid thing conceivable.


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## RichardWagnerOfficial (Sep 11, 2021)

Wit =/= intelligence.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

SONNET CLV said:


> "Music is the most witless thing conceivable, ..."
> 
> Before I move on deeper into the articles, I must ponder that opening assertion. If I conclude as I am now leaning that the statement is pure balderdash, I shall not read on. For even if the statement _hints_ at a modicum of truth, there is certainly something at least conceivably _more_ witless, and that is to assert that music is the most foolish and stupid thing conceivable.


Well, I got past your opening line, but couldn't stomach this...


> Surely we may call the A-major Symphony of Beethoven the brightest thing that any art has e'er brought forth: but can we imagine the genius of this work in any but a state of loftiest transport? Here is held a Dionysos-feast such as only on the most ideal of suppositions can the Greek have ever celebrated: let us plunge into the rushing tumult, the frenzy of delight, we never leave the realm of lofty ecstasy, high as heaven above the soil where Wit rakes up its meagre fancies.


I mean, I quite like the 7th, but really..


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

“If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.”

(Johannes Brahms)


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Kind of reminds me of Tony Palmer's old _Wagner_ film from years ago, featuring Richard Burton's last performance. In a memorable soirée scene, one thing becomes abundantly clear: when Wagner's around, never, EVER mention Meyerbeer.


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