# Why people like Wagner so much



## RogerWaters

By way of background, at the time as I love Richard Wagner more, I also like him less. As I am coming to value selections of his oeuvre more and more I am, at the same time, becoming clearer that his works, taken as wholes, are too long with too much 'filler' for me with too much focus on narrative and not enough on music (at least, music with rhythmic continuity and development).

This got me thinking about why Wagner supporters often love his music so... unconditionally.

Having some awareness of selectionist reasoning in evolution biology, I realised that the length of Wagner's musical dramas probably _selects for_ a certain kind of fan.

Only those people who love Wagner enough to sit through 4 hours of dramatics are 'Wagnerites'.

Of course, this only applies to some degree. There are no doubt plenty of 'conditional fans' (including myself) who only love excerpts of the Ring, Tristan etc.

Are you an unconditional or conditional fan of Wagner?


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## mbhaub

Conditional - I've sat through the Ring live three times. That's enough. Nowadays I prefer his operas in chunks - an act a day is fine. Flying Dutchman is ok, not too long. But when you see 70 coming at you, sitting for long stretches is difficult. I do like the bleeding chunks as well as the many arrangements of the operas without words. There are times when I wish he had been more concise and trimmed the works by 25%. Still, I'll take my Wagner unabridged.


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## Neo Romanza

For me, _Das Rheingold_ and _Parsifal_ are two of the greatest pieces of music ever written. I think Wagner has earned his place amongst the upper echelon of composers. The man was a genius and hugely influential to a whole new generation of composers. I love his music unconditionally. I don't listen to him very often, but when I want something to take my breath away that's on a massive scale, Wagner fits this bill like no other.


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## Woodduck

I can't respond to the "conditional/unconditional" thing... Not every bar of Wagner's music is equally inspired or absorbing, but then I know of no operas by any composer that, taking parts in isolation, impress me consistently throughout. Wagner's are, IMO, powerful taken as whole entities, and never less than interesting. Given the freedom and complexity of his harmony and his ambitious efforts to give musical cohesion to a stream-of-consciousness musical narrative to illuminate stage action, I find his mastery altogether amazing and have little difficulty with the occasional dull(er) moment. The idea of listening to "highlights" in preference to complete works rather horrifies me. I will listen to isolated sections of the operas from time to time, but mainly to enjoy the work of certain performers.


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## SONNET CLV

Deep into and near the end of his eloquent essay "The Monster," a thoughtful and intriguing though highly subjective portrait of Richard Wagner, composer/critic Deems Taylor writes this passage:

There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner.

Those words have stayed with me since my first reading of the Taylor essay, now some half century ago. I can think of no other composer who is so well described by proclaiming his greatness and his failings as being "in the grand manner." And that has ever since been the measure by which I hear Wagner, right or wrong though I may be. Where music specifically (and "art" in general) is concerned, his is surely that conceived in a vastly spacious mind.


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## larold

Wagner's art is famed and there is a theater created specifically for it. Aside from that what makes you think people love his art? Have you ever seen in played in your town? How many of his operas or other music have you sat through? 

I agree his music is striking and original and I like Wagner about 20 minutes at a time before it becomes wearisome. I could never endure even Meistersinger in the opera house.

I think the opposite: for as much as it is talked about and praised I don't like people his music all that much outside of the bleeding chunks.


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## Enthusiast

I'm no Wagner fanatic and would never claim he was the greatest composer who ever lived or anything like that. For me he _is _a great and many of his operas (notably the Ring, Meistersinger, Parcifal and Tristan) are, along with many of the operas of Mozart, Verdi and Britten, among the greatest. But I don't get the fanaticism.


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## Kreisler jr

larold said:


> Wagner's art is famed and there is a theater created specifically for it. Aside from that


This sounds as if it wasn't anything special at all to have a theater and festival for ONE composer that is a pretty big deal almost every year basically since its inception almost 150 years ago.
And the operas are also played frequently in other cities with large opera houses (and not only the largest, in countries like Germany you will occasionally have a "Ring" in an opera house of a 200k people city, "Dutchman" or "Lohengrin" are obviously less demanding). Considering how demanding most of them are, there are very few other operas of that scale (i.e. >3h long AND large orchestra) that are given as regularly as Wagner's. Meyerbeer's are basically gone from the repertoire, Berlioz' Troyens is fairly rare, I'd guess Strauss' "Rosenkavalier" would probably be in the same range as Wagner (his two other famous ones are about half as long as typical Wagner and the huge ones like "Frau ohne Schatten" are not so frequently staged)


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## Clairvoyance Enough

For me it's no different than all of the "Voice of God" fervor that surrounds Mozart. I love Mozart, but not enough that I've ever related to all of that sentimental rhetoric, and so I'm puzzled and sometimes put off by it in the same you are by Wagner-mania. On the other hand, Wagner's music actually does fill me with that "Voice of God"-type energy, more so than any other composer ever has. The most physical reactions I've ever had to any music have been to his operas. At the height of my infatuation with it I would shed tears, shiver, and generally vibrate with raw, surplus energy that I didn't know what to do with, just a glowing aesthetic-pleasure that would last the entire day. 

My similar hangups with Wagner's lack of "rhythmic continuity" aside (I am also very, very bored by large sections of his music), no other composer has ever come close to affecting me in that way with as much consistency or intensity. It only accentuated the value of the "good parts" that I was willing to persevere through my dislike of his music drama format. If I only liked Wagner as much as, say, Dvorak, I wouldn't have bothered.


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## amfortas

For me, the power of Wagner is a cumulative effect extending over the long musical and dramatic arcs of his works. If you wanted to put it less charitably, you could say he gradually beats his audience into submission. "Bleeding chunks" are all well and good, but inevitably seem diminished in effect when shorn from their larger context.


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## larold

_Wagner's art is famed and there is a theater created specifically for it...This sounds as if it wasn't anything special at all to have a theater and festival for ONE composer that is a pretty big deal almost every year basically since its inception almost 150 years ago._

I agree I may have minimized his importance as a revolutionary artist. Among other things Wagner was the creator of a new art form -- music, drama, scene -- that changed the music world. His Ring tetralogy is the greatest single achievement in classical music and was mimicked hundreds of years later in the 20thcentury music-drama-scene form, film, with its own Ring trilogy.

Having said that I still think his music is more talked about than loved and attended especially compared to other great composers. His "problem" for me is similar to Berlioz: too big most of the time.


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## Woodduck

Like the works of Shakespeare, the operas of Wagner become greater the better you know them. "Knowing them" requires both understanding their musical/dramatic complexities and subtleties and exploring their philosophical and psychological implications. Secondarily, it means learning about their prominent position in our cultural history. They can keep us busy for as long as we want to be engaged. There are reasons why books analyzing them continue to appear. 

There's no definitive answer to the question of "why people like Wagner," but if you do find that you like him and if you follow that liking wherever it leads, you'll be a long, long time coming to the end of him, and you'll probably never get there. He really is that big, and there are few other artists of whom that can be said. Maybe Shakespeare is the only one.


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## Aries

RogerWaters said:


> By way of background, at the time as I love Richard Wagner more, I also like him less. As I am coming to value selections of his oeuvre more and more I am, at the same time, becoming clearer that his works, taken as wholes, are too long with too much 'filler' for me with too much focus on narrative and not enough on music (at least, music with rhythmic continuity and development).


Sometimes there is too much talking. But is it just a problem of the Ring des Nibelungen or of all of his operas? I think Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg or Der Fliegende Holländer aren't boring anywhere or? Maybe it is just the Ring where Wagner neglected rhythm and melody too much and tried to solve it just with harmonics.


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## Cellscape

My introduction to Wagner was in 1951, when I was 16. I was passionately interested in classical music at the time, but more Beethoven and Mozart and Bach. I just happened to notice in the Radio Times that the Bayreuth Festival, which I had never heard of, was getting going again, and that the BBC was broadcasting an opera called Parsifal. I had heard a couple of operas before but I wasn’t particularly interested in opera then.

So I got out from the public library Ernest Newman’s Wagner Nights and read the chapter on Parsifal and thought, wow, all this stuff about the wound that can’t heal,the Holy Grail,I found it incredibly intriguing. And when the BBC broadcast the opening performance I listened with the vocal score that I’d got out of the library. Parsifal was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, and I can’t pretend I understood it in any way, but I was unbelievably intrigued and thrilled by it.The darkness of it, and the pain of it were incredible: and I never found it slow in the way my music master had warned me that all Wagner was slow; even though one of the amazing things about Parsifal is its revolutionary breadth, its silences, and its ineluctability.

I then listened to any Wagner I could on the Third Programme; there were hardly any recordings then except highlights. In the autumn the BBC broadcast the whole Ring over four evenings, and I listened to it with the vocal scores and Newman’s book open beside me and that was absolutely stunning. Of course I was in a very remote relationship to what I now consider to be the essence of the music,but it had the most tremendous impact on me. I became a proselytizer for Wagner even though I didn’t understand in any deep way what was going on. And my passion for Wagner was enormously influenced by my interest in philosophy, though not in the sense of the theories that influenced him, because I didn’t know that he’d read Schopenhauer, and I didn’t know that he'd studied Feuerbach, or any of the intellectual context; but it was just the emotional equivalent of philosophy if you like. Things such as Wotan asking himself questions about how he as a God could create a free being. I thought it was amazing that an opera could contain people, or for that matter gods, asking questions like that.

I’ve spent a very large part of my life playing Wagner to people, explaining first, and then giving them an idea of what they were going to hear. If somebody asked me who my favorite composer was, I'd have to say Wagner as he's been the center of my life in so many ways, but I don't think he's better than Bach, or Mozart, or Schubert for example, who are all sublime. I wouldn't say my love of Wagner is 'unconditional', but I think Wagner has shaped me in a very real and profound way. When you give yourself over to a great artist, and trust in the excellence of the artistic creation, one enters into a sort of dialogue with a great creative figure like that. It no doubt produces a sort of distorted picture of them in a way,but there is a sort of interaction going on,and that’s the only thing that really matters.


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## amfortas

^^^ One of my favorite posts in recent memory.


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## Woodduck

Cellscape said:


> So I got out from the public library Ernest Newman's Wagner Nights and read the chapter on Parsifal and thought, wow, all this stuff about the wound that can't heal,the Holy Grail,I found it incredibly intriguing. And when the BBC broadcast the opening performance I listened with the vocal score that I'd got out of the library. Parsifal was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, and I can't pretend I understood it in any way, but I was unbelievably intrigued and thrilled by it.The darkness of it, and the pain of it were incredible: and I never found it slow in the way my music master had warned me that all Wagner was slow; even though *one of the amazing things about Parsifal is its revolutionary breadth, its silences, and its ineluctability.*


Beautifully expressed. My experience was similar. I was about 15, and the 1951 Bayreuth recording of _Parsifal_ (the only one then available) was broadcast on public radio. I already knew and loved the act one prelude and the Good Friday music, and had read the story of the opera and been fascinated by the magical, portentous quality of its strange events. I listened to the whole opera from start to finish in a state of total absorption - I had no libretto, but could follow the plot more or less easily - and when it ended I think I spent the next twenty minutes somewhere outside my body. Almost sixty years later the work can still take me to a place that nothing else can. The blend of pain and ecstasy in its music is unique; no music I know of leads me so close to the fearful, dark center of spiritual death, and then leads me so blissfully out of it. And I think that nothing less than that was Wagner's intention.


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## Itullian

Wagner's are the only operas that can make me cry.
The only operas that can make me tremble.

With operas with arias , after i've heard them, i'm bored.
With Wagner its about each act.. Each act is a symphonic unified composition.
As a result, as an "unconditional" Wagnerite, i can listen to a whole opera or just a single act and feel satisfied symphonically and emotionally.
My favorite listens are the more non-popular parts.
Siegfried Act 2, Walkure Act 2, Tristan Act 1, Lohengrin Act 2 etc.
I find them never boring to listen to. They dont jump out and grab you, but they hold my attention.
i find them enthralling.
I started with other operas, but when i got my first Wagner opera, i went WOW!
This is different, this is amazing, this is Michelangelo in music!!!


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## SixFootScowl

Why people like Wagner so much?

Awesome stories. Awesome music. Awesome singing. What else can I say?


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## Radames

SixFootScowl said:


> Why people like Wagner so much?
> 
> Awesome stories. Awesome music. Awesome singing. What else can I say?


His innovations. He created new ideas in harmony, melodic leitmotifs and operatic structure. Has anyone created something like his Ring? Such ambition and massive conception. So many incredible scenes...


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## Pat Fairlea

I gladly acknowledge that some people find Wagner's music deeply satisfying, absorbing, brilliant. I don't, but wouldn't argue that I'm right and they are in some way wrong. I prefer simple food to a chef's tour de force, prefer art deco to baroque, prefer the cold water of Sibelius at his most austere to the rich cocktails of late 19th century Romanticism. I'm also inclined to agree with Rossini's glib remark that Wagner has some wonderful moments but some dreadful quarter-hours. So carry on loving Wagner's music, folks, I'm genuinely happy for you. Just don't try to talk me into agreeing with you. :tiphat:


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## amfortas

Pat Fairlea said:


> I gladly acknowledge that some people find Wagner's music deeply satisfying, absorbing, brilliant. I don't, but wouldn't argue that I'm right and they are in some way wrong. I prefer simple food to a chef's tour de force, prefer art deco to baroque, prefer the cold water of Sibelius at his most austere to the rich cocktails of late 19th century Romanticism. I'm also inclined to agree with Rossini's glib remark that Wagner has some wonderful moments but some dreadful quarter-hours. So carry on loving Wagner's music, folks, I'm genuinely happy for you. Just don't try to talk me into agreeing with you. :tiphat:


You VILL agree, damn you!


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## Barbebleu

Be haff vays of makink you appreciate Herr Vagner, nicht war?


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## annaw

Wagner is my absolute musical comfort zone and I love his mature operas.

The thing with Wagner is that he just didn't seem to write a single actually bad opera (in my opinion) after his early attempts, which he seemed to pretty much disown anyway. He had consistency that makes him quite unique among composers - every next work he wrote seemed to be even better and even more genius than the previous one. His works have a sense of sincerity and intimacy that I haven't found in the works of any other opera composer to the same extent. I find Wagner's operas extremely humane and real because of that; I can see the artist behind them.

I think part of the reason behind Wagner's lasting popularity is that he was just an utter artistic maniac. How many people would *actually* dare to attempt to write something like _Der Ring_?! When one listens to works like _Der Ring_ or _Parsifal_, it is not difficult to realise that writing them must have required an immense artistic effort. His inspiration and ambition seemed to be endless, but it must have taken blood, toil, tears, and sweat to put such a kaleidoscope of ideas, philosophies, and inspirations together into one comprehensive whole and then repeat the process again, again, and again for each opera individually.

In the end, I find him to be quite a humbling composer. No matter how much I read about his works and listen to them, I always have a feeling that there are things and ideas I still don't understand or haven't even noticed.


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## HenryPenfold

Sometimes someone comes along, Jesus, Shakespeare, Wagner, Don Van Vliet, Holger Czukay ...


EDIT: I'm an atheist, btw.


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## Woodduck

HenryPenfold said:


> Sometimes someone comes along, Jesus, Shakespeare, Wagner, Don Van Vliet, Holger Czukay ...
> 
> EDIT: I'm an atheist, btw.


I'm an atheist too (and in the strict sense Wagner was too, _Parsifal _and Nietzsche's opinion of it notwithstanding), but it's possibly relevant to point out that atheists and religious believers both know brilliance and profundity when they see or hear it. In Wagner's case they not only appreciate him but in various ways lay claim to him. Among Wagner's famous Christian enthusiasts were T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and C.S. Lewis. Lewis's friend H. R. Tolkien didn't like to talk about his ring's obvious debt to Wagner's (whereas Wagner, whose reputation for arrogance is overblown, wasn't shy about his literary inspirations). Auden opined that _Wagner_ might be the greatest genius who ever lived, which must have led to some interesting fights with some of his literary friends in the land of Shakespeare. In our day, one of the most eloquent writers on the composer has been the late Father Owen Lee, who finds much in the operas compatible with his Christian views. Wieland Wagner, Richard's grandson whose postwar stagings at Bayreuth set a high artistic standard in refreshing the look of Wagner productions through modern stagecraft, called Wagner's works profoundly Christian, by which I take him to have been talking not about theology but about the themes of sin and salvation, love and redemption, and the search for a higher dimension of life which pervade the composer's works. Buddhists, too, have found deep resonances with their own sense of things in Wagner (who studied Asian religions both directly and through Schopenhauer), and despite his stated antisemitic views some of his most prominent musical advocates have been Jews, both in his lifetime and after.

If art has real human depth it certainly ought to transcend religious persuasions. It really does appear that Wagner's works, with their exploration of mythic archetypes, have the peculiar ability to persuade atheists, Christians, Buddhists and others that he is in some important way one of their own. It's no wonder that he was called the sorcerer of Bayreuth.


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## progmatist

In most opera, musical creativity necessarily takes a back seat to the libretto. Wagner found a way to remain prolific in the background, without distracting from the libretto.

RE religion: am I the only one who finds it ironic Wagner's wedding march is played when the bride enters the church, and Mendelssohn's wedding march is played when the new couple exits? Wagner was militantly antisemitic, while Mendelssohn was the grandson of famous Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.


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## Couchie

I regard all music prior to _Parsifal_ as foreplay, and afterwards a slow death.


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## Woodduck

Couchie said:


> I regard all music prior to _Parsifal_ as foreplay, and afterwards a slow death.


A profound insight from the green beretman. No, really, it _is!_ 

The general consensus is that _Tristan,_ and specifically its ambiguous first chord, marks a turning point in Western music, and there's certainly something to that. An unprepared dissonance, right at the start of a work, which is impossible to analyze tonally except in retrospect (and which even then gives rise to argument) can be seen, accurately or not, as a decisive move toward Schoenberg's "emancipation of the dissonance" - which is to say, toward harmony that can't be comprehended tonally at all. But _Parsifal _may justifiably be considered a turning point in a more comprehensive sense.

In contrast to the obvious ambiguity of _Tristan_'s beginning, _Parsifal_ opens serenely with a melody that outlines a perfect major triad, and subsequent passages in the score are as purely diatonic as Palestrina (whose music Wagner studied and edited). But in Wagner's swan song diatonicism keeps company with, and is set off dramatically against, a chromaticism whose freedom and subtlety surpasses at times even that of _Tristan._ In the prelude to _Parsifal_'s third act we are led on a journey - in the opera, Parsifal's wandering in search of the Grail's domain - in which every hint of a destination seems to evaporate on the horizon as soon as we perceive it. To represent the hero's uncharted wanderings, Wagner creates a music of unchartable harmony, and he himself said that as he composed it he felt as if he were reinventing music.






Set against this unprecedented harmonic freedom, bordering on chaos but reined in by Wagner's tight motivic structure and long-range key plotting, are passages at the other stylistic extreme of his musical heritage, in which tribute is paid to the great diatonic and contrapuntal tradition that stretches from the Renaissance to Bach and beyond. These extremes are simultaneously contrasted and integrated in the temple scene of Act 1 and in the majestic "Transformation Music" that precedes it. Here each stylistic element contributes its own peculiar power in a synthesis that lays forth the emotional extremes of the drama:






It isn't much of an exaggeration to claim that what Wagner does in _Parsifal _ is to survey the great sweep of centuries of Western music, from the age of polyphony on through his own Romantic era, and to use each element of it with the keenest sensitivity to its peculiar expressive potential. Although we can look at Wagner's previous work as whole and find a striking range of stylistic influences - just compare the rich chromatics of _Tristan_ with the splendid neo-baroque counterpoint of _Die Meistersinger_ which immediately followed - there is nothing like the scope of _Parsifal_'s stylistic integration in any earlier music I know of. The nearest thing to it subsequently would probably be some of the symphonies of Mahler (who loved _Parsifal_ and paid explicit tribute to it in _Das Lied von der Erde)_. Wagner's last work not only summarized his own career - he said that it was his final opera, after which he would write only symphonies - but, in a real sense, it stood as a culmination of the the Western tradition of tonal music, and in its innovative aspects fed the imaginations of those whose own innovations would precipitate the breakdown of that tradition.

Foreplay - climax - slow death? The tonal tradition as orgasm? If we're talking about the composer who practically invented eroticism in music, it's not a bad metaphor.


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## hammeredklavier

progmatist said:


> famous Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.


Not only famous, but also influential, with ideas of family relationships;
"He embraced the honour of educating his children as his God-given paternal right. It was according to Moses Mendelssohn - a figure whose writing was familiar to the Mozarts - a necessary responsibility of parenthood, and something that Leopold embraced both passionately and uncompromisingly:" https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/68809/8/02whole.pdf#page=27



Woodduck said:


> A profound insight from the green *beretman*. No, really, it _is!_


you mean "bunchie"



hammeredklavier said:


> View attachment 138254
> 
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bunchie


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## Coach G

"Why people like Wagner so much?"

Wagner did everything on a grand scale; everything is done in a big way and is all-encompassing: the story, the drama, the setting, the music. Even if the orchestration is part and parcel of the grand late Romantic fashion, the music loses none of it's "bigness" when reduced to a piano transcription as Vladimir Horowitz demonstrated when he recorded Liszt's transcription of _Isolde's Liebestod_. As with JRR Tolkien's adventures of "Middle Earth", Frank Baum's "Land of Oz"; George Lucas' "Star Wars" universe; JK Rowling's "Harry Potter" universe; and Walt Disney's multi-media brand of entertainment; Wagner created his own mythology. Bayreuth is something of Wagner's "Disneyworld". No other composer could create his or her own "world" of multimedia art and entertainment; not Bach, nor Mozart, nor Brahms or Tchaikovsky; and not even Beethoven. Scriabin and Ives planned to do so with the unfinished _Mysterium_ and _Universe Symphony_, respectively; but only Wagner had the drive and the imagination to realize it. In this regard, Wagner's _Ring Cycle_ is the summit of what an artist can do when they put their mind to creating their own universe. I read Edith Hamliton's _Mythology_ as a teenager and was fascinated to learn that while the gods of Greece were in every way immortal with Zeus high on Mount Olympus throwing down thunder volts and playing with human beings like chess players play with bishops, rooks, knights, and pawns; that the gods of the Norse were not invincible; that they were as subject to "fate" as are we mortal human beings. The severely disabled physicist, Stephen Hawking, was a fan of Wagner's music and especially the _Ring Cycle_. Perhaps the idea that Hawking's mind could unlock the secrets to the universe while "fate" destined his body to continue to deteriorate appealed to his imagination. Here again, Hawking was one of those people who also thought "big": concerning himself with time, black holes, white holes, quasars, galaxies, and the "GUT" or "Grand Unifying Theory" of everything.


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## Enthusiast

Couchie said:


> I regard all music prior to _Parsifal_ as foreplay, and afterwards a slow death.


You must find most of this forum a little boring?


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## Celloman

Listening to an opera by Wagner is rather like climbing a mountain.

You set off down a winding path in the high brush. You can't even see the peak you're supposed to climb, but you know it is there ahead of you. Then you reach the shoulder of the mountain and come up out of the brush. It's a long, treacherous hike. You'll stumble across a moss-banked mountain stream, or a meadow of flowers, and you might even find yourself losing altitude at a few points. Sometimes, the peak will drift out of sight, but you'll always find it again at a turn in the path.

At 4,000 meters, you slam into a wet labyrinth of slope-hugging clouds. You know that you're very close to the top. You can almost smell it. You stop to rest for a minute, thinking about all the adventures you had along the way. Then you decide to push to the top.

As you step out onto the rocky pinnacle, the clouds suddenly drift off. The world spreads at your feet: chasms, waterfalls, valleys, and a tiny glimpse of that old swamp (the one in Act II where you nearly drowned). You feel a mad thrill, the giddy swirl of adrenaline - you made it.

That's how I feel when I scramble over the last page of a Wagnerian opera. Or I'm Siegfried, and I've just shouted, "Das ist nein mann!"


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## Woodduck

Celloman said:


> Listening to an opera by Wagner is rather like climbing a mountain.
> 
> You set off down a winding path in the high brush. You can't even see the peak you're supposed to climb, but you know it is there ahead of you. Then you reach the shoulder of the mountain and come up out of the brush. It's a long, treacherous hike. You'll stumble across a moss-banked mountain stream, or a meadow of flowers, and you might even find yourself losing altitude at a few points. Sometimes, the peak will drift out of sight, but you'll always find it again at a turn in the path.
> 
> At 4,000 meters, you slam into a wet labyrinth of slope-hugging clouds. You know that you're very close to the top. You can almost smell it. You stop to rest for a minute, thinking about all the adventures you had along the way. Then you decide to push to the top.
> 
> As you step out onto the rocky pinnacle, the clouds suddenly drift off. The world spreads at your feet: chasms, waterfalls, valleys, and a tiny glimpse of that old swamp (the one in Act II where you nearly drowned). You feel a mad thrill, the giddy swirl of adrenaline - you made it.
> 
> That's how I feel when I scramble over the last page of a Wagnerian opera. Or I'm Siegfried, and I've just shouted, "Das ist nein mann!"


If you're not a mountain hiker you do a fine job of imagining the sights and sounds. Or maybe you've merely listened to Wagner's splendid evocation of that rarefied, sun-drenched, high-elevation feeling as he reaches the fire-ringed fell where Brunnhilde lies awaiting his kiss.


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## Pat Fairlea

amfortas said:


> You VILL agree, damn you!


No, nay, never, nein!


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## Couchie

Woodduck said:


> A profound insight from the green beretman. No, really, it _is!_
> 
> The general consensus is that _Tristan,_ and specifically its ambiguous first chord, marks a turning point in Western music, and there's certainly something to that. An unprepared dissonance, right at the start of a work, which is impossible to analyze tonally except in retrospect (and which even then gives rise to argument) can be seen, accurately or not, as a decisive move toward Schoenberg's "emancipation of the dissonance" - which is to say, toward harmony that can't be comprehended tonally at all. But _Parsifal _may justifiably be considered a turning point in a more comprehensive sense.
> 
> In contrast to the obvious ambiguity of _Tristan_'s beginning, _Parsifal_ opens serenely with a melody that outlines a perfect major triad, and subsequent passages in the score are as purely diatonic as Palestrina (whose music Wagner studied and edited). But in Wagner's swan song diatonicism keeps company with, and is set off dramatically against, a chromaticism whose freedom and subtlety surpasses at times even that of _Tristan._ In the prelude to _Parsifal_'s third act we are led on a journey - in the opera, Parsifal's wandering in search of the Grail's domain - in which every hint of a destination seems to evaporate on the horizon as soon as we perceive it. To represent the hero's uncharted wanderings, Wagner creates a music of unchartable harmony, and he himself said that as he composed it he felt as if he were reinventing music.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Set against this unprecedented harmonic freedom, bordering on chaos but reined in by Wagner's tight motivic structure and long-range key plotting, are passages at the other stylistic extreme of his musical heritage, in which tribute is paid to the great diatonic and contrapuntal tradition that stretches from the Renaissance to Bach and beyond. These extremes are simultaneously contrasted and integrated in the temple scene of Act 1 and in the majestic "Transformation Music" that precedes it. Here each stylistic element contributes its own peculiar power in a synthesis that lays forth the emotional extremes of the drama:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It isn't much of an exaggeration to claim that what Wagner does in _Parsifal _ is to survey the great sweep of centuries of Western music, from the age of polyphony on through his own Romantic era, and to use each element of it with the keenest sensitivity to its peculiar expressive potential. Although we can look at Wagner's previous work as whole and find a striking range of stylistic influences - just compare the rich chromatics of _Tristan_ with the splendid neo-baroque counterpoint of _Die Meistersinger_ which immediately followed - there is nothing like the scope of _Parsifal_'s stylistic integration in any earlier music I know of. The nearest thing to it subsequently would probably be some of the symphonies of Mahler (who loved _Parsifal_ and paid explicit tribute to it in _Das Lied von der Erde)_. Wagner's last work not only summarized his own career - he said that it was his final opera, after which he would write only symphonies - but, in a real sense, it stood as a culmination of the the Western tradition of tonal music, and in its innovative aspects fed the imaginations of those whose own innovations would precipitate the breakdown of that tradition.
> 
> Foreplay - climax - slow death? The tonal tradition as orgasm? If we're talking about the composer who practically invented eroticism in music, it's not a bad metaphor.


This is great, thank you. I should employ you to academically justify all of my crazed hyperbolic musings.


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## Couchie

Enthusiast said:


> You must find most of this forum a little boring?


No I enjoy lots of music. It's easy actually. Anything before Wagner that I like I say, "ah, this inspired Wagner". And anything afterwards I enjoy I say, "ah, Wagner's influence". Explains everything really.


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## Woodduck

Couchie said:


> This is great, thank you. I should employ you to academically justify all of my crazed hyperbolic musings.


I would be honored. And well-compensated, I trust.


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## hammeredklavier

Couchie said:


> Anything before Wagner that I like I say, "ah, this inspired Wagner". And anything afterwards I enjoy I say, "ah, Wagner's influence". Explains everything really.


Whatabout music contemporary to Wagner? I suppose you say "ah, cretins" about them?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Why people like Wagner so much? That is a question that's been baffling me for years. I've tried numerous times to like Wagner and outside of orchestral excerpts from his operas I have failed. 

Just last night, after reading some of the posts in this thread, I tried Parsifal. The Prelude was nice. Yes, that is the strongest adjective that comes to mind. Then after 30 minutes of Act 1, I could take it no more. To me, it sounds like the music is subservient to the plot. There is a lot of singing, most of it not very interesting musically, and orchestral accompaniment, which occasionally rises to the foreground, that ranges from pleasant to dull. 

That is what I hear in Wagner's operas. And I am no fan of opera in general.

I think opera was meant to be as much a visual/plot driven art as musical. And the music reflects this, as it often takes a step back from being the main attraction.


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## larold

Just about every opera I've ever seen was the mixed bag you suggest -- lots of banality, stretches of nothingness, and lack of inspiration between the lightning strikes. Wagner was described earlier as climbing a mountain. Insofar as there is no participation in the thing other than listening (unlike climbing or hiking where you are a participant all the time) I think of it more as reading a highly episodic novel. If you can get through the minutiae the exciting moments make it worthwhile. But isn't that every opera?


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## WildThing

larold said:


> Just about every opera I've ever seen was the mixed bag you suggest -- lots of banality, stretches of nothingness, and lack of inspiration between the lightning strikes. Wagner was described earlier as climbing a mountain. Insofar as there is no participation in the thing other than listening (unlike climbing or hiking where you are a participant all the time) I think of it more as reading a highly episodic novel. If you can get through the minutiae the exciting moments make it worthwhile. But isn't that every opera?


No. That isn't an accurate assessment of my experience with my favorite operas at all actually.


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## Woodduck

larold said:


> Just about every opera I've ever seen was the mixed bag you suggest -- lots of banality, stretches of nothingness, and lack of inspiration between the lightning strikes. Wagner was described earlier as climbing a mountain. Insofar as there is no participation in the thing other than listening (unlike climbing or hiking where you are a participant all the time) I think of it more as reading a highly episodic novel. If you can get through the minutiae the exciting moments make it worthwhile. But isn't that every opera?


I'm with WildThing. My experience of opera is quite the opposite of yours. I hear an opera, like a play, as a whole, with an overall shape that gives meaning to the moments along the way, a meaning greater than they would have if heard in isolation.

Operas differ in their musical design; some are successions of distinct pieces (arias, choruses, etc.) separated by recitatives, while others are "through-composed" with continuous, unbroken musical development which may or may not be analyzable into distinct episodes. Any mix of these constructive principles is possible, but the best operas, like good plays, maintain a sense of shape and momentum.

I marvel at Wagner's ability to create dramatically subtle and complex situations, employ a diversity of musical ideas - motifs, textures, forms - and sustain interest and momentum over long stretches of time and diverse moods. He isn't uniformly successful in every work, but in his mature operas the level of success is, in my estimation, astonishing. I would cite the third act of _Tristan und Isolde_ as an absolute tour de force of musical/dramatic design.

I do acknowledge that many people have difficulty perceiving the structure of opera, perhaps because they're expecting quickly developing, tight structures such as we find in non-dramatic music. I had a musician friend who fell asleep during the first scene of _Die Walkure_ because, he said, nothing was happening. He was clearly wanting musical exposition at the peppy pace of a Haydn symphony, rather than the patient unfolding of expressive ideas at a pace congruent with dramatic action. I must say that when I first discovered Wagner, before I had any preconceptions of musical form imprinted on my brain, his manner of musical development seemed completely natural, inevitable, and captivating. Half a century later it still does, and that slow opening sequence from _Die Walkure_, spinning out and interweaving the themes expressing the awakening love and sorrows of Siegmund and Sieglinde, moves me as deeply as it ever did.


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## La Passione

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I think opera was meant to be as much a visual/plot driven art as musical. And the music reflects this, as it often takes a step back from being the main attraction.


Opera is a dramatic art form, but not primarily a visual or a plot driven one. Hence why the action of an opera is often static, requiring only the sparest gestures on the part of the performers as they sing their character's passions, and why a listener can have the most profound and other-wordly experience without any sort of visual aid, following the music with the libretto and conjuring just the most basic visualization of of the story in their mind's eye.

At its best opera is a dramatization of our inner lives, a representation of subjective states of feeling brought about by music's ability to express states of being that words could never fully capture. Butterfly's innocent passion founded on self-deception; Siegfried's love for Brunnhilde shot through with unconscious treachery; Florestan and Leonore being united by a joy that is not of this world and which unites them in a space of their own; these are dramatic ideas that are not realized through words, but which are burned into our hearts through the music of opera. The libretto supplies just the most basic framework of characters and settings, while all the moods, emotions, motivations, and dramatic propulsion are generated and fleshed out in the music.

What _I_ hear in Wagner is a master at capturing the essence of dramatic ideas and events and distilling them into orchestral sound; of infusing schematic passages of dialogue with life and emotion and psycholgocial significance soley through music; of a never-ending stream of "musical prose" that moves freely with the verse, weaving voices with orchestra into long, polyphonic symphonic episodes made up of melodic and thematic material of breathtaking beauty and power.


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## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> I do acknowledge that many people have difficulty perceiving the structure of opera, perhaps because they're expecting quickly developing, tight structures such as we find in non-dramatic music. I had a musician friend who fell asleep during the first scene of _Die Walkure_ because, he said, nothing was happening. He was clearly wanting musical exposition at the peppy pace of a Haydn symphony, rather than the patient unfolding of expressive ideas *at a pace congruent with dramatic action.*


I'm not sure there is any objective case for such as I have emboldened but perhaps you don't agree? Of course the problem might actually be Wagner's harmony and themes themselves that TwoFlutesOneTrumpet and others have issues with.


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## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> I'm not sure there is any objective case for such as I have emboldened but perhaps you don't agree? Of course the problem might actually be Wagner's harmony and themes themselves that TwoFlutesOneTrumpet and others have issues with.


Could you clarify? Objective case for what?


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## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> Could you clarify? Objective case for what?


You state that it's the listener who has, 'difficulty perceiving the structure of opera,' so you are making an objective case for Wagner's, 'patient unfolding of expressive ideas at a pace congruent with dramatic action.'


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## Kreisler jr

There are different "time scales" in music as different as e.g. Haydn (or Mozart or Rossini's operas) and Wagner. This works both ways. Listeners who expect everything to unfold in slow motion need to get used that in a Haydn symphony you get new stuff within a few seconds, not a few minutes etc.
This should not be controversial. 
But of course, not everyone wants to adapt to these different paces and styles. Wagner has also long stretches where the singers are debating something in more or less recitativo style in stilted German and the "action" (leitmotives being woven together or transformed etc.) is in the orchestra, so we have (with some exaggeration) almost a reversal of rôles compared to a lot of other opera.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> You state that it's the listener who has, 'difficulty perceiving the structure of opera,' so you are making an objective case for Wagner's, 'patient unfolding of expressive ideas at a pace congruent with dramatic action.'


I was just reading an opinion. I am not sure how "an objective case" would differ from the "subjective case" that you presumably advocate. Perhaps you wanted a couple of IMOs and IMHOs? For the record I understand and relate 100% to Woodduck's description. I guess those who dislike Wagner might not.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> I was just reading an opinion. I am not sure how "an objective case" would differ from the "subjective case" that you presumably advocate. Perhaps you wanted a couple of IMOs and IMHOs? For the record I understand and relate 100% to Woodduck's description. I guess those who dislike Wagner might not.


I'm sure Woodduck will clarify, but it seems that he asserts that the listener fails when they 'have difficulty perceiving the structure.....'.


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## Kreisler jr

This does not seem an unfair charge to be (although probably unhelpful). 
If am totally lost confronted with some music while other listeners perceive structure, meaning etc., this seems pretty close to failing at some kind of comprehension.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> I'm sure Woodduck will clarify, but it seems that he asserts that the listener fails when they 'have difficulty perceiving the structure.....'.


So you reject my answer? OK I wasn't the author but the author had put his words into the public domain. I don't read what you read in those words ... or perhaps there is a little exasperation at someone expecting a form of music that would be totally wrong for the drama in question.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> So you reject my answer? OK I wasn't the author but the author had put his words into the public domain. I don't read what you read in those words ... or perhaps there is a little exasperation at someone expecting a form of music that would be totally wrong for the drama in question.


The emphasis was on the the listener's difficulties rather than the composer falling short of what the listener considers worthy music. Both are possible.


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## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> You state that it's the listener who has, 'difficulty perceiving the structure of opera,' so you are making an objective case for Wagner's, 'patient unfolding of expressive ideas at a pace congruent with dramatic action.'


So...you want "objective proof" (is there another kind?) that some listeners may have trouble staying awake if the unfolding of musical ideas is relatively slow? What kind of proof do you require? A large-scale statistical survey? How large? Over how long a time period? Including what countries? Perhaps a double-blind study, in which the composers' names are unknown, or switched around?

I have not "made a case for" Wagner's, patient unfolding of expressive ideas at a pace congruent with dramatic action. I merely described what Wagner does, gave a good example of it - the opening scene of _Die Walkure_ - and related how a very fine musician I know fell asleep during it, explaining that he was bored because for his taste not enough was happening musically. That person is particularly fond of Haydn, and of course the music of the Classical period exhibits a very quick rate of exposition. Wagner can do that when he wants to (as in many purely orchestral passages such as the overtures and preludes, which my musician friend said he can enjoy), but his music is unprecedented in the degree to which dramatic action onstage is a controlling factor in its shaping, particularly with respect to the pace of the exposition of material. The necessity of following and commenting on the stage action, both seen and unseen (including the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the moment) has quite a variable effect on musical form, and Wagner's forms exhibit extreme variety. It also opens the way to the complex interplay of motifs and the rich chromatic harmony characteristic of his mature style.


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## KRoad

Woodduck said:


> So...you want "objective proof" (is there another kind?) that some listeners may have trouble staying awake if the unfolding of musical ideas is relatively slow? What kind of proof do you require? A large-scale statistical survey? How large? Over how long a time period? Including what countries? Perhaps a double-blind study, in which the composers' names are unknown, or switched around?


Woodduck, why the sarcastic tone, please? It is unnecessary and rather sours the debate.


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## Woodduck

KRoad said:


> Woodduck, why the sarcastic tone, please? It is unnecessary and rather sours the debate.


Sorry. If you knew the history on TC of certain people demanding "objective proof" of statements about music you'd understand my impatience. Occasionally I get so tired of being assaulted for daring to make what I hope are useful observations that I have to take time out from the forum, or simply retreat to the opera forum where people are less apt to issue contentious challenges.


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## Celloman

KRoad said:


> Woodduck, why the sarcastic tone, please? It is unnecessary and rather sours the debate.


Are you quite sure, my fine fellow, that you aren't mistaking Woodduck's fine and scintillating wit for some vulgar breed of sarcasm?


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## Woodduck

Celloman said:


> Are you quite sure, my fine fellow, that you aren't mistaking Woodduck's fine and scintillating wit for some vulgar breed of sarcasm?


I believe this is the very first application of the term "scintillating" to me. I can now go to my eternal rest, still sparkling and effervescing. Or is that hyperbolic?


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## Barbebleu

I would have said that you were coruscant as opposed to scintillating. Only because hardly anyone ever uses the word!:lol:


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## Woodduck

Barbebleu said:


> I would have said that you were coruscant as opposed to scintillating. Only because hardly anyone ever uses the word!:lol:


I'm being introduced to it for the first time. I will endeavor to use it in my next conversation, due to occur some time this weekend. Perhaps I'll wish my sister a coruscant sixty-sixth birthday.


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## SixFootScowl

Woodduck said:


> I'm being introduced to it for the first time. I will endeavor to use it in my next conversation, due to occur some time this weekend. Perhaps I'll wish my sister a coruscant sixty-sixth birthday.


I just did a search and coruscant is some geographic place in the Star Wars series. You may have to do a Slip Mahoney (or Curly Howard) and mal pronounce it as corpulent.


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

La Passione said:


> Opera is a dramatic art form, but not primarily a visual or a plot driven one. Hence why the action of an opera is often static, requiring only the sparest gestures on the part of the performers as they sing their character's passions, and why a listener can have the most profound and other-wordly experience without any sort of visual aid, following the music with the libretto and conjuring just the most basic visualization of of the story in their mind's eye.
> 
> At its best opera is a dramatization of our inner lives, a representation of subjective states of feeling brought about by music's ability to express states of being that words could never fully capture. Butterfly's innocent passion founded on self-deception; Siegfried's love for Brunnhilde shot through with unconscious treachery; Florestan and Leonore being united by a joy that is not of this world and which unites them in a space of their own; these are dramatic ideas that are not realized through words, but which are burned into our hearts through the music of opera. The libretto supplies just the most basic framework of characters and settings, while all the moods, emotions, motivations, and dramatic propulsion are generated and fleshed out in the music.
> 
> What _I_ hear in Wagner is a master at capturing the essence of dramatic ideas and events and distilling them into orchestral sound; of infusing schematic passages of dialogue with life and emotion and psycholgocial significance soley through music; of a never-ending stream of "musical prose" that moves freely with the verse, weaving voices with orchestra into long, polyphonic symphonic episodes made up of melodic and thematic material of breathtaking beauty and power.


I know opera is not primarily a visual or plot driven art form. Still, it relies heavily on visuals and plot. Hence the elaborate staging, dresses, costumes and acting on part of the singers. It is not music only and that is what makes it much less interesting, musically, to me. There are large sections that are there seemingly just to advance the plot along with very little musical value.

If we're talking about music's ability to express states of being that words could never capture then abstract music does this best and musically alone. A great symphony will always be superior musically to an opera because it only uses music (yes, I'm aware of some symphonies with vocal parts but those are exceptions) to achieve the same result that opera needs visuals and plot and even then, in my ears, it fails.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

I would be grateful if someone pointed out in the first 30 or so minutes of Parsifal what they find so great about the music. I ask because that is an opera many Wagner fans rave about and it is my most recent attempt to understand Wagner and after 30 minutes I could not find anything to latch onto.

By the way, my favorite Wagner piece is Götterdämmerung, 'Siegfried's Death & Funeral March' from The Ring without Words. I absolutely love it.


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## RogerWaters

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I know opera is not primarily a visual or plot driven art form. Still, it relies heavily on visuals and plot. Hence the elaborate staging, dresses, costumes and acting on part of the singers. It is not *music *only and that is what makes it much less interesting, musically, to me. There are large sections that are there seemingly just to advance the plot along with very little musical value.
> 
> If we're talking about music's ability to express states of being that words could never capture then abstract music does this best and musically alone. A great symphony will always be superior musically to an opera because it only uses *music *(yes, I'm aware of some symphonies with vocal parts but those are exceptions) to achieve the same result that opera needs visuals and plot and even then, in my ears, it fails.


Of course, in one sense what you're saying depends on your definition of 'music'. If 'music' can involve story (Bob Dylan?) then a piece that derives its meaning from narrative development more than motivic development, say, will still be interesting _music_.

However in an obvious sense I think you are right. I highly doubt that people would find the final scene of Die Walkure as good if it wasn't for the poignancy of the plot and tension between love and duty.



> When Wotan arrives, the Valkyries vainly try to hide Brünnhilde [Wotan's daughter]. He faces her and declares her punishment: she is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status and become a mortal woman, to be held in defenceless sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who finds her. The other Valkyries protest, but when Wotan threatens them with the same, they flee. In a long discourse with Wotan, Brünnhilde explains that she decided to protect Siegmund knowing that this was Wotan's true desire. Wotan consents to her request that he surround her resting place with a circle of fire that will protect her from all but the bravest of heroes. He bids her a loving farewell and lays her sleeping form down on a rock. He then invokes Loge, the demigod of fire, and creates a circle of perpetual fire around her. Before slowly departing, Wotan pronounces that anyone who fears his spear shall never pass through the fire.


I'm basically alluding the phenomena of 'cognitive penetrability' - where what we perceive (and how we perceive it) is influenced by our beliefs and knowledge. In this case, the stimuli coming from the speakers quite literally sound _different _and _better_ to those who understand (and, of course, like) the story being expressed.

Some will no doubt find this idea somehow threatening. But Wagner's art pretty obviously depends on narrative as well as musical development. Which means, if you subtract the narrative, there is less 'there', musically speaking (of course, I am talking about the course of an entire opera).


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

RogerWaters said:


> Of course, in one sense what you're saying depends on your definition of 'music'. If 'music' can involve story (Bob Dylan?) then a piece that derives its meaning from narrative development more than motivic development, say, will still be interesting _music_.
> 
> However in an obvious sense I think you are right. I highly doubt that people would find the final scene of Die Walkure as good if it wasn't for the poignancy of the plot and tension between love and duty.
> 
> I'm basically alluding the phenomena of 'cognitive penetrability' - where what we perceive (and how we perceive it) is influenced by our beliefs and knowledge. In this case, the stimuli coming from the speakers quite literally sound _different _and _better_ to those who understand (and, of course, like) the story being expressed.
> 
> Some will no doubt find this idea somehow threatening. But it seems something only an academic/expert would quibble about:
> 
> *Wagner's art pretty obviously depends on narrative as well as musical development. Which means, taking the music alone, there is less 'there'.*


Yes, I don't care about Wagner's narratives, or opera's narratives in general. And you are right that when I mean musical I exclude words and plot.


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> So...you want "objective proof" (is there another kind?) that some listeners may have trouble staying awake if the unfolding of musical ideas is relatively slow? What kind of proof do you require? A large-scale statistical survey? How large? Over how long a time period? Including what countries? Perhaps a double-blind study, in which the composers' names are unknown, or switched around?


No, I don't and didn't ask for such.

My only quibble was that you seemed to point the finger at the listener who has, 'difficulty perceiving the structure of opera.'


----------



## janxharris

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I would be grateful if someone pointed out in the first 30 or so minutes of Parsifal what they find so great about the music. I ask because that is an opera many Wagner fans rave about and it is my most recent attempt to understand Wagner and after 30 minutes I could not find anything to latch onto.
> 
> By the way, my favorite Wagner piece is Götterdämmerung, 'Siegfried's Death & Funeral March' from The Ring without Words. I absolutely love it.


You are not alone - John Eliot Gardiner:

"With Wagner, audiences tend to fall into two camps. Those who bow and scrape with reverence, and the sceptics who feel there's a great deal of flatulence. I'm a sceptic. Friends have told me Parsifal is one of the greatest operas, but every time I've tried to listen to it, I've fallen asleep. I feel the same way about Tristan, too."

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/01/nothing-wrong-bored-by-opera


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## RogerWaters

janxharris said:


> You are not alone - John Eliot Gardiner:
> 
> "With Wagner, audiences tend to fall into two camps. Those who bow and scrape with reverence, and the sceptics who feel there's a great deal of flatulence. I'm a sceptic. Friends have told me Parsifal is one of the greatest operas, but every time I've tried to listen to it, I've fallen asleep. I feel the same way about Tristan, too."
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/01/nothing-wrong-bored-by-opera


Length of Wagner's works selects out, to large degree, those people who don't adore him.


----------



## janxharris

RogerWaters said:


> Length of Wagner's works selects out, to large degree, those people who don't adore him.


On the other hand, I can't think of any composer that has anywhere near four hours (I'm thinking of the length of Tristan and Isolde) of music that I love. Sturgeon's 90% is too low.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> You are not alone - John Eliot Gardiner:
> 
> "With Wagner, audiences tend to fall into two camps. Those who bow and scrape with reverence, and the sceptics who feel there's a great deal of flatulence. I'm a sceptic. Friends have told me Parsifal is one of the greatest operas, but every time I've tried to listen to it, I've fallen asleep. I feel the same way about Tristan, too."
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/01/nothing-wrong-bored-by-opera


Strangely, many of his recordings have a similar effect on me. I think of him as a factory and I can easily imagine that the sweep of Wagner's music is hard to deal with on a production line!


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## Kreisler jr

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Yes, I don't care about Wagner's narratives, or opera's narratives in general. And you are right that when I mean musical I exclude words and plot.


So you don't care about (the point of) opera in general, unless you happen to find some extraits musically attractive. This is perfectly fine. Both the "Rhine Journey" and the Funeral march are better than most so-called symphonic poems, I think. 
But you can hardly expect that anyone here could change this attitude of yours by text messages, especially if a particularly slow and "esoteric" opera like Parsifal is concerned. 
It's a bit like announcing that one usually does not like poetry but could please someone explain briefly what was so special about Paradise Lost that it was still assigned to literature students.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Strangely, many of his recordings have a similar effect on me. I think of him as a factory and I can easily imagine that the sweep of Wagner's music is hard to deal with on a production line!


What is it about his conducting you don't like?


----------



## Kreisler jr

RogerWaters said:


> Length of Wagner's works selects out, to large degree, those people who don't adore him.


I have admittedly only seen two Wagner operas on stage (Parsifal and Siegfried) but I found this much easier than I had expected from listening to recordings (and I hardly knew Parsifal when I saw it on stage). It's far easier to get distracted in one's own room (and this was before smartphones and 24h internet connections). Of the long operas I have seen, Rosenkavalier required more patience.


----------



## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> No, I don't and didn't ask for such.
> 
> My only quibble was that you seemed to point the finger at the listener who has, 'difficulty perceiving the structure of opera.'


Why is the idea that people differ in their perception of musical form novel or surprising? Wagner's forms - his ways of creating interrelationships, coherence and meaning - are not always obvious. They tend to be felt subconsciously rather than grasped cognitively the way classical forms are. I think this is one of the things that bothered my friend. What he was hearing didn't evoke any of the usual templates in his brain, and he couldn't surrender the expectations those templates created and simply "go with the flow." Wagner wrote an entire opera, _Die Meistersinger_, about this, with the intuitive, freethinking young genius Walther challenging the rules of music defended by the Mastersingers. The music given to each side of the conflict well represents the principles involved.


----------



## Enthusiast

RogerWaters said:


> I'm basically alluding the phenomena of 'cognitive penetrability' - where what we perceive (and how we perceive it) is influenced by our beliefs and knowledge. In this case, the stimuli coming from the speakers quite literally sound _different _and _better_ to those who understand (and, of course, like) the story being expressed.
> 
> Some will no doubt find this idea somehow threatening. But Wagner's art pretty obviously depends on narrative as well as musical development. Which means, if you subtract the narrative, there is less 'there', musically speaking (of course, I am talking about the course of an entire opera).


This sounds very clean and logical. But it worries me a little to separate out the music (and musical development) from the plot like that. The drama can - and in opera does - create a structure but it seems a leap to say that this is not a musical structure. In fact, the musical structures that we find in operas seem to be the best we have had for constructing music that spans large periods of time. Perhaps you just prefer music that is more succinct?

Nor do I think that your account of "cognitive penetrability" leads to it being inevitable that only those who know what is going on in an opera will fully perceive the music's meaning (I think that's what you are saying?). Of course, being able to follow the drama will enrich the experience - that is not in doubt - but it is not my experience that appreciation of the music depends on it. To me, the drama provides shape to the music and that shape is musical. I am not sure that is so different to a symphony - which might be structured for purely musical purposes - and I don't know many decent symphonies which are merely technical essays. I say this as a member of the audience who has no music theory but believes that he can enjoy, experience and "understand" the music without knowing what is happening technically. Music is written for and enjoyed by people like me. Musical forms _help _composers present a narrative - perhaps an argument, perhaps a story, perhaps an explication of a process that generates one or more "pictures" - until fashions change and new structures are needed. And here I am mostly referring to symphonies, with their tendency to rely on sonata form (a form that played a dominant role in music for less than a couple of hundred years and which can be enormously satisfying in much the same way as a good story). What about concertos and tone poems? They have structures and can be enormously satisfying but I find it hard to accept that the structures that composers adopt are dictated solely by narrowly musical concerns. They are about creating an experience for the listener.

I have not spent a lot of time in the opera house but I do _listen _to a lot of opera. I know what is happening in the ones I know well but there are many more where I am still only at the stage of enjoying the music (perhaps knowing that well enough to hum along all the way through). I can get as much musical enjoyment from that as from a symphony, a sonata, a tone poem ... . I don't experience a lower level of _musical _inspiration.


----------



## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Just last night, after reading some of the posts in this thread, I tried *Parsifal. The Prelude was nice. *Yes, that is the strongest adjective that comes to mind. Then after 30 minutes of Act 1, I could take it no more. To me, it sounds like the music is subservient to the plot. There is a lot of singing, most of it not very interesting musically, and orchestral accompaniment, which occasionally rises to the foreground, that ranges from pleasant to dull.
> 
> I would be grateful if someone pointed out in the first 30 or so minutes of Parsifal what they find so great about the music. I ask because that is an opera many Wagner fans rave about and it is my most recent attempt to understand Wagner and after 30 minutes I could not find anything to latch onto.
> 
> By the way, my favorite Wagner piece is Götterdämmerung, 'Siegfried's Death & Funeral March' from The Ring without Words. I absolutely love it.


It is of course impossible to convey to someone who doesn't respond to particular music what's "so great" about it. If you found the prelude to _Parsifal_ no more than "nice," my honest recommendation would be to just forget about it. The first time I heard it, at about age 14, I thought it was magic. Almost sixty years later, I still think it is.

In more conducive circumstances I could open my score, sit down at the piano, and show you the motivic elements Wagner is working with, the relationships between them, the ways in which they transform and fragment, the framework of keys, etc., but if the sound of the music doesn't grab you you still wouldn't get much from it. I must also remark that the first scene of the opera is expository, both musically and dramatically, and the pace is unhurried. When you know the entire work the various parts of it take their places in the whole; you can even see the entire three act opera as majestically symmetrical, a gigantic AB - C - AB "bow" form, with Act 3 a recapitulation and transformation of Act 1, and the central act as the crisis and turning point. But for many people, perhaps most, _Parsifal_ is not the place to begin with Wagner. Taking his operas in their chronological sequence is actually not a bad idea, since he developed his unique methods slowly and steadily.


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## La Passione

Not an analysis of Parsifal, but Deryck Cooke's musical guide and Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen does a good job at walking one through Wagner's compositional approach. How he builds large symphonic tapestries based on short, memorable motifs that are related musically and yet also carry dramatic significance; constantly combining, transforming and expanding them in an consistently inspired musical journey that enriches and imposes meaning on the drama as much as it is guided by the basic narrative. And the way that Cooke demonstrates that Wagner's operas are completely coherent and contain their own inner logic musically while working on this whole other level simultaneously as a kind of dramatic commentary absolutely boggles the mind.


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## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> Taking his operas in their chronological sequence is actually not a bad idea, since he developed his unique methods slowly and steadily.


Though one can probably ignore the first two or three operas as musical and dramatic dead ends.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Kreisler jr said:


> So you don't care about (the point of) opera in general, unless you happen to find some extraits musically attractive. This is perfectly fine. Both the "Rhine Journey" and the Funeral march are better than most so-called symphonic poems, I think.
> But you can hardly expect that anyone here could change this attitude of yours by text messages, especially if a particularly slow and "esoteric" opera like Parsifal is concerned.
> It's a bit like announcing that one usually does not like poetry but could please someone explain briefly what was so special about Paradise Lost that it was still assigned to literature students.


That's fair, although it's possible for people to change their opinion when they have an open mind and seek to understand the greatness in Wagner's art so many hear (or opera in general).


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## Barbebleu

amfortas said:


> Though one can probably ignore the first two or three operas as musical and dramatic dead ends.


I take it you're referring to Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi? And not, heaven forfend, Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin! :lol:


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## amfortas

Barbebleu said:


> I take it you're referring to Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi? And not, heaven forfend, Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin! :lol:


Yes. And since those first three are frequently left out of discussion anyway, I suppose the clarification is necessary.


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## SixFootScowl

Not sure who said it. Not Yogi Berra, though it sounds like something he would have said:


> Wagner's Music Is Really Much Better Than It Sounds


https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/11/25/wagner-better/


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## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> This sounds very clean and logical. *But it worries me a little to separate out the music (and musical development) from the plot like that. The drama can - and in opera does - create a structure but it seems a leap to say that this is not a musical structure.* In fact, the musical structures that we find in operas seem to be the best we have had for constructing music that spans large periods of time. Perhaps you just prefer music that is more succinct?
> 
> Nor do I think that your account of "cognitive penetrability" leads to it being inevitable that only those who know what is going on in an opera will fully perceive the music's meaning (I think that's what you are saying?). *Of course, being able to follow the drama will enrich the experience - that is not in doubt - but it is not my experience that appreciation of the music depends on it. To me, the drama provides shape to the music and that shape is musical. I am not sure that is so different to a symphony - which might be structured for purely musical purposes - and I don't know many decent symphonies which are merely technical essays.* I say this as a member of the audience who has no music theory but believes that he can enjoy, experience and "understand" the music without knowing what is happening technically. Music is written for and enjoyed by people like me. *Musical forms help composers present a narrative - perhaps an argument, perhaps a story, perhaps an explication of a process that generates one or more "pictures" - until fashions change and new structures are needed.* And here I am mostly referring to symphonies, with their tendency to rely on *sonata form* (a form that played a dominant role in music for less than a couple of hundred years and which *can be enormously satisfying in much the same way as a good story*). What about concertos and tone poems? They have structures and can be enormously satisfying but *I find it hard to accept that the structures that composers adopt are dictated solely by narrowly musical concerns. They are about creating an experience for the listener.*


This lovely post makes an important point. It could be stated in several ways, but I'll venture these: 1.) There is no such thing as "pure music"; 2.) musical meaning derives, to varying degrees, from extramusical meaning.

It's true that the music of opera derives meaning from the drama it represents, and that knowing that drama adds a dimension to our enjoyment of the sounds we're hearing. We might enjoy the music without that dimension, but if we do the chances are that our minds will simply have substituted one extramusical meaning for another, one based on whatever personal background and associations determine our particular response. The same can be said for non-operatic works.

Consider a tone poem such as _The Swan of Tuonela_. Sibelius's title, and the legend it refers to, provide an extramusical context through which we can participate in the realm of ideas and feelings that inspired his music. Without the title, it's unlikely most of us would think of a swan while listening, much less the swan that swam and sang in the icy realm of death in Finnish mythology. We would, however, hear a work whose distinctive character took us on a journey of some kind, a journey it invoked from our subconscious experiences of music and of life. We would not hear something called "pure music," even though we might have no conscious concept of anything but the play of sounds in our minds. There would be no need for us to attach a specific story to the music, but it would nevertheless embody some sort of implicit narrative, and call up shadowy images which need not be clear enough to be named.

What's true of program music is also true of a presumably "abstract" work such as a symphony. At the level of subconscious evocation, a piece such as the first movement of Beethoven's 5th is pregnant with extramusical meaning, and the idea that its brilliantly calculated formal cohesion, the compelling inevitability of its forward motion, represents merely a mastery of the technical aspects of composition is an illusion. At a subconscious level, the music tells a story - a nonspecific story abstracted from the vast realms of our emotional experience which the music taps into and presents back to us in symbolic, sensuous form. A musical movement in sonata form isn't just a nicely shaped, mathematical sequence of sounds that we can note with detached approval. It's a mini-drama, a narrative, evoking a life we live largely beneath conscious identification and even knowledge. The genius of music we call "great" has as much to do with its ability to embody and speak to the "dramas" and "stories" of our common experience and largely subconscious lives as it has to do with its exceptional command of music's technical resources. Listening to music with comprehension amounts to much more than solving a mathematical puzzle.


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## KRoad

Woodduck said:


> The genius of music we call "great" has as much to do with its ability to embody and speak to the "dramas" and "stories" of our common experience and largely subconscious lives as it has to do with its exceptional command of music's technical resources. Listening to music with comprehension amounts to much more than solving a mathematical puzzle.


But then this begs the question: to what extent is common experience culturally specific? Further, if cognitive understanding swings on an anchor of largely subconscious experience as you suggest, is a consensual appreciation and collectively recognised aesthetic even possible?


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## amfortas

KRoad said:


> But then this begs the question: to what extent is common experience culturally specific? Further, if cognitive understanding swings on an anchor of largely subconscious experience as you suggest, is a consensual appreciation and collectively recognised aesthetic even possible?


If you hang around this site long enough, the answer to your second question will appear to be "no."


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## Woodduck

KRoad said:


> But then this begs the question: to what extent is common experience culturally specific?


To varying extents. The answer varies as much as music itself. Some features of music are naturally more universally significant than others. This is not just theoretical but is plainly observable.



> Further, if cognitive understanding swings on an anchor of largely subconscious experience as you suggest, is a consensual appreciation and collectively recognised aesthetic even possible?


It's possible to varying degrees. The existence of consensual responses isn't theoretical. Again, it's easily observed. There are reasons why very different listeners report similar interpretations of music. Of course none of this is precisely measurable. I think the '"nature" vs "nurture" debate is rather pointless. It's generally a matter of both. Maybe neuroscience will ultimately allow us to measure aesthetic responses in a more quantitative manner, but what good will that do you or me? Personally, I couldn't care less.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> T 1.) There is no such thing as "pure music"; 2.) musical meaning derives, to varying degrees, from extramusical meaning.


There are degrees of purity in music, though. It is clear that opera is less musically pure than a symphony. The former relies on non musical aspects for its full effect by combining music, words and visual effects whereas the latter uses only sound.



Woodduck said:


> Consider a tone poem such as _The Swan of Tuonela_. Sibelius's title, and the legend it refers to, provide an extramusical context through which we can participate in the realm of ideas and feelings that inspired his music. Without the title, it's unlikely most of us would think of a swan while listening, much less the swan that swam and sang in the icy realm of death in Finnish mythology. We would, however, hear a work whose distinctive character took us on a journey of some kind, a journey it invoked from our subconscious experiences of music and of life. We would not hear something called "pure music," even though we might have no conscious concept of anything but the play of sounds in our minds. There would be no need for us to attach a specific story to the music, but it would nevertheless embody some sort of implicit narrative, and call up shadowy images which need not be clear enough to be named.


Of course we all bring our subconscious into our musical experiences and different people are going to experience The Swan differently based on their background but the important thing is that The Swan does not rely on words of visuals for its effect.



Woodduck said:


> What's true of program music is also true of a presumably "abstract" work such as a symphony. At the level of subconscious evocation, a piece such as the first movement of Beethoven's 5th is pregnant with extramusical meaning, and the idea that its brilliantly calculated formal cohesion, the compelling inevitability of its forward motion, represents merely a mastery of the technical aspects of composition is an illusion. At a subconscious level, the music tells a story - a nonspecific story abstracted from the vast realms of our emotional experience which the music taps into and presents back to us in symbolic, sensuous form. A musical movement in sonata form isn't just a nicely shaped, mathematical sequence of sounds that we can note with detached approval. It's a mini-drama, a narrative, evoking a life we live largely beneath conscious identification and even knowledge. The genius of music we call "great" has as much to do with its ability to embody and speak to the "dramas" and "stories" of our common experience and largely subconscious lives as it has to do with its exceptional command of music's technical resources. Listening to music with comprehension amounts to much more than solving a mathematical puzzle.


In an abstract symphony, like Beethoven's 5th, there are no words and no visual effects. What Beethoven does he does by notes and sound alone. Whatever meaning listeners derive from the symphony is the result of the organization of notes; there are no words (non-music) and no visuals (non-music) to shape the piece or drive its logical argument forward. To me, that is what makes it more pure music than music than needs more than just notes to make its impact on the listener.


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## KRoad

Woodduck said:


> Some features of music are naturally more universally significant than others. This is not just theoretical but is plainly observable.
> 
> There are reasons why very different listeners report similar interpretations of music.
> 
> Personally, I couldn't care less.


Me neither to be honest - just playing with you here dude.

However:

1. _Some features of music are naturally more universally significant than others. This is not just theoretical but is plainly observable. _ Could you perhaps provide some examples, particularly those that would seem to circumnavigate the issue of cultural specificity, please?

2. _There are reasons why very different listeners report similar interpretations of music._ This is an extrapolation of the above. What are those reasons, please? Does this pertain only to listeners from a western musical tradition?


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## Woodduck

KRoad said:


> Me neither to be honest - just playing with you here dude.
> 
> However:
> 
> 1. _Some features of music are naturally more universally significant than others. This is not just theoretical but is plainly observable. _ Could you perhaps provide some examples, particularly those that would seem to circumnavigate the issue of cultural specificity, please?
> 
> 2. _There are reasons why very different listeners report similar interpretations of music._ This is an extrapolation of the above. What are those reasons, please? Does this pertain only to listeners from a western musical tradition?


Sigh. I'm sorry to have started something here. I've been on this forum for about 7 years and have trod this tired ground too many times. I'm not here to mount an argument or write a thesis, but merely to make some observations. I'm getting old and tired, and I'm content to let the young folks work these questions out for themselves. I'll just point out something obvious - that people cross cultural lines all the time in the appreciation and understanding of art - and suggest that if you haven't been around long enough to observe that there are broad areas of perception in art that transcend different viewpoints and points of origin, including cultural points of origin, you need to be around a little longer and pay closer attention. And maybe study Chinese painting or Indian music or something. We're all human, and art isn't a crap shoot.


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> There are degrees of purity in music, though. It is clear that opera is less musically pure than a symphony. The former relies on non musical aspects for its full effect by combining music, words and visual effects whereas the latter uses only sound.


How much any music relies on anything besides words to make its impact - and the impact is different in kind and degree for each listener - depends on each listener. The fact that you aren't impressed by opera as "pure" music doesn't seem relevant to anyone but you. I've heard plenty of vocal music that I've loved without knowing what the words mean, and this seems not to be an uncommon experience. I've also had the experience of sensing to a substantial degree whether an opera is effective as musical drama without having read the libretto. Moreover, there are many operas I've listened to just for the music without caring to think about the story even if I do know it.



> Of course we all bring our subconscious into our musical experiences and different people are going to experience The Swan differently based on their background but the important thing is that The Swan does not rely on words of visuals for its effect.


"The Swan of Tuonela" is a bunch of words. It does matter a bit that the piece isn't called "Texas Hoedown." On the other hand, if someone wants to imagine that while listening to the piece, more power to them.



> In an abstract symphony, like Beethoven's 5th, there are no words and no visual effects. What Beethoven does he does by notes and sound alone. Whatever meaning listeners derive from the symphony is the result of the organization of notes; there are no words (non-music) and no visuals (non-music) to shape the piece or drive its logical argument forward. To me, that is what makes it more pure music than music than needs more than just notes to make its impact on the listener.


OK.


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## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> "The Swan of Tuonela" is a bunch of words. It does matter a bit that the piece isn't called "Texas Hoedown." On the other hand, if someone wants to imagine that while listening to the piece, more power to them.


Now I will forever imagine the Swan of Tuonela taking part in a Texas hoedown. Thank you very much.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> How much any music relies on anything besides words to make its impact - and the impact is different in kind and degree for each listener - depends on each listener. The fact that you aren't impressed by opera as "pure" music doesn't seem relevant to anyone but you. I've heard plenty of vocal music that I've loved without knowing what the words mean, and this seems not to be an uncommon experience. I've also had the experience of sensing to a substantial degree whether an opera is effective as musical drama without having read the libretto. Moreover, there are many operas I've listened to just for the music without caring to think about the story even if I do know it.


I have heard vocal music that I've enjoyed without knowing what it means too. My enjoyment of the vocals does not change the fact that the piece uses non-musical aspects to make its impact. I enjoy lots of vocal music, mostly non-classical, but opera is just too diluted by words that have little emotional connection to me. The stories are silly and so are the visuals.



Woodduck said:


> "The Swan of Tuonela" is a bunch of words. It does matter a bit that the piece isn't called "Texas Hoedown." On the other hand, if someone wants to imagine that while listening to the piece, more power to them.


I never think of swans when listening to Tuonela. In fact, I never think of any concrete objects when listening to any abstract music. It wouldn't make an iota of difference to me if Sibelius had called it "The Rings of Saturn" or "Do your ears hang low?".


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I have heard vocal music that I've enjoyed without knowing what it means too. My enjoyment of the vocals does not change the fact that the piece uses non-musical aspects to make its impact. I enjoy lots of vocal music, mostly non-classical, but opera is just too diluted by words that have little emotional connection to me. The stories are silly and so are the visuals.


Is there an argument in this somewhere? Are you trying to prove that opera lovers who actually enjoy operatic music have inferior musical judgment? That they're wasting their time with "silly visuals," or with dreary music that means nothing without them, something you are too smart and sophisticated ever to do? Astonishing, isn't it, that intelligent, well-educated people put on opera CDs while they make dinner, that opera houses are viewed as major artistic institutions, that hundreds of books on Wagner alone crowd the shelves of bookstores and libraries, and that people still probe his works for meaning. Really now, aren't there enough earworms being generated by Auto-Tune that we don't have to waste our lives on the foolish entertainments of past eras? Who can comprehend it?



> I never think of swans when listening to Tuonela. In fact, I never think of any concrete objects when listening to any abstract music. It wouldn't make an iota of difference to me if Sibelius had called it "The Rings of Saturn" or "Do your ears hang low?".


Composers do seem to enjoy writing music inspired by literary, poetic, or pictorial ideas. We're free to ignore these ideas, of course. But many people enjoy the synthesis of sensory or cognitive modes, whether or not those listeners possess that unusual trait known as synesthesia. "Cross-domain mapping," as cognitive psychologists call it, is actually a basic part of mental functioning. We don't have to look at Arnold Boecklin's "The Isle of the Dead" to enjoy Rachmaninoff's tone poem inspired by it, but it's at least interesting to see the painting to gain insight into the composer's thinking, and it serves as a link between the music and a wider world of experience.

The world of experience which an opera such as _Tristan und Isolde_ or the _Ring_ can open up is potentially very wide. This would be much less true if the music were not compelling to so many people. It isn't "'silly visuals" that keep these works alive.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> Is there an argument in this somewhere? Are you trying to prove that opera lovers who actually enjoy operatic music have inferior musical judgment? That they're wasting their time with "silly visuals," or with dreary music that means nothing without them, something you are too smart and sophisticated ever to do? Astonishing, isn't it, that intelligent, well-educated people put on opera CDs while they make dinner, that opera houses are viewed as major artistic institutions, that hundreds of books on Wagner alone crowd the shelves of bookstores and libraries, and that people still probe his works for meaning. Really now, aren't there enough earworms being generated by Auto-Tune we don't have to waste our lives on the foolish entertainments of past eras? Who can comprehend it?


I am trying to show why I find opera less appealing than abstract music. Yes, to me opera is an inferior musical form to abstract music like symphony, and I have given my reasons why. That is my very personal opinion and I respect those who think opera is great. Clearly there is enough in it for intelligent people to enjoy. It could very well be my failing to understand how opera's combination of plot, visuals and music produces an art form that can be equal to that of abstract music.



Woodduck said:


> Composers do seem to enjoy writing music inspired by literary, poetic, or pictorial ideas. We're free to ignore these ideas, of course. But many people enjoy the synthesis of sensory or cognitive modes, whether or not those listeners possess that unusual trait known as synesthesia. "Cross-domain mapping," as cognitive psychologists call it, is actually a basic part of mental functioning. We don't have to look at Arnold Boecklin's "The Isle of the Dead" to enjoy Rachmaninoff's tone poem inspired by it, but it's at least interesting to see the painting to gain insight into the composer's thinking, and it serves as a link between the music and a wider world of experience.
> 
> The world of experience which an opera such as _Tristan und Isolde_ or the _Ring_ can open up is potentially very wide. This would be much less true if the music were not compelling to so many people. *It isn't "'silly visuals" that keep these works alive.*


But it is these silly visuals and plot that get in the way of my enjoyment. There is some great music within opera that I enjoy immensely but, and especially in Wagner, there is just too much that doesn't hold my attention and it seems to me that there are large sections in which what drives the work forward is not so much the music but the plot.


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## Clairvoyance Enough

I do think there is a clear difference between traditional songs and the recita-singing that comprises most of Wagner. For instance, when listening to Siegfried's Notung song, or any lieder, I get the sense that the words have been fit into "pure" music that would still seem whole as an instrumental transcription.

On the other hand, if one transcribed the large prose clusters that comprise most of the operas into an instrumental context, we would hear all sorts of seemingly arbitrarily gestures and one-off melodies/phrases which, for me, do not function as "pure music." And why would they, when the order of those notes has partially been determined by the grammar, sentence structure, syllables, and etc of the sentences in the libretto? I love the recitatives in Messiah as well, but they would definitely sound a bit random if the singer were replaced with an oboe.

In these sections, the music has been fit into the words just as much as the words have been fit into the music, and, unfortunately for me, those words can sometimes make for a bumpy road that interferes with the pacing (not the overall dramatic pacing, but the way individual chunks of music flow from start to end and into one another). It is the lack of these half extra-musical gestures that gives "pure music" a sort of fluidity that I like. Tone poems and ballets lack them as well, unlike Wagner's music or much opera in general, and so I don't really think something like the Swan of Tuonela can be accurately compared.

That said, it does work for me some of the time. Wagner's more naturalistic vocal writing captures the drama of actual speech in an interesting way, such as when Isolde airs her grievances at the start of Tristan. As written, rather than sounding like a person singing about their fury, it _literally _sounds like a person shouting their fury into the sky, with the same haphazard rhythm and spontaneity of an actor delivering lines in a play or film. Would Isolde singing an actual lieder have been more effective instead? Maybe, but it would not have been effective in the same way.

Wagner's unique methods are a mixed bag for me. Much like a lot of the weirdo modern and contemporary classical music, I often struggle to decide whether I think it "works" long after I've already decided that I enjoy it.


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## Woodduck

Perhaps a brief summary of Wagner's approach to vocal writing would be useful.

What's called secco (literally, "dry") recitative, in 18th-century opera, could be considered stylized musical speech. It's main function was to get a lot of words out quickly, words not deemed suitable for the extended expression of an aria, with which recitative alternated. The increasing importance and expressive role of the orchestra in opera, beginning in the late 18th century with Mozart, pushed vocal writing away from the strict recitative-aria division. Ultimately there's an unbroken continuum between dry recitative and formal aria, with vocal lines which approximate the inflections of speech at one end and more or less self-contained vocal melodies at the other. Composers choose where to compose music along this continuum according to the verbal values involved and the overall pace and texture of the music as a whole.

Wagner's vocal writing - and the majority of operatic writing since his example - exploits the full range of this continuum. In his works there are quickly uttered, recitative-like lines at one extreme and extended, self-contained tunes at the other, but the vocal line's most characteristic form is a freely developing, open-ended melody which attempts to express the qualities and meaning of words while constituting an essential, often dominant line in the often complex musical texture. The degree to which the vocal line is musically dominant or subordinate is guided by dramatic as well as verbal and musical considerations. The aria in baroque opera was typically a moment in which the action paused and a character would explore and express a single, concentrated state of mind. This is quite a natural function for a self-contained song, and Wagner does write true arias which perform this function; good examples are Siegmund's "spring song" ("Wintersturme wichend dem Wonnemond") and Isolde's "Liebestod." But Wagner wanted most of the time to make music represent the fluidity of action, thought and feeling - the fluidity of life as lived in time - and to illuminate the psychological significance of the moment as well as the long-range meaning of it. For this he found the orchestra to be his chief resource, and the orchestra inevitably took over much of the burden of expression previously assigned to the voice even as it expressed things which no traditional aria could ever express. Once this shift in emphasis from vocal to orchestral expression takes place, the vocal writing is free to respond moment by moment to verbal meanings, as it had in true recitative, and to move in the direction of the inflections of speech, deriving from speech some of speech's own expressive values. The declamatory song of a Wagnerian vocal line here meets the songlike declamation of a classical actor or an ancient bard, and it's worth remembering that this was also precisely the goal of the Florentine Camerata who created opera in the 1590s, utilizing a form of musical declamation which was the first of a number of attempts to revive the dramatic style of ancient Greece. 

I find it beside any point worth making to compare the various elements that go to make up a Wagner opera with, say, a Bach fugue, and to complain that one aspect of Wagner's music is less intrinsically interesting than a Bachian line of counterpoint. Like every other aspect of Wagner's work, his writing for the voice should be considered - and experienced - in the context of the whole musical/dramatic project, and the overall structure, of the work. For those who can do that, his vocal writing seems not a weak form of melody or something inferior to song, but an immensely fluid expressive resource which is part of a large arsenal of expressive resources. Most opera composers since Wagner have been influenced by his methods and example, and while there is no denying the dangers inherent in such a complex approach to setting drama to music, it is also an approach with such potentialities that few composers in the generations following Wagner could resist or avoid the challenge to their own powers of invention posed by it. The operas of Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Debussy, Dukas, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Berg - to cite only some of the most enduring works of the period - are unthinkable without Wagner.'s innovations, among which his immensely resourceful and sensitive vocal writing is one of the most important.


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## Clairvoyance Enough

This is all very helpful and illuminating. I've read many such descriptions of Wagner's techniques and tried to keep them in mind while listening to his music. There is the issue that my preferred format for opera actually is a complete separation of recitative from aria, my favorites being Handel, Mozart, and etc. And it is often hard to inhibit my expectations that other operas will behave in the same way.

My first time listening to Rheingold, I felt a bit jarred by many moments in the second act. Fasolt and Fafner enter the scene to terrifying drums and horns... which quickly dissipate so that an extended and rather low energy conversation can take place. Then, to break things up, Donner challenges the giants to a fight, and we hear a rousing, heroic theme rise up from the orchestra!!! ...only for it to also die a quick death so we may return to the moderate, conversational pace. 

Admittedly, this is my brain thinking "But in a Mozart opera, this would be the part where we get an exciting two to three minute aria featuring the theme we just heard? Where was it!?" I understand that's not really fair.

These scenes stand in sharp contrast to something like Wotan's argument with Fricka in Walkure. Again the conversational style of the singing fights with my innate preferences to some extent, but both the words and the music are bursting with a passion and energy that strikes me aesthetically successful whether I'm in love with it or not. Fresh off the inspiration of a scene like this, I'll return to the aforementioned sections of Rheingold, and other passages in other operas I have similar issues with, and just hear nothing but confusingly dry exposition as wonderful motifs just kind of tremor subtly in the background.

One issue I think the uninitiated (and fans who prefer "pure music) run into is that Wagner's method of emulating the flow of real human speech gives his operas a more uniform pace and tempo. You don't have these big obvious contrasts between a clear allegro section, an adagio section, and then a rondo section, for example. Whether the scene is fast and exciting or tender and quiet, the characters sing with the "inflections of speech," and so everything always moves at the pace of real people talking to each other. As such, even an opera like Walkure, which I do not think has any boring parts at all, can be challenging for me to sit through from beginning to end.

That a great many listeners apparently don't have these issues with Wagner does compel me to keep trying.


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## amfortas

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> My first time listening to Rheingold, I felt a bit jarred by many moments in the second act. Fasolt and Fafner enter the scene to terrifying drums and horns... which quickly dissipate so that an extended and rather low energy conversation can take place. Then, to break things up, Donner challenges the giants to a fight, and we hear a rousing, heroic theme rise up from the orchestra!!! ...only for it to also die a quick death so we may return to the moderate, conversational pace.
> 
> Admittedly, this is my brain thinking "But in a Mozart opera, this would be the part where we get an exciting two to three minute aria featuring the theme we just heard? Where was it!?" I understand that's not really fair.
> 
> These scenes stand in sharp contrast to something like Wotan's argument with Fricka in Walkure. Again the conversational style of the singing fights with my innate preferences to some extent, but both the words and the music are bursting with a passion and energy that strikes me aesthetically successful whether I'm in love with it or not. Fresh off the inspiration of a scene like this, I'll return to the aforementioned sections of Rheingold, and other passages in other operas I have similar issues with, and just hear nothing but confusingly dry exposition as wonderful motifs just kind of tremor subtly in the background.


Because of the years-long incubation period Wagner took between his three early "romantic" operas and the composition of the Ring cycle, people don't always acknowledge the tremendous musical/dramatic leap between _Das Rheingold_ and _Die Walküre_. The former opera shows Wagner applying his new theoretical principles for the first time, in somewhat inflexible ways, while the latter shows him hitting full stride, incorporating those principles more freely into a passionate, compelling drama.


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## Kreisler jr

It also helps that Die Walküre is still a kind of love story whereas Das Rheingold a somewhat complicated setup with a lot of characters. There is virtually no quasi-aria or duet in Rheingold, it is a conversation piece whereas in Walküre most of the first act is quite easy to get with Sieglinde's tale of the sword in the tree and the love duet later on. I still tend to think Walküre is the best way to get into Wagner unless one is really fearless, then one can start with Tristan.


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## Woodduck

amfortas said:


> Because of the years-long incubation period Wagner took between his three early "romantic" operas and the composition of the Ring cycle, people don't always acknowledge the tremendous musical/dramatic leap between _Das Rheingold_ and _Die Walküre_. The former opera shows Wagner applying his new theoretical principles for the first time, in somewhat inflexible ways, while the latter shows him hitting full stride, incorporating those principles more freely into a passionate, compelling drama.


Hahaha! You've beat me to the punch. In _Rheingold_ we hear Wagner's manipulating the elements of his new style - leitmotif, song, recitative, orchestral interlude - in a deliberate, distinct, at times simplistic manner, and this has the effect of making some parts of it rather "talky" while other parts show a more complex and extended musical development. This "primitive" demonstration of a novel style notwithstanding, I think his instincts as to what to do where are pretty sound, and the opera hangs together musically and dramatically; its relative musical naivete even strikes me as charming, giving the work the quality of a children's story, not inappropriate for a work depicting the beginning of the world. But the entrance of humanity into the world of gods, elementals, giants and dwarves, which occurs right off the bat in the opening scene of _Die Walkure, _moves us onto a higher plane of musical elaboration, appropriate to the deeper emotions being depicted. Wagner seems always to rise to a new level of musical sophistication when new dramatic demands require it, and of course he placed these demands on himself by conceiving his dramas from the ground up, working freely from his mythical and legendary sources, and imagining every detail of their realization.


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## Coach G

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> ...I never think of swans when listening to [Sibelius'] Tuonela. In fact, I never think of any concrete objects when listening to any abstract music. It wouldn't make an iota of difference to me if Sibelius had called it "The Rings of Saturn" or "Do your ears hang low?".


I find it hard to believe that you are able to disassociate the image of a swan from the experience of listening to Sibelius' _Swan of Tounela_. In this regard, along with the mastery of the composer, the influence of the title alone really has a lot to do with how one might perceive the music. Whether it's the battle scene in _Mars the God of War_ from Holst's _Planets_; the water gently moving in Beethoven's _By the Brook_ movement in _Symphony #6 "Pastorale"_; or the dancing cowboys in Copland's _Rodeo_; once you hear it, you _always_ hear it.

So if you're not hearing the swan in _Swan of Tounela_, that must mean that you have some ability to make yourself invulnerable to cognitive and behavioral processes such as the laws of perception, confirmation bias, and classical conditioning; and that would make you out to be quite extraordinary. Either that, or Sibelius wasn't a very good composer, in that he failed to paint the musical picture of the swan slowly moving through the marsh; to the point where you say that _never_ hear it! And since _Swan of Tounela_ has been recorded dozens or even, maybe, more than a hundred times over, by every major orchestra and almost every major conductor since classical music recordings have existed; I'm not going to challenge that legacy.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> I find it beside any point worth making to compare the various elements that go to make up a Wagner opera with, say, a Bach fugue, and to complain that one aspect of Wagner's music is less intrinsically interesting than a Bachian line of counterpoint. Like every other aspect of Wagner's work, his writing for the voice should be considered - and experienced - in the context of the whole musical/dramatic project, and the overall structure, of the work. For those who can do that, his vocal writing seems not a weak form of melody or something inferior to song, but an immensely fluid expressive resource which is part of a large arsenal of expressive resources. Most opera composers since Wagner have been influenced by his methods and example, and while there is no denying the dangers inherent in such a complex approach to setting drama to music, it is also an approach with such potentialities that few composers in the generations following Wagner could resist or avoid the challenge to their own powers of invention posed by it. The operas of Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Debussy, Dukas, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Berg - to cite only some of the most enduring works of the period - are unthinkable without Wagner.'s innovations, among which his immensely resourceful and sensitive vocal writing is one of the most important.


Well, I guess we disagree on what points are worth making. In a Bach fugue, all the elements are musical, even when there are voices, the voices are there as another instrument. In a Wagner opera, there are non-musical aspects that contribute to the overall structure and impact of the work. I find this to be self-evident and don't understand the resistance to acknowledge this self-evident truth. Words are not music. Visuals are not music. These are extra-musical elements that Wagner infused into his work. Of course you are free to enjoy this dramatic output more than any other musical form but it isn't pointless to compare the elements that comprise a Bach fugue or a Sibelius symphony to a Wagner opera. We can compare them, analyze them and reach certain conclusions. My conclusion that Wagner's work is less musically pure follows logically from our definition of what musical elements are, unless you want to argue to speaking or dressing up in a costume is a musical element.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Coach G said:


> I find it hard to believe that you are able to disassociate the image of a swan from the experience of listening to Sibelius' _Swan of Tounela_. In this regard, along with the mastery of the composer, the influence of the title alone really has a lot to do with how one might perceive the music. Whether it's the battle scene in _Mars the God of War_ from Holst's _Planets_; the water gently moving in Beethoven's _By the Brook_ movement in _Symphony #6 "Pastorale"_; or the dancing cowboys in Copland's _Rodeo_; once you hear it, you _always_ hear it.
> 
> So if you're not hearing the swan in _Swan of Tounela_, that must mean that you have some ability to make yourself invulnerable to cognitive and behavioral processes such as the laws of perception, confirmation bias, and classical conditioning; and that would make you out to be quite extraordinary. Either that, or Sibelius wasn't a very good composer, in that he failed to paint the musical picture of the swan slowly moving through the marsh; to the point where you say that _never_ hear it! And since _Swan of Tounela_ has been recorded dozens or even, maybe, more than a hundred times over, by every major orchestra and almost every major conductor since classical music recordings have existed; I'm not going to challenge that legacy.


Whether you believe it or not, it is what my experience has been listening to the Swan of Tounela. Not even once have I imagined a swan when listening to the music. Of course, I associate the work with the word Swan since that is what it is called but musically there is nothing in it that conjures up a swan for me. Perhaps it is the result of how differently we experience music that you cannot understand my experiences. I don't even see what the attraction of imagining a swan moving slowly through the marsh is. That is rather boring unless you experience it live in nature. I like the Swan of Tounela because of how it sounds (duh) and the way it's structured, not because of what images it evokes in me, which, as I've said, is none.


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## hammeredklavier

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Well, I guess we disagree on what points are worth making. In a Bach fugue, all the elements are musical, even when there are voices, the voices are there as another instrument. In a Wagner opera, there are non-musical aspects that contribute to the overall structure and impact of the work.







Abstract music can't really set up a "situation" mentally like opera does. So it _can be argued_ abstract music is just not as varied in covering various aspects of the human condition (I don't think it is).

Berlioz did not like most pre-Beethoven era abstract music (although he did say about Mozart; "the marvelous beauty of his quartets and quintets and of one or two of his sonatas was what first converted me to this celestial genius". -Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 94)) for reasons similar to this; it can seem like playing with notes for notes' sake.
"The abstract combination of sounds, the purely 'musical' aspect of music, without forthright reference to feelings, events or images, leaves him indifferent." < Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies | Kerry Murphy | P.23 >


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## Barbebleu

It is The Swan of Tuonela. Not The Swan of Tounela! Check your spelling please folks.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

hammeredklavier said:


> Abstract music can't really set up a "situation" mentally like opera does. So it _can be argued_ abstract music is just not as varied in covering various aspects of the human condition (I don't think it is).
> 
> Berlioz did not like most pre-Beethoven era abstract music (although he did say about Mozart; "the marvelous beauty of his quartets and quintets and of one or two of his sonatas was what first converted me to this celestial genius". -Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 94)) for reasons similar to this; it can seem like playing with notes for notes' sake.
> "The abstract combination of sounds, the purely 'musical' aspect of music, without forthright reference to feelings, events or images, leaves him indifferent." < Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies | Kerry Murphy | P.23 >


And that is why some people are drawn to opera, I guess. The human condition from where I experience it has been completely covered by abstract music and I don't need opera for any extra coverage. My stance is that opera is less musical than abstract music but not necessarily an inferior artistic product.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Barbebleu said:


> It is The Swan of Tuonela. Not The Swan of Tounela! Check your spelling please folks.


Sorry, spelling police. I swear I will check the accuracy of stuff I copy and paste in the future.


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## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> Hahaha! You've beat me to the punch. In _Rheingold_ we hear Wagner's manipulating the elements of his new style - leitmotif, song, recitative, orchestral interlude - in a deliberate, distinct, at times simplistic manner, and this has the effect of making some parts of it rather "talky" while other parts show a more complex and extended musical development. This "primitive" demonstration of a novel style notwithstanding, I think his instincts as to what to do where are pretty sound, and the opera hangs together musically and dramatically; its relative musical naivete even strikes me as charming, giving the work the quality of a children's story, not inappropriate for a work depicting the beginning of the world. But the entrance of humanity into the world of gods, elementals, giants and dwarves, which occurs right off the bat in the opening scene of _Die Walkure, _moves us onto a higher plane of musical elaboration, appropriate to the deeper emotions being depicted. Wagner seems always to rise to a new level of musical sophistication when new dramatic demands require it, and of course he placed these demands on himself by conceiving his dramas from the ground up, working freely from his mythical and legendary sources, and imagining every detail of their realization.


Absolutely. You and Kreisler are both right; _Das Rheingold_ and _Die Walküre_ are very different dramatically, so it's neither surprising nor coincidental that their musicodramatic realizations would contrast so strongly. Nonetheless, it remains true that the latter opera in many respects represents a major advance beyond anything Wagner (or anyone else) had previously composed. This is not to deny, of course, that later operas, particularly _Tristan_, pushed the envelope even further.


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Well, I guess we disagree on what points are worth making. In a Bach fugue, all the elements are musical, even when there are voices, the voices are there as another instrument. In a Wagner opera, there are non-musical aspects that contribute to the overall structure and impact of the work. I find this to be self-evident and don't understand the resistance to acknowledge this self-evident truth. Words are not music. Visuals are not music. These are extra-musical elements that Wagner infused into his work. Of course you are free to enjoy this dramatic output more than any other musical form but it isn't pointless to compare the elements that comprise a Bach fugue or a Sibelius symphony to a Wagner opera. We can compare them, analyze them and reach certain conclusions. My conclusion that Wagner's work is less musically pure follows logically from our definition of what musical elements are, unless you want to argue to speaking or dressing up in a costume is a musical element.


Apples and oranges comparisons may teach us something, but usually not what, and always less than, they purport to. Music whose form is determined partly by the stresses and cadences of speech rather than entirely by some abstract formal concept is not inherently less "musical" or interesting for that reason. It certainly depends on the specific case.

The dry recitative of most 18th-century opera, uttered at more or less the pace of speech, is generally of little musical interest, not because it can't be made interesting but because it wasn't considered worth a composer's time to make it so. It tends to consist predominantly of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic formulae, and it depends largely on the performer to give it the dramatic accents and pacing (or, in the case of the accompanist, the decoration) that would impart some musical value to it. This was acknowledged at the time - Mozart was concerned not to bore the audience with too much recitative - and was certainly a motivation for the move toward so-called accompanied recitative, where declamatory singing with speechlike accents could be embedded in a more sustained and inventive musical texture (Mozart and Gluck were both masters of this). By Wagner's day dry recitative was a thing of the past, the traditional melodic formulae were retained only where useful, and the vocal melodic line was determined by factors more peculiar to the musical and dramatic situation. Recitative-like passages in mid- to late 19th-century opera are often not properly described as recitative, since they tend to function as part of a larger musical design; there is always a specific musical context that contains and impels them, including harmonic progressions and the play of motifs in the orchestra.

In looking over the first few pages of _Parsifal _following the prelude - since you mentioned it early on - I see an orchestral texture, quiet and spare but purposeful, consisting of several of the principal motifs to be used throughout the opera. Even at the very start of the opera, these motifs are already being subjected to elaboration and development. At the same time, the vocal lines tend toward a conversational brevity, yet can expand melodically as needed and are musically integrated with the orchestral part. The whole texture is governed by key relationships and moments of harmonic punctuation which maintain a purposeful play of tensions and a sense of progression, yet also create a mood of anxiety and uncertainty as required by the dramatic situation. I find nothing "unmusical" about any of it, but of course if one is expecting steady rhythms, broad melodies and busy textures, the musical substance that's actually there is likely to seem meager and unsatisfying. More elaborate music does occur in _Parsifal,_ and quite frequently, but it does so when and where it's needed. As I've said, the work needs to be viewed whole, just as any work of art needs to be experienced as a whole in order for the meaning of its parts to become fully clear. A ten-minute fugue or sonata movement is meant to be appreciated as a whole more or less right away, at least by a musically sophisticated listener. A four hour opera is another thing. It takes time, and we have to be willing to give it. _Parsifal_, a work of a nature more contemplative than active, is a prime example of the stretching out of time, with a very deliberate exposition of its material. But if we can slow our pulses and sit quietly before it, we come to see that more is happening than we suspected at first.


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## Kreisler jr

It is also simply not true that there was nothing (or only very little) extra-musical in Bach. 
If there are voices, it is obviously a differences if the text is "A mighty fortress is our Lord" or "Miserere mei, Domine" or "The coffee tastes sweet like kisses". 
And if there is no text, there are rhetorical figures in the music, often influences from both dances (all the suite movements are dances) or typical vocal forms, even actual chorale melodies (not only in the organ pieces based on chorales). (I am not denying that there is "absolute" abstract music in the baroque, but it is not the "standard")

There are no visuals, but otherwise most baroque music and this holds for a lot of other music has extra-musical content, allusions, influences. The instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart (and some contemporaries, although instrumental programme music was already popular, e.g. the titles symphonies by Dittersdorf) might be among the "purest" examples of "absolute" music and even there are obviously influences by vocal music (cf. e.g. the theme in K 551,i that is literally taken from an aria, does clearly sound like a buffonesque aria and also musically has the typical feature of a half bar of accompaniment before the "voice" sets in (shared by the very beginning of K 550 which has been identified as a type "aria agitata", like Cherubinos "Non so piu cosa son cosa faccio"). 

In the case of Beethoven early commentators came up with stories and poetic images despite the music usually having no titles/programmes because they found it so irrestibly evocative of extramusical content. 
Sure, there are often "projections" of such content and pretty silly ones, but most music in the history of European music was text-based and a lot of instrumental music was strongly influenced by vocal music. This goes down so deep that in many languages "parts" are called "voices", groups of instruments "choirs" and they are named after the types of singing voices etc.


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## Barbebleu

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Sorry, spelling police. I swear I will check the accuracy of stuff I copy and paste in the future.


Yeah, I may have come across as a bit harsh. We pedants have our own crosses to bear. Or, we pendants have hour own crosses to bare!!:lol:


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## Enthusiast

Pure (even abstract) music versus programme (is that the right word?) music seems to me to be a misleading and perhaps ambiguous dichotomy. As I have already said, I listen to a lot of opera as pure music. When listening to an opera that I have never seen I pay little attention to what is going on until I know and like the work as music. Some operas are easier than others to enjoy as pure music but in all cases I am aware of the drama as part of the music - both structurally and in any given moment - even though I don't actually know what the subject is and what is happening. So I am not very clear how to separate the drama from the music. 

But the same is true, I think, of music that has no programme. The structure of a symphony is still a narrative, it is just more abstract and there may be no story to uncover as you get to know the piece. So, with operas that I am enjoying as music (but have yet to engage with as drama) and with symphonies, I am listening to music with a narrative that is for me abstract. 

Suppose we use the description "abstract" only for purely non-programme works - so we are recognising that tone poems and symphonic poems are not abstract - what is the difference between the pure music and music that paints a picture or tells a story? Does it really make a difference that some music is structured by musical rules (and the careful ignoring of rules) while other music draws on something more "organic" (but still presumably musical)? Yes, in a way it does. It is the difference between a Beethoven sonata and a Schumann piano piece. It's OK to like one and not the other but to say this is because you need or don't need an abstract rigorous purely musical structure seems to involve confessing a major limit to what you can and cannot enjoy. Fair enough but this is not just about opera. 

Or you can listen to a musical poem - perhaps the Swan of Tuonela - as pure music by ignoring the fact that the composer aimed to depict a story. But then you are not doing anything different to what I do with a lot of the opera I like as music but have never seen. 

I suppose we can restrict a definition of pure music to "music without words". OK but is this distinction really any different to saying that pure music has no singers? And, if that's the case, why not just say "I don't like to hear classical singing, no matter how wonderful the singer's voice"? I have often felt that the voice is the greatest and most versatile instrument that classical music has but do understand that there are many people who don't much like classical singing. They usually state this preference plainly but if they want to find a reason for their prejudice I am not sure abstract vs concrete (or programme) works coherently.


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## Clairvoyance Enough

Enthusiast said:


> I suppose we can restrict a definition of pure music to "music without words". OK but is this distinction really any different to saying that pure music has no singers? And, if that's the case, why not just say "I don't like to hear classical singing, no matter how wonderful the singer's voice"? I have often felt that the voice is the greatest and most versatile instrument that classical music has but do understand that there are many people who don't much like classical singing. They usually state this preference plainly but if they want to find a reason for their prejudice I am not sure abstract vs concrete (or programme) works coherently.


It seems to be the case that many listeners can enjoy opera as pure music with no understanding of the story, but this is not the case for me. The blend of recitative with aria in most post-Mozart opera creates a pretty distinct effect from that of traditional word-setting for a lieder. An instrumental transcription of all the singing in a Wagner, Puccini, or even Verdi opera would leave clear rhythmic evidence of its origin not just as words set to music, but explicit emulation of conversational dialogue and monologues set to music.

The score would be littered with choppy phrases and awkwardly meandering sequences of melody, amounting basically to abandoned instructions for the delivery of lines. Can we sincerely suggest that an expository scene, whether from Rheingold or Rigoletto, transcribed to instruments only would retain its effect to the same degree as a piano transcription of Schubert's Gute Nacht, a work which, while containing words, is _setting those words to a song,_ not emulating the back-and-forth cadence of conversation and recitative in a staged scene?

Tone poems, ballets, and lieder do not contain musical information that was conceived with the duel purpose of recitative, and I think this is a difference we can all physically hear. A line of melody from Wagner that's been scalped from its prose is going to sound as musically independent as an extracted phrase from a purely orchestral tone poem? Come on now. It's not that the music is inferior for having a duel purpose, but I think it's no surprise that it doesn't function as "pure music" for many listeners when it was never meant to.

Even lieder, which I would classify as pretty near to pure-music, often contain qualities that, just in my opinion, hint at an expectation that the listener is understanding the poem or story. Schubert's Gute Nacht essentially repeats the same "exposition" 3 or 4 times until all of the stanzas in the poem have been exhausted. Now, the music is so good that even if you don't know the language you will likely enjoy it, but would Schubert have really considered those repeats with little variation an appropriate aesthetic choice if Gute Nacht was just a solo piano piece? I think there's an unspoken assumption that your attention is being partially sustained through those repeats by the content of the poem that inspired him in the first place.

Even in vocal music that is close to pure music, we can find aesthetic choices like this that make the music more accessible if the words are given proper attention. When we branch even further from this into vocal music that is not simply dressing up musically independent songs with words, but directly combining stage-play dialogue with music, it becomes even stranger to me to suggest there's no valuable distinction between "pure music" and an opera like Rheingold.


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## hammeredklavier

Kreisler jr said:


> There are no visuals, but otherwise most baroque music and this holds for a lot of other music has extra-musical content, allusions, influences. The instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart (and some contemporaries, although instrumental programme music was already popular, e.g. the titles symphonies by Dittersdorf) might be among the "purest" examples of "absolute" music and even there are obviously influences by vocal music (cf. e.g. the theme in K 551,i that is literally taken from an aria, does clearly sound like a buffonesque aria and also musically has the typical feature of a half bar of accompaniment before the "voice" sets in (shared by the very beginning of K 550 which has been identified as a type "aria agitata", like Cherubinos "Non so piu cosa son cosa faccio").


J. Haydn Mass in E flat: 



Beethoven Op.55/ii: 



There are striking parallels in the sentiments both the Haydn and the Beethoven express. (It's also interesting they were both written when the respective composers were around 35 in age)


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## Enthusiast

uiuyiuyiuyiu hjhg


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## Enthusiast

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> It seems to be the case that many listeners can enjoy opera as pure music with no understanding of the story, but this is not the case for me. The blend of recitative with aria in most post-Mozart opera creates a pretty distinct effect from that of traditional word-setting for a lieder. An instrumental transcription of all the singing in a Wagner, Puccini, or even Verdi opera would leave clear rhythmic evidence of its origin not just as words set to music, but explicit emulation of conversational dialogue and monologues set to music.
> 
> The score would be littered with choppy phrases and awkwardly meandering sequences of melody, amounting basically to abandoned instructions for the delivery of lines. Can we sincerely suggest that an expository scene, whether from Rheingold or Rigoletto, transcribed to instruments only would retain its effect to the same degree as a piano transcription of Schubert's Gute Nacht, a work which, while containing words, is _setting those words to a song,_ not emulating the back-and-forth cadence of conversation and recitative in a staged scene?
> 
> Tone poems, ballets, and lieder do not contain musical information that was conceived with the duel purpose of recitative, and I think this is a difference we can all physically hear. A line of melody from Wagner that's been scalped from its prose is going to sound as musically independent as an extracted phrase from a purely orchestral tone poem? Come on now. It's not that the music is inferior for having a duel purpose, but I think it's no surprise that it doesn't function as "pure music" for many listeners when it was never meant to.
> 
> Even lieder, which I would classify as pretty near to pure-music, often contain qualities that, just in my opinion, hint at an expectation that the listener is understanding the poem or story. Schubert's Gute Nacht essentially repeats the same "exposition" 3 or 4 times until all of the stanzas in the poem have been exhausted. Now, the music is so good that even if you don't know the language you will likely enjoy it, but would Schubert have really considered those repeats with little variation an appropriate aesthetic choice if Gute Nacht was just a solo piano piece? I think there's an unspoken assumption that your attention is being partially sustained through those repeats by the content of the poem that inspired him in the first place.
> 
> Even in vocal music that is close to pure music, we can find aesthetic choices like this that make the music more accessible if the words are given proper attention. When we branch even further from this into vocal music that is not simply dressing up musically independent songs with words, but directly combining stage-play dialogue with music, it becomes even stranger to me to suggest there's no valuable distinction between "pure music" and an opera like Rheingold.


What you say may be right but why is it bad to feel speech or words in the music? Why is that somehow less musical? Sometimes I hear speech in some of my favourite recordings of string quartets and orchestral music, too. Some performers seem to be aiming for this.


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## Barbebleu

Enthusiast said:


> uiuyiuyiuyiu hjhg


Normally I would agree with you but I have to take a different point of view. Ohohohohoh. Haha!


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## Clairvoyance Enough

Enthusiast said:


> What you say may be right but why is it bad to feel speech or words in the music? Why is that somehow less musical? Sometimes I hear speech in some of my favourite recordings of string quartets and orchestral music, too. Some performers seem to be aiming for this.


I think some perceive it as "less musical" because it does not work for them when they just listen and pay no attention to the meaning of the words at all. I've tried to asborb Verdi's Falstaff as pure music many times, but, not knowing the words, a lot of the "music" which is not an explicit aria becomes meaningless, choppy, non-sense sequences of notes because it is not meant to be heard as an aria, but as words being exchanged in a conversation. They are serving a storytelling purpose as well as a musical purpose, and that's not a bad thing at all. I think it's a misunderstanding that anyone in this thread was saying that it is.


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## Woodduck

It's certainly right to point out that music which attempts to set words in a way that respects the intonations of speech may be structured in a distinctive way, a way that would be unlikely to occur to a composer writing purely instrumental music. A good demonstration of this is the start of the last movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony, where the tune of the bass singer's recitative is first announced by the orchestra's low strings in a passage we immediately identify as "quasi recitativo." It's gestures are unmistakably vocal in character. Clairvoyance Enough is right in saying that when vocal lines from opera having a speechlike cadence are transcribed for instruments they betray their vocal origin ("An instrumental transcription of all the singing in a Wagner, Puccini, or even Verdi opera would leave clear rhythmic evidence of its origin not just as words set to music, but explicit emulation of conversational dialogue and monologues set to music"). It goes a little far, though, to say that "the score would be littered with choppy phrases and awkwardly meandering sequences of melody, amounting basically to abandoned instructions for the delivery of lines." To that I would say two things:

1.) Much music is idiomatic for certain instruments and sounds quite wrong played on other instruments. The human voice is an instrument with unique characteristics, even apart from its ability to carry words. It should be no surprise that the rhythms and intonations of vocal music, and not only classical music, are powerfully expressive when uttered by a human voice, but lose their meaning when coming from an impersonal instrument. Much of the power of vocal music resides in the sound of the voice as such, and we can hear and respond to a beautifully or forcefully sung phrase even without knowing the meaning of the words, if any. Composers write music that takes advantage of the unique qualities of particular instruments. What would the lonely, unaccompanied cor anglais melody that opens Act 3 of _Tristan_ convey if played on a flute, harp or xylophone? The voice is distinctive among all instruments, and the composers of opera seek to take maximum advantage of its distinctiveness and write music which is essentially vocal.

2.) "Choppy phrases" are not necessarily musically bad, and "awkwardly meandering sequences of melody" and "instructions for the delivery of lines" are not descriptions that match my experience of the vocal writing of, say, the opening scenes of _Tristan_ or _Gotterdammerung._ Wagner's vocal writing is exceedingly varied, but it is always a musically integral part of a larger musical design and is, even when most fragmentary and when heard in isolation, full of harmonic implications. We don't play Wagner's (or any other opera composer's) vocal lines on trumpets or clarinets and severed from their musical context. Great composers know the importance of creating a cohesive musical fabric in which the vocal lines, while they are central in advancing the drama by means of a text and the affective qualities of the human voice, are not the only component. Wagner wasn't the first to write passages and scenes in which the vocal lines were carried along by a larger musical structure - Mozart was already working on this - but he certainly carried the principle to unprecedented levels of complexity and has arguably never been surpassed at it. His command of long-term musical structure - resting largely on his extraordinary powers as a harmonist and his skill and inventiveness in developing and manipulating motifs - is what makes us come away from one of his operas with the feeling of having been for several hours visitors to a complete, coherent alternative universe. It's this, and not mere length or simple "bigness," that makes his work epic.

Nearly all composers for generations felt compelled by Wagner's example to try to integrate all aspects of an opera into an organic wholeness, and that included obliterating the artificial (no disparagement intended) distinction between speech (recitative) and song (aria). It's interesting to observe different composers meeting the challenge in their distinctive ways. Just by the way, I feel that the most successful of them, if we exclude the last operas of Verdi, was probably Puccini. But I'm not trying to start any arguments where none are needed!


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> Apples and oranges comparisons may teach us something, but usually not what, and always less than, they purport to. Music whose form is determined partly by the stresses and cadences of speech rather than entirely by some abstract formal concept is not inherently less "musical" or interesting for that reason. It certainly depends on the specific case.


 Not apples and oranges. We're comparing musical forms so unless you group all your musical forms in to a fruit category then I guess it's apples and oranges.



Woodduck said:


> The dry recitative of most 18th-century opera, uttered at more or less the pace of speech, is generally of little musical interest, not because it can't be made interesting but because it wasn't considered worth a composer's time to make it so. It tends to consist predominantly of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic formulae, and it depends largely on the performer to give it the dramatic accents and pacing (or, in the case of the accompanist, the decoration) that would impart some musical value to it. This was acknowledged at the time - Mozart was concerned not to bore the audience with too much recitative - and was certainly a motivation for the move toward so-called accompanied recitative, where declamatory singing with speechlike accents could be embedded in a more sustained and inventive musical texture (Mozart and Gluck were both masters of this). By Wagner's day dry recitative was a thing of the past, the traditional melodic formulae were retained only where useful, and the vocal melodic line was determined by factors more peculiar to the musical and dramatic situation. Recitative-like passages in mid- to late 19th-century opera are often not properly described as recitative, since they tend to function as part of a larger musical design; there is always a specific musical context that contains and impels them, including harmonic progressions and the play of motifs in the orchestra.


Yes, I have noticed this change between the operas of Mozart and Wagner. Mozart was right to be concerned that recitatives would bore the listeners.



Woodduck said:


> In looking over the first few pages of _Parsifal _following the prelude - since you mentioned it early on - I see an orchestral texture, quiet and spare but purposeful, consisting of several of the principal motifs to be used throughout the opera. Even at the very start of the opera, these motifs are already being subjected to elaboration and development. At the same time, the vocal lines tend toward a conversational brevity, yet can expand melodically as needed and are musically integrated with the orchestral part. The whole texture is governed by key relationships and moments of harmonic punctuation which maintain a purposeful play of tensions and a sense of progression, yet also create a mood of anxiety and uncertainty as required by the dramatic situation. I find nothing "unmusical" about any of it, but of course if one is expecting steady rhythms, broad melodies and busy textures, the musical substance that's actually there is likely to seem meager and unsatisfying. More elaborate music does occur in _Parsifal,_ and quite frequently, but it does so when and where it's needed. As I've said, the work needs to be viewed whole, just as any work of art needs to be experienced as a whole in order for the meaning of its parts to become fully clear. A ten-minute fugue or sonata movement is meant to be appreciated as a whole more or less right away, at least by a musically sophisticated listener. A four hour opera is another thing. It takes time, and we have to be willing to give it. _Parsifal_, a work of a nature more contemplative than active, is a prime example of the stretching out of time, with a very deliberate exposition of its material. But if we can slow our pulses and sit quietly before it, we come to see that more is happening than we suspected at first.


Yes, I like my music to have interesting rhythms, melodies and some sort of musical development that doesn't take hours to decipher. I get that it takes time to appreciate a 4-hour opera and that understanding the overall structure will add to the appreciating of the music but if the parts comprising the overall structure are dull, how do I make myself sit though 4 hours to understand something that bores me for the most part?

Again, what I find unmusical is the presence of the plot and visuals. Why are there elaborate stages and singers acting and a libretto if the music is sufficient? Would you enjoy a Wagner opera if there were no visuals at all (why are they there then?) or if the singers sang blah blah blah?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Kreisler jr said:


> It is also simply not true that there was nothing (or only very little) extra-musical in Bach.
> If there are voices, it is obviously a differences if the text is "A mighty fortress is our Lord" or "Miserere mei, Domine" or "The coffee tastes sweet like kisses".
> And if there is no text, there are rhetorical figures in the music, often influences from both dances (all the suite movements are dances) or typical vocal forms, even actual chorale melodies (not only in the organ pieces based on chorales). (I am not denying that there is "absolute" abstract music in the baroque, but it is not the "standard")
> 
> There are no visuals, but otherwise most baroque music and this holds for a lot of other music has extra-musical content, allusions, influences. The instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart (and some contemporaries, although instrumental programme music was already popular, e.g. the titles symphonies by Dittersdorf) might be among the "purest" examples of "absolute" music and even there are obviously influences by vocal music (cf. e.g. the theme in K 551,i that is literally taken from an aria, does clearly sound like a buffonesque aria and also musically has the typical feature of a half bar of accompaniment before the "voice" sets in (shared by the very beginning of K 550 which has been identified as a type "aria agitata", like Cherubinos "Non so piu cosa son cosa faccio").
> 
> In the case of Beethoven early commentators came up with stories and poetic images despite the music usually having no titles/programmes because they found it so irrestibly evocative of extramusical content.
> Sure, there are often "projections" of such content and pretty silly ones, but most music in the history of European music was text-based and a lot of instrumental music was strongly influenced by vocal music. This goes down so deep that in many languages "parts" are called "voices", groups of instruments "choirs" and they are named after the types of singing voices etc.


I did not say there is nothing extra-musical in Bach's oeuvre. I was referring specifically to a Bach fugue where voices are used as another instrument in the fugal texture since that was Wooduck's example. I was thinking of the Kyrie from the B minor mass. But yes, there are words in it so my statement was not entirely correct. I don't care what the words say, though, to me the voices are just another instrument.

Also, it's not a coincidence that what I love about Bach is his keyboard music and instrumental music, not so much his vocal works, although the beauty of works like the B minor mass or St. Matthew passion are irresistible even without( or despite) the use of words.


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I like my music to have interesting rhythms, melodies and some sort of musical development that doesn't take hours to decipher. I get that it takes time to appreciate a 4-hour opera and that understanding the overall structure will add to the appreciating of the music but if the parts comprising the overall structure are dull, how do I make myself sit though 4 hours to understand something that bores me for the most part?


If music isn't interesting to you, it isn't interesting _to you._ "Interesting" is not an intrinsic property of rhythms and melodies. It all depends on what we expect of them and what we like. Some people think musical minimalism is interesting. I don't. But I never found the first thirty minutes of _Parsifal_ uninteresting. I find it arresting and evocative. This is partly because of the immediate sound of it and the subtle moods it conveys, and partly because, having heard the whole opera, I hear the opening scene in context. The harmonies and motifs Wagner is introducing at the outset are fundamental to the opera's huge structure and meaning.



> Again, what I find unmusical is the presence of the plot and visuals.


Well they aren't music, that's for sure.



> Why are there elaborate stages and singers acting and a libretto if the music is sufficient?


Sufficient for what? It's an opera. That's what an opera consists of.



> Would you enjoy a Wagner opera if there were no visuals at all (why are they there then?) or if the singers sang blah blah blah?


Actually, yes. I find a tremendous amount of enjoyable music in Wagner's, and other people's, operas.
That doesn't mean that every moment is equally interesting, or that knowing the story doesn't add to my pleasure. Music, as an expressive medium, is nonspecific, and plot and dialogue do make the music more specific for us. But much operatic music can be heard as powerfully expressive even if we don't know exactly what its dramatic meaning is in the opera. Wagner, in particular, is uncanny in his ability to evoke moods, atmospheres, visual impressions, and emotional states of amazing specificity. I do understand, though, that this aspect of music is not equally valued by everyone. But beyond the immediate expressive quality of individual passages and effects, Wagner's building of large-scale structures - whole scenes and even whole acts - by means of motivic deployment, tonal relationships, and harmonic and orchestral color, is magnificently impressive. And this is a _musical_ achievement, an achievement of a most exceptional kind. But, of course, if the sound of the music doesn't interest us, we won't stick around to discover the full scope of Wagner's command of his musical resources.


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## Clairvoyance Enough

Woodduck said:


> It goes a little far, though, to say that "the score would be littered with choppy phrases and awkwardly meandering sequences of melody, amounting basically to abandoned instructions for the delivery of lines." To that I would say two things:
> 
> 2.) "Choppy phrases" are not necessarily musically bad, and "awkwardly meandering sequences of melody" and "instructions for the delivery of lines" are not descriptions that match my experience of the vocal writing of, say, the opening scenes of _Tristan_ or _Gotterdammerung._ Wagner's vocal writing is exceedingly varied, but it is always a musically integral part of a larger musical design and is, even when most fragmentary and when heard in isolation, full of harmonic implications.


I mostly agree and aspire to one day actually experience Wagner in this way more than I actually do. But I did not mean to imply that Wagner's vocal writing _as a whole_ would become choppy and meandering as pure music, especially not clear musical set-pieces like the openings of Tristan or Gotterdammerung. I was referring more to a scene like Siegmund's explanation of his backstory to Hunding. On a re-listen, there is more musical substance and emotion in it than I remembered, but it is still a sort of "talking" scene (fair to say it's somewhat of a short break in the beefier musical action?) whose instrumental transcription I wouldn't play for someone like TwoFlutesOneTrumpet if I were trying to convert them.

If someone is in love with the rigorously and exclusively musical music of pure music and is trying to perceive Wagner in the same way with no knowledge of the libretto, then even the smallest expository lines like "Oh wait, I forgot my book," or "Of course I can turn into a toad!" will likely strike them as frustrating musical fat, and yet, as you pointed out, they are an inextricable part of the fabric. My own personal opinion has always been that paying no attention to the words and just listening to opera as pure music makes absolutely no sense in the first place, at least not to people like me who can't enjoy it that way, so my dog is not in this fight.


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## Enthusiast

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> I think some perceive it as "less musical" because it does not work for them when they just listen and pay no attention to the meaning of the words at all. I've tried to asborb Verdi's Falstaff as pure music many times, but, not knowing the words, a lot of the "music" which is not an explicit aria becomes meaningless, choppy, non-sense sequences of notes because it is not meant to be heard as an aria, but as words being exchanged in a conversation. They are serving a storytelling purpose as well as a musical purpose, and that's not a bad thing at all. I think it's a misunderstanding that anyone in this thread was saying that it is.


Yes, I have found Verdi most difficult to enjoy as pure music and only cracked it relatively recently. I think the time spans of opera are longer than most other forms of music and making sense as music in my head of an opera means listening to bigger spans that I would with, say, even Bruckner's 8th. So I don't focus on it very much until a whole act is somewhat familiar. You feel the dramatic sweep as a form of structure of a very long piece of music.


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## amfortas

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Again, what I find unmusical is the presence of the plot and visuals. Why are there elaborate stages and singers acting and a libretto if the music is sufficient? Would you enjoy a Wagner opera if there were no visuals at all (why are they there then?) or if the singers sang blah blah blah?


I, like many people, enjoy Wagner's operas with no visuals at all. If I didn't, I'd have wasted a lot of money on CDs!

And some, I would imagine, go even further and enjoy listening to his operas without knowing the story or speaking any "blah blah blah" German. Though I have to wonder why they would limit themselves that way.


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## RogerWaters

Woodduck said:


> If music isn't interesting to you, it isn't interesting _to you._ "Interesting" is not an intrinsic property of rhythms and melodies. It all depends on what we expect of them and what we like.


I agree with you but I seem to remember you asserting in the objective vs subjective debates that greatness and other such qualities are _in_ the music...


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## hammeredklavier

Barbebleu said:


> Ohohohohoh. Haha!


You mean "O!hojotohoh! Haha!"


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## RogerWaters

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> In a Bach fugue, all the elements are musical, even when there are voices, the voices are there as another instrument. In a Wagner opera, there are non-musical aspects that contribute to the overall structure and impact of the work. *I find this to be self-evident and don't understand the resistance to acknowledge this self-evident truth*. Words are not music. Visuals are not music. These are extra-musical elements that Wagner infused into his work...


I suspect, although I might be wrong, that it's difficult to get agreement on this point for vaguely 'Platonic' reasons that might well be implicit and not overtly entertained: Opera lovers might not like to admit that their enjoyment rests on less abstract artistic properties: vocals (in common with pop and rock), relatively simple emotional cues, and a story.

I'm not justifying this criteria, as, if we're pushing it to its limits, the most 'pure' form of expression would be mathematics - Hesse's Glass Bead Game.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> If music isn't interesting to you, it isn't interesting _to you._ "Interesting" is not an intrinsic property of rhythms and melodies. It all depends on what we expect of them and what we like


I chose "interesting" purposely to emphasize the subjective nature of music experience. But I can elaborate and say that if a composer needs hours to make his/her music interesting, that is not my kind of music. I do expect interesting (to me) music to not rely on plot or other extra-musical elements and to have rhythmic, harmonic and melodic elements that hold my attention. My biggest issue with appreciating Wagner's operas is that I find these largely lacking at the scale that I'm used to. And I find the preponderance of singing in a language that I find ill-suited (harsh-sounding) for music an extra deterrent to my enjoyment. Maybe one day I'll get over these obstacles and see what others see in Wagner. Today, though, it seems like climbing Everest.


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## Couchie

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I chose "interesting" purposely to emphasize the subjective nature of music experience. But I can elaborate and say that if a composer needs hours to make his/her music interesting, that is not my kind of music. I do expect interesting (to me) music to not rely on plot or other extra-musical elements and to have rhythmic, harmonic and melodic elements that hold my attention. My biggest issue with appreciating Wagner's operas is that I find these largely lacking at the scale that I'm used to. And I find the preponderance of singing in a language that I find ill-suited (harsh-sounding) for music an extra deterrent to my enjoyment. Maybe one day I'll get over these obstacles and see what others see in Wagner. Today, though, it seems like climbing Everest.


To listen to Wagner *is* to climb Mount Everest, there's Puccini for those who prefer day hikes (stealing this from Wooduck ).


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Couchie said:


> To listen to Wagner *is* to climb Mount Everest, there's Puccini for those who prefer day hikes (stealing this from Wooduck ).


I'll stick to the city for now then, as neither the mountains nor the day hikes have scenery that's alluring


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## Woodduck

RogerWaters said:


> I agree with you but I seem to remember you asserting in the objective vs subjective debates that greatness and other such qualities are _in_ the music...


No, I was continually assaulted by people who accused me of accepting their definition of "in." I devoted some time and effort to explaining what it actually means to say that music can justifiably be considered better or worse - and in some cases great - but the arguments were obviously too alien, subtle and complex for the kinds of minds that enjoy endless, repetitive theoretical outgassing. Eventually I gave up and retreated to the opera forum, where most people simply enjoy the works of composers whose greatness is unavoidably perceptible to them.

"Interesting," in any case, is not epistemically in the same category as "great." What is interesting, and one's reasons for finding it interesting, are _entirely_ an individual matter.


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## RogerWaters

Woodduck said:


> No, I was continually assaulted by people who accused me of accepting their definition of "in." I devoted some time and effort to explaining what it actually means to say that music can justifiably be considered better or worse - and in some cases great - but the arguments were obviously too alien, subtle and complex for the kinds of minds that enjoy endless, repetitive theoretical outgassing. Eventually I gave up and retreated to the opera forum, where most people simply enjoy the works of composers whose greatness is unavoidably perceptible to them.
> 
> "Interesting," in any case, is not epistemically in the same category as "great." What is interesting, and one's reasons for finding it interesting, are _entirely_ an individual matter.


I guess, in the sense that there is (from what I remember of your 'objectivist' criteria) something great about Madonna (in that she has hooked millions of people over many years - tapped into some part of 'human nature' you might say) without this requiring everyone to find her interesting.

But if we're going with a more subjective understanding of greatness (which I cannot but be forced into accepting if the consequence of an objectivist definition is that Madonna is 'great'), nothing that doesn't hold my interest is great.


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## Woodduck

RogerWaters said:


> I guess, in the sense that there is (from what I remember of your 'objectivist' criteria) something great about Madonna (in that she has hooked millions of people over many years - tapped into some part of 'human nature' you might say) without this requiring everyone to find her interesting.
> 
> But if we're going with a more subjective understanding of greatness (which I cannot but be forced into accepting if the consequence of an objectivist definition is that Madonna is 'great'), nothing that doesn't hold my interest is great.


As people rather different from me like to say, "What-EV-vah!"


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## hammeredklavier

amfortas said:


> I, like many people, enjoy Wagner's operas with no visuals at all. If I didn't, I'd have wasted a lot of money on CDs!


"There is a well-known anecdote about Anton Bruckner at the opera attending a performance of Tristan und Isolde where he drew the curtain of his box because he did not want to be distracted from the impact of the music by having to see what was happening on stage. And even Wagner himself - who famously invented the invisible orchestra for his Bayreuth festival hall - at one point said that he should have invented the invisible stage as well. He said so in despair about the poor staging in the first production of Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876. Some justification for ignoring the stage dimension lies in the fact that today - despite the extensive online availability of opera productions - concert performances have become more and more popular, even at large opera houses, and the popularity of CDs (and more recently again of LPs) is equally undisputed. I am aware that leaving out the stage dimension - and the performance aspect of theatrical realizations in general - implies an essential restriction in discussing operas. Yet considering that the overall theme addressed in the present volume is significant absence on the level of the signifiers, such a restriction seems in place. After all, the fundamental signifiers of operas, which establish the dramatic context of the works, are found in the scores, and they overwhelmingly appear in the words of the libretto and the music for the voices and the orchestra."
< Meaningful Absence Across Arts and Media The Significance of Missing Signifiers | Nassim Balestrini, Walter Bernhart, Werner Wolf | P. 174 >


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> But for many people, perhaps most, _Parsifal_ is not the place to begin with Wagner. Taking his operas in their chronological sequence is actually not a bad idea, since he developed his unique methods slowly and steadily.


I tried The Flying Dutchman yesterday. My reaction to it was much more positive than to Parsifal. We'll see, there is some promise there. I still skipped a couple of less interesting pieces and the sound of German singing is still somewhat of an irritant but there were enjoyable moments.


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I tried The Flying Dutchman yesterday. My reaction to it was much more positive than to Parsifal. We'll see, there is some promise there. I still skipped a couple of less interesting pieces and the sound of German singing is still somewhat of an irritant but there were enjoyable moments.


:clap::clap::clap: ..........................


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## Barbebleu

There’s quite a lot of German singing in Wagner as I recall. That may be problematic! Prepare to be somewhat irritated.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Barbebleu said:


> There's quite a lot of German singing in Wagner as I recall. That may be problematic! Prepare to be somewhat irritated.


I'll try a anti-German irritation cream, see if it helps


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## Coach G

German can be a beautiful and musical language as has been demonstrated by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and many others, especially when handled by someone by the likes of the late Dietrich Fischer-Diskau whose technique is rich and warm. German is full of consonants which makes it sound a bit like it comes from the throat as opposed to French which seems to come from the nose, or Italian which is full of vowels and seems to come from the daiphragm. I imagine that English, being a Germanic language, may sound similar to German when heard by someone who doesn't speak English, but here again, someone like Benjamin Britten or Samuel Barber who both composed wonderful, lyrical, music for the voice and the English language would also reveal English to be quite beautiful; as well as Frank Sinatra whose phrasing would also demonstrate how beautiful English can be in popular music. Russian is actually very beautiful but seems to fit the lower voices, the bass singers who can handle Boris Godunov or the bass singers who serve as the foundation to Rachmaninoff's wonderful _Vespers/All Night Vigil_.

I think we tend to identify German as an ugly language because we all grew up watching those old newsreels of Hitler yelling his vitriol in German from the podium; and the World War II movies with the German officers barking orders. This has has left a stain on the German language. I'm not well-versed enough in opera or in the mechanics of music to explain it properly but I think that with Wagner there's a style of singing that is more urgent, and therefore, may sound more rough and less polished and beautiful than, say, Schubert's _Eventide_;, or Mahler's _Song of the Wayfarer_, or Richard Strauss' _Four Last Songs_. In contrast, parts of Wagner almost sound like shouting or moaning, maybe because it is a drama.

In this sense, I don't think one can approach Wagner using Mozart, Rossini, or Verdi, as your frame of reference. In this sense I think Wagner was after a style of singing that approximates human speech patterns, and a passion that is raw.

This is not to say that Wagner couldn't be melodic and lyrical when he wanted to:


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Coach G said:


> German can be a beautiful and musical language


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## Couchie

The people who think German is a harsh language have clearly never been in a busy Cantonese restaurant. :lol:


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## annaw

Coach G said:


> I'm not well-versed enough in opera or in the mechanics of music to explain it properly but I think that with Wagner there's a style of singing that is more urgent, and therefore, may sound more rough and less polished and beautiful than, say, Schubert's _Eventide_;, or Mahler's _Song of the Wayfarer_, or Richard Strauss' _Four Last Songs_. In contrast, parts of Wagner almost sound like shouting or moaning, maybe because it is a drama.
> 
> In this sense, I don't think one can approach Wagner using Mozart, Rossini, or Verdi, as your frame of reference. In this sense I think Wagner was after a style of singing that approximates human speech patterns, and a passion that is raw.


I personally absolutely adore German. Although I haven't learnt German, I feel it has a certain rhythm, which makes it so satisfying to listen to.

When it comes to Wagner then I think that there has been a constant trend recently to sing Wagner without proper legato or at least that's the stereotype Wagner singing has. However, I think lots of Wagner can sound very musical if it's sung with legato as it used to be, with words musically connected and not always distinctly separated as in usual speech. Of course it will always be more forceful than the Italian opera, but that's probably inevitable. If one compares an old-school singer like Hotter who was famous for his legato (



) to a more recent bass-baritone, such as Tomlinson (



) then I think the difference is clearly heard. James Morris is probably one exception, being a relatively contemporary singer with emphasis on legato. But then he has sung extensively both German and legato-heavy Italian repertoire and was also coached by Hotter himself.

With legato, Wagner's music has potential to sound very musical (although probably never as traditionally musical as, say, an average Verdi aria). Some passages, such as Wotan's monologue in _Die Walküre_ Act II can sound very speech-like but I don't think Wagner intended his music to be like _sprechgesang_.


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## RogerWaters

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


>


This must surely win the internet?


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## amfortas

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


>


You can't argue with carefully controlled scientific experiments.


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## hammeredklavier

Couchie said:


> The people who think German is a harsh language have clearly never been in a busy Cantonese restaurant. :lol:


Now we know; not only are you Green, you're racist.


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## Esterhazy

RogerWaters said:


> By way of background, at the time as I love Richard Wagner more, I also like him less. As I am coming to value selections of his oeuvre more and more I am, at the same time, becoming clearer that his works, taken as wholes, are too long with too much 'filler' for me with too much focus on narrative and not enough on music (at least, music with rhythmic continuity and development).
> 
> This got me thinking about why Wagner supporters often love his music so... unconditionally.
> 
> Having some awareness of selectionist reasoning in evolution biology, I realised that the length of Wagner's musical dramas probably _selects for_ a certain kind of fan.
> 
> Only those people who love Wagner enough to sit through 4 hours of dramatics are 'Wagnerites'.
> 
> Of course, this only applies to some degree. There are no doubt plenty of 'conditional fans' (including myself) who only love excerpts of the Ring, Tristan etc.
> 
> Are you an unconditional or conditional fan of Wagner?


Wagner was the champion of German Romanticism and art in the 19th century. He was the triumphant model of musical drama and orchestral expressionism that Europe (and maybe the world at that point) culminated with. His music might be hard to appreciate for many, but that is because those ears need training and grounding in German expressionism.


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## Itullian

Have a listen to Walther's Prize Song.
The German sounds great to me.

And "in fernem land" in Lohengrin

Or the liebestod.

There are other examples of beauty.

Liten to he Magic Flute. Gorgeous


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## Couchie

hammeredklavier said:


> Now we know; not only are you Green, you're racist.


If I was racist, why would I frequent these restaurants in Richmond, BC? 

We can discuss how pleasant a language sounds to us while having nothing to do with race. My least favorite language is actually French, but I doubt you would pull the racism card on me for that, as you haven't for the several people commenting on the harshness of German. Stop senseless virtue signalling.


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## mossyembankment

Couchie said:


> If I was racist, why would I frequent these restaurants in Richmond, BC?
> 
> Interesting that you single out calling Cantonese as harsh is racist, but not German? Why is that?


In my opinion both Cantonese and German could both reasonably be called harsh. They could also both reasonably be called beautiful languages (I have heard lots of both and hold this opinion). It's pretty subjective. I think you're fine.


----------



## Kreisler jr

Couchie said:


> My least favorite language is actually French, but I doubt you would pull the racism card on me for that, as you haven't for the several people commenting on the harshness of German. Stop senseless virtue signalling.


My problem with sung French is the nasals and that so many syllables that are usually swallowed turn up again "fully" but with dull or nasal vowels. I don't share the swooning over spoken French either but it is o.k. for "popular singing". For classical singing it does sound doubly artificial (and the nasals just sound bad...) 
As German is the second most important language in classical music and opera, I'd say people should better get used to it. Admittedly, Wagner is a special case as he uses often very mannered and artificial language, especially in the Ring because he wanted to allude to archaic and medieval poetry (but this does not affect the sound that much and people hardly knowing the language probably will not recognize).


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## Enthusiast

For those who feel that Wagner is not for them because of the language, there are versions in other languages. Goodall recorded his Ring in English.


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## amfortas

Enthusiast said:


> For those who feel that Wagner is not for them because of the language, there are versions in other languages. Goodall recorded his Ring in English.


Not saying his tempi are slow or anything, but I believe he's still recording it as we speak.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Enthusiast said:


> For those who feel that Wagner is not for them because of the language, there are versions in other languages. Goodall recorded his Ring in English.


I'll check it out, it's available on Spotify.


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## Barbebleu

amfortas said:


> Not saying his tempi are slow or anything.


What are you saying then?:lol:


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## amfortas

Barbebleu said:


> What are you saying then?:lol:


Um . . . the rest of the world is fast?


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## Andrew Kenneth

Enthusiast said:


> For those who feel that Wagner is not for them because of the language, there are versions in other languages. Goodall recorded his Ring in English.


There are also recordings of Wagner opera's sung in italian.

- Flying Dutchman - Francesco Molinari-Pradelli (1955) on Walhall
- Lohengrin - Ferdinand Leitner (1959) on Orfeo
- Meistersinger - Lovro Von Matacic (1962) on Datum (and Orfeo)
- Parsifal - Vittorio Gui (1950) on Warner Classics (w/ Maria Callas)

and a 1949 Lohengrin sung in russian conducted by Samuil Samosud (on Walhall)

Wagner in french can be heard on "bleeding chunks" cd's of singers Germaine Lubin (on Archipel) and Georges Thill (on Malibran)

Malibran also released an excellent french Lohengrin "bleeding chunks" cd.

And then there's Opera Monte-Carlo's 2017 french language staging of the Paris version of Tannhäuser. (This version of Tannhäuser premiered in Paris in 1861 in french) =>


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Apparently there are 3 versions of Tannhauser: Dresden, Paris and Vienna. I'm thinking the original, Dresden 1845 version is best for a newbie. Thoughts?


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Apparently there are 3 versions of Tannhauser: Dresden, Paris and Vienna. I'm thinking the original, Dresden 1845 version is best for a newbie. Thoughts?


Go for Paris and don't look back. The orgiastic ballet sequence and the sensual, beguiling new music Wagner wrote for Venus are far more potent than what they replace. By the time of the Paris production Wagner had already composed _Lohengrin,_ half of the _Ring_ and _Tristan,_ and he was able to turn his tepid Venusberg into a hothouse that makes Tannhauser's craving for a little fresh air and everyday boredom entirely understandable. Wagner said he'd have liked to revise other parts of the opera too, but he never got around to it. If you want to hear the original ending of the overture, with its recap of the pilgrim's chorus tune, you can always listen to it separately.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Woodduck said:


> Go for Paris and don't look back. The orgiastic ballet sequence and the sensual, beguiling new music Wagner wrote for Venus are far more potent than what they replace. By the time of the Paris production Wagner had already composed _Lohengrin,_ half of the _Ring_ and _Tristan,_ and he was able to turn his tepid Venusberg into a hothouse that makes Tannhauser's craving for a little fresh air and everyday boredom entirely understandable. Wagner said he'd have liked to revise other parts of the opera too, but he never got around to it. If you want to hear the original ending of the overture, with its recap of the pilgrim's chorus tune, you can always listen to it separately.


Thanks. I'll try the 1971 Solti recording, available on Spotify.


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## Woodduck

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Thanks. I'll try the 1971 Solti recording, available on Spotify.


Good choice. ................


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## Couchie

Unpopular opinion, but I love Act 2 of Tannhauser and it's some of Wagner's finest work. I wouldn't revise a thing.


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## EdwardBast

Woodduck said:


> Lewis's friend H. R. Tolkien didn't like to talk about his ring's obvious debt to Wagner's


I've seen this sort of statement a number of times. You're aware that Tolkien was primarily a philologist and literary scholar who read Old English, Old Norse, Medieval Welsh, Finish and other languages and that he knew and translated the sources on which Wagner based his operas in the original languages, right? Given that Tolkien surely knew this mythology more thoroughly than Wagner and that he had spent a career with the primary sources, I'm wondering why you think he owed a debt to Wagner.


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## WildThing

EdwardBast said:


> I've seen this sort of statement a number of times. You're aware that Tolkien was primarily a philologist and literary scholar who read Old English, Old Norse, Medieval Welsh, Finish and other languages and that he knew and translated the sources on which Wagner based his operas in the original languages, right? Given that Tolkien surely knew this mythology more thoroughly than Wagner and that he had spent a career with the primary sources, I'm wondering why you think he owed a debt to Wagner.


James McGregor has written up a comparative study that answers yours question.

Two rings to rule them all: a comparative study of Tolkien and Wagner


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## EdwardBast

WildThing said:


> James McGregor has written up a comparative study that answers yours question.
> 
> Two rings to rule them all: a comparative study of Tolkien and Wagner


McGregor does not answer my questions. That would require comparing Tolkien and Wagner in relation to the mythology on which they both drew, which is only obliquely addressed in the essay. But I'll note this from McGregor's conclusions:

"When it comes to spiritual authenticity to the sources, Tolkien's professional authority outweighs Wagner's gifted amateurism and makes his version, in that sense, the 'truer' of the two."

Tolkien's version, it should also be noted, is a far more coherent narrative than Wagner's.

McGregor cites and quotes Arthur Morgan's "Medieval, Victorian and Modern, Tolkien, Wagner, and the Ring" (1992) in enumerating the supposed parallels between Tolkien's and Wagner's ring and other parallels. McGregor claims that Morgan "pinpoints Alberich's curse in Das Rheingold as encapsulating, for the first time, 'all the major features of Tolkien's Ring' and [that he] proceeds to summarize them." McGregor, however, fails to note Morgan's several errors in drawing parallels.

Morgan writes: "There is one Ring only" - In Tolkien there are nineteen others.
"The Ring came by a curse, which is now transferred" - Tolkien's does not come by a curse.
"It confers unlimited power on its possessor." This is not true of the One Ring in Tolkien.
"It will gradually consume its possessor with anxiety" Also not true of Tolkien's Ring. It consumes to be sure, but "anxiety" in Morgan's sense is not an issue. Tolkien's One Ring is farther from the original mythological sources than Wagner's and owes nothing to Wagner's reading.

Morgan also claims that Tolkien "is certainly influenced by the composer's very modern 'association of the Ring with machinery,' exemplified by the parallel images of Nibelheim and Isengard." Apparently Morgan doesn't know his Tolkien very well, since environmentalism and a disdain for the industrial ravaging of nature is a theme in all of Tolkien's fiction, and Isengard has nothing to do with the Ring.

So, this article supports my view that Tolkien knew the original mythology more thoroughly than Wagner. Whether Tolkien was actively correcting Wagner or not is an interesting point. But in thinking about it one should consider the possibility that Tolkien was just attempting to write a more aesthetically satisfying and coherent mythology than he found in Old Norse and Icelandic sources. Compare Tolkien's creation myth at the beginning of the Silmarillion with Genesis and you'll see that his attempts to "improve on" existing mythology are pretty much what he was about.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> I've seen this sort of statement a number of times. You're aware that Tolkien was primarily a philologist and literary scholar who read Old English, Old Norse, Medieval Welsh, Finish and other languages and that he knew and translated the sources on which Wagner based his operas in the original languages, right? Given that Tolkien surely knew this mythology more thoroughly than Wagner and that he had spent a career with the primary sources, I'm wondering why you think he owed a debt to Wagner.
> 
> Tolkien's One Ring is farther from the original mythological sources than Wagner's and owes nothing to Wagner's reading.


Wagner's conception of the ring is actually quite different from that in the myths. His primary source for the central object and symbol in his story is the dwarf Andvari and his magic ring, which enables him to acquire great wealth and which is stolen from him by Loki. In the Eddas, Andvari does not seek power over others, his ring is not a creation or instrument of evil, and it confers no power beyond the acquisition of wealth. But Wagner's ring - like Tolkien's - confers power over others, it was forged out of malign motives, and its power can be ended only if it is returned to its source - in Wagner's case, the depths of the Rhine, and in Tolkien's, the fires of Mount Doom.

I don't know what Tolkien cited as his sources for his conception of his ring, and I don't seem able to find that information. But the above resemblances seem quite fundamental, and if they were not suggested by Wagner's conception, I'd be interested in knowing how Tolkien arrived at them.


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## EdwardBast

Woodduck said:


> I don't know what Tolkien cited as his sources for his conception of his ring, and I don't seem able to find that information. But the above resemblances seem quite fundamental, and if they were not suggested by Wagner's conception, I'd be interested in knowing how Tolkien arrived at them.


He arrived at them by reading all of the original mythological sources Wagner drew on, among others, in their original languages. Essentially, he did what Wagner did, but more thoroughly and without relying on secondary sources and translations - then he significantly revamped the mythology to create his own world and history. He didn't need Wagner for any of that and certainly not for inspiration. What motivated Tolkien to create the world of the Ring was his desire for a fictional world in which several languages he had invented (based on Old English, Old Norse, and Old Welsh) could be spoken.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Barbebleu said:


> I take it you're referring to Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi? And not, heaven forfend, Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin! :lol:


So I listened to Rienzi last night and quite liked it. I only listened to the Overture and Act 1 but what I heard was pretty attractive music (mostly) to my ears.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> He arrived at them by reading all of the original mythological sources Wagner drew on, among others, in their original languages. Essentially, he did what Wagner did, but more thoroughly and without relying on secondary sources and translations - then he significantly revamped the mythology to create his own world and history. He didn't need Wagner for any of that and certainly not for inspiration. What motivated Tolkien to create the world of the Ring was his desire for a fictional world in which several languages he had invented (based on Old English, Old Norse, and Old Welsh) could be spoken.


That doesn't answer my question specifically. Did Tolkien arrive independently at a conception of the ring that just happened to contain certain basic traits which Wagner seems not to have derived from the mythical sources? We know what Wagner's sources for his ring were, and how his concept of the ring's origin, powers and destiny differ from what we find in those sources. What were Tolkien's sources for his own concept, and how did his ring end up resembling Wagner's as closely as it did? Coincidences are certainly possible, but Wagner's _Ring_ was well-known to Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic who considered his own work profoundly Christian and who disliked Wagner enough to want to downplay any suggestion of influence. I doubt we can prove a connection one way or the other, but it's far from true that the only resemblance between the two authors' rings is that "both rings are round." That Tolkien made that very claim naturally arouses suspicion. He'd be neither the first nor the last Christian to protest the "purity" of his gospel and try to keep his distance from "heathen" influences. But that raises another interesting question, which those who know Tolkien better than I do might be able to address: if Tolkien thought he was being more respectful of his mythical sources than Wagner was, what made him think that using them to advance a specifically Christian world view was consistent with that faithfulness? And what did he object to in Wagner's treatment ?


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## EdwardBast

Woodduck said:


> That doesn't answer my question specifically. Did Tolkien arrive independently at a conception of the ring that just happened to contain certain basic traits which Wagner seems not to have derived from the mythical sources? We know what Wagner's sources for his ring were, and how his concept of the ring's origin, powers and destiny differ from what we find in those sources. What were Tolkien's sources for his own concept, and how did his ring end up resembling Wagner's as closely as it did? Coincidences are certainly possible, but Wagner's _Ring_ was well-known to Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic who considered his own work profoundly Christian and who disliked Wagner enough to want to downplay any suggestion of influence. I doubt we can prove a connection one way or the other, but it's far from true that the only resemblance between the two authors' rings is that "both rings are round." That Tolkien made that very claim naturally arouses suspicion. He'd be neither the first nor the last Christian to protest the "purity" of his gospel and try to keep his distance from "heathen" influences. But that raises another interesting question, which those who know Tolkien better than I do might be able to address: if Tolkien thought he was being more respectful of his mythical sources than Wagner was, what made him think that using them to advance a specifically Christian world view was consistent with that faithfulness? And what did he object to in Wagner's treatment ?


I'd guess Tolkien's Ring derives in part from the same sources as Wagner's, which were in the center of his literary purview. But the other primary and more important source was Tolkien's own mythology. Tolkien had already invented the whole world of The Lord of the Rings, including thousands of years of history, the mythologies and languages of several cultures, and the histories of numerous magical and powerful agents, long before he wrote the novels. The Silmarillion, for example, recounts the saga and fates of three such powerful agents, magical jewels coveted by an evil entity and retrieved (one of them, anyway) by a mortal hero and his immortal love. There are numerous other fantastical agents in his histories and Tolkien drew on their stories and his treatment of them when he conceived the Ring. Tolkien was an inventor of mythologies and languages. The Ring, in the many ways it and it's powers and history depart from the old Norse sagas, was just another item in the sui generis mythology Tolkien generated for most of his life.


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## Kreisler jr

I think one Wagnerian thing that goes considerably beyond typical norse mythology (at least beyond the youth versions of these stories usually based on the medieval "Nibelungenlied" I read as a kid) in upgrading the Ring to a symbol of absolute corrupting power. At least in the usual medievalized version that obviously also lacks the Gods, the ring is secondary and the Tarnhelm, Siegfried's sword etc. considerably more important. IIRC the One Ring of Power also started like an accidentally found gimmick in Bilbo's story before it was later upgraded into the larger framework. That the Ring is so corrupting that it cannot really be used in good faith seems also common to Tolkien and Wagner.


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## EdwardBast

Kreisler jr said:


> I think one Wagnerian thing that goes considerably beyond typical norse mythology (at least beyond the youth versions of these stories usually based on the medieval "Nibelungenlied" I read as a kid) in upgrading the Ring to a symbol of absolute corrupting power. At least in the usual medievalized version that obviously also lacks the Gods, the ring is secondary and the Tarnhelm, Siegfried's sword etc. considerably more important. *IIRC the One Ring of Power also started like an accidentally found gimmick in Bilbo's story before it was later upgraded into the larger framework. That the Ring is so corrupting that it cannot really be used in good faith seems also common to Tolkien and Wagner.*


You haven't taken into account that, fictionally speaking, _The Hobbit_ was written by Bilbo Baggins, a naive narrator who had no idea what he had when he found the Ring. This doesn't mean Tolkien didn't know (or suspect) its true nature and significance, especially given that thousands of years of the history of which the Ring is a part had already been committed to paper. And Tolkien's ring was in fact used "in good faith" a number of times by three different hobbits. Unlike Wagner's ring, the corrupting effect of Tolkien's One Ring was not absolute and was mitigated by the good intentions and character of those who used it.


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## Phil loves classical

I recall reading about a ring that turns the wearer of the ring invisible in Plato's Republic. It was more an illustration of morality.

https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/the-ring-of-gyges-is-justice-always-self-interested-f67b4689f742


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Have really been enjoying The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser and to a lesser degree Rienzi. There are dull moments but there is also a lot of extremely enjoyable music.

Then I tried Tristan and Isolde. I haven't been this bored since I watched the paint on my wall dry. I liked the prelude to Act 1 and very little else in Act 1. I couldn't muster the motivation to listen to Act 2. There is some exciting music but it is mostly in the background or in between what I find utterly dull singing. I don't get what Wagner is trying to do musically with it. I had high expectations as many rate this Wagner's best opera. Similar reaction to Parsifal. So it seems that for me, for now at least, it's early Wagner. I have plans for the Ring next; we'll see how it fares.


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## EdwardBast

^ ^ ^ Hearing T & I live helps. And if you do the Ring, I'd advise finding a good performance on DVD.


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## hammeredklavier

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Have really been enjoying The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser and to a lesser degree Rienzi. There are dull moments but there is also a lot of extremely enjoyable music.


How do you feel about a lot of other classical vocal music (other than Wagner) now?


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## Itullian

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Have really been enjoying The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser and to a lesser degree Rienzi. There are dull moments but there is also a lot of extremely enjoyable music.
> 
> Then I tried Tristan and Isolde. I haven't been this bored since I watched the paint on my wall dry. I liked the prelude to Act 1 and very little else in Act 1. I couldn't muster the motivation to listen to Act 2. There is some exciting music but it is mostly in the background or in between what I find utterly dull singing. I don't get what Wagner is trying to do musically with it. I had high expectations as many rate this Wagner's best opera. Similar reaction to Parsifal. So it seems that for me, for now at least, it's early Wagner. I have plans for the Ring next; we'll see how it fares.


Tristan and Parsifal are difficult music dramas to get into.
They are very different from "operas"
It takes some people years before they click.
And for some they never do.
Perhaps try them again at a later date.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

EdwardBast said:


> ^ ^ ^ Hearing T & I live helps. And if you do the Ring, I'd advise finding a good performance on DVD.


Thanks for the suggestion. I don't think I can survive 4 hours of T & I live. Plus, visuals don't appeal to me all that much; I'm in it strictly for the music.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

hammeredklavier said:


> How do you feel about a lot of other classical vocal music (other than Wagner) now?


Besides Wagner's operas, in the last week I listened to Rigoletto and I enjoyed it. I am becoming more receptive to opera in general. I have plans to listen to many of the top operas over the coming months as there appears to be some really great untapped music ripe for my enjoyment. I've heard many of the top operas before (well, highlights of them mostly) and now I'll see how it goes when listening to the whole opera. One thing I've noted so far is that I get the most enjoyment out of them by breaking my listening sessions into smaller chunks, usually an act at a time. The lack of musical development, the kind I'm used to hearing in symphonies, coupled with the usually much longer duration, and the presence of duller moments where the music takes a back stage, make it difficult for me to listen to a whole opera in one sitting.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Itullian said:


> Tristan and Parsifal are difficult music dramas to get into.
> They are very different from "operas"
> It takes some people years before they click.
> And for some they never do.
> Perhaps try them again at a later date.


Great suggestion. I have already mentally queued them for a later time. Perhaps after I've gained more experience listening to the Wagner stuff I like.


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## hammeredklavier

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The lack of musical development, the kind I'm used to hearing in symphonies, coupled with the usually much longer duration, and the presence of duller moments where the music takes a back stage, make it difficult for me to listen to a whole opera in one sitting.


Whatabout Beethoven's 9th? I remember you saying the concluding movement was your least favorite of all Beethoven symphony movements.


hammeredklavier said:


> 16:00~17:55
> 
> 
> 
> this is glorious


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

hammeredklavier said:


> Whatabout Beethoven's 9th? I remember you saying the concluding movement was your least favorite of all Beethoven symphony movements.


Among the least favourite, yes, although by no means does that mean I don't like it. Within it, there are parts that are superb, like the fugal section that starts after the Turkish march part and the final minute is as exciting a finish to a symphony as Beethoven ever wrote. I do like the section you've highlighted, yes, I've always liked it - it's a simple yet beautiful variation on the main theme and I generally prefer choruses to single voices. Even in the parts where the singing predominates, there is something in the background that is interesting (I always focus on the gorgeous woodwinds and pizzicato string accompaniment instead of the voice singing the big tune at the beginning of the movement, for example).


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## Couchie

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Have really been enjoying The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser and to a lesser degree Rienzi. There are dull moments but there is also a lot of extremely enjoyable music.
> 
> Then I tried Tristan and Isolde. I haven't been this bored since I watched the paint on my wall dry. I liked the prelude to Act 1 and very little else in Act 1. I couldn't muster the motivation to listen to Act 2. There is some exciting music but it is mostly in the background or in between what I find utterly dull singing. I don't get what Wagner is trying to do musically with it. I had high expectations as many rate this Wagner's best opera. Similar reaction to Parsifal. So it seems that for me, for now at least, it's early Wagner. I have plans for the Ring next; we'll see how it fares.


I would give Act II of Tristan a try. The music of Act 1 is much more tight and constrained, mirroring the imprisoned natured of the protagonists. When the love potion sets them free, the music becomes much more lush and beautiful. I link below to the 40 minute love duet, which brought even Italian opera composers like Verdi and Puccini to their knees in awe and terror.


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## hammeredklavier

Couchie said:


> I would give Act II of Tristan a try. The music of Act 1 is much more tight and constrained, mirroring the imprisoned natured of the protagonists. When the love potion sets them free, the music becomes much more lush and beautiful. I link below to the 40 minute love duet, which brought even Italian opera composers like Verdi and Puccini to their knees in awe and terror.


In simple terms, "Act 1 is the _foreplay_ for Act II".


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## Barbebleu

Couchie said:


> I would give Act II of Tristan a try. The music of Act 1 is much more tight and constrained, mirroring the imprisoned natured of the protagonists. When the love potion sets them free, the music becomes much more lush and beautiful. I link below to the 40 minute love duet, which brought even Italian opera composers like Verdi and Puccini to their knees in awe and terror.


And Meier's not even a proper soprano! I saw her in 2014 in Berlin in the Harry Kupfer production with Peter Seiffert as Tristan with Barenboim conducting. She was excellent although she did duck the high notes in Act II.


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## hammeredklavier

RogerWaters said:


> not enough on music (at least, music with rhythmic continuity





Aries said:


> Wagner neglected rhythm and melody too much and tried to solve it just with harmonics.


It never occurred to me that way, but apparently, there's also an article written about it. What do you think? I still think it's one of things that makes Wagner unique from what came before.

The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner
Robert Ralph





The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner on JSTOR


Robert Ralph, The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner, The Musical Times, Vol. 54, No. 842 (Apr. 1, 1913), pp. 234-237




www.jstor.org




Wagner's weakness undoubtedly lay in the staleness of his rhythmic formulae. After the stringent measures of the Beethoven symphonies it is small wonder that the critics of Wagner's time objected to the latter's music. To a student of that period, who knew his 'fifth Symphony' well, the prelude to 'Lohengrin' or the 'Venusberg' music, must have seemed as boneless as jellyfish. Doubtless much of the misunderstanding arose from the fact that the audiences of that day were peering for rhythms, and Wagner was giving them harmonies and polyphonies. The reason why Mankind prefers music with a strong rhythm to the other variety, is probably purely physiological. [...]


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## HenryPenfold

hammeredklavier said:


> It never occurred to me that way, but apparently, there's also an article written about it. What do you think? I still think it's one of things that makes Wagner unique from what came before.
> 
> The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner
> Robert Ralph
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner on JSTOR
> 
> 
> Robert Ralph, The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner, The Musical Times, Vol. 54, No. 842 (Apr. 1, 1913), pp. 234-237
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.jstor.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wagner's weakness undoubtedly lay in the staleness of his rhythmic formulae. After the stringent measures of the Beethoven symphonies it is small wonder that the critics of Wagner's time objected to the latter's music. To a student of that period, who knew his 'fifth Symphony' well, the prelude to 'Lohengrin' or the 'Venusberg' music, must have seemed as boneless as jellyfish. Doubtless much of the misunderstanding arose from the fact that the audiences of that day were peering for rhythms, and Wagner was giving them harmonies and polyphonies. The reason why Mankind prefers music with a strong rhythm to the other variety, is probably purely physiological. [...]


The rhythm and melody flow from the harmonics. That's just a glimpse of the indescribable magic of Wagner.....


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## Couchie

hammeredklavier said:


> It never occurred to me that way, but apparently, there's also an article written about it. What do you think? I still think it's one of things that makes Wagner unique from what came before.
> 
> The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner
> Robert Ralph
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner on JSTOR
> 
> 
> Robert Ralph, The Rhythmic Weakness of Wagner, The Musical Times, Vol. 54, No. 842 (Apr. 1, 1913), pp. 234-237
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.jstor.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wagner's weakness undoubtedly lay in the staleness of his rhythmic formulae. After the stringent measures of the Beethoven symphonies it is small wonder that the critics of Wagner's time objected to the latter's music. To a student of that period, who knew his 'fifth Symphony' well, the prelude to 'Lohengrin' or the 'Venusberg' music, must have seemed as boneless as jellyfish. Doubtless much of the misunderstanding arose from the fact that the audiences of that day were peering for rhythms, and Wagner was giving them harmonies and polyphonies. The reason why Mankind prefers music with a strong rhythm to the other variety, is probably purely physiological. [...]


Nietszche said the same thing. It's not a universally true though. Wagner is perfectly rhythmic when he wants to be (Think _Ride of the Valkyries,_ where he relates almost sardonically the cheerfully ignorant boisterousness of the Valkyries in contrast to Wotan's thoughtful monologue in Act II), and most arrhythmic when he wants to achieve a purposeful effect (ie. Act II of _Parsifal_, to disorient the audience and cause them to lose their sense of time. When Act III rolls around, its only been 3 hours, but it might have just as well have been 20 years).


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

A year after I tried and gave up on Tristan and Isolde, I gave it another couple of tries and unfortunately it was no better than the previous attempts to like the music so many consider one of the greatest operas. I like the preludes to the acts well enough but when the singing starts, the music loses me except for the occasional instrumental interjections (is this Tristan's leitmotif that appears in the strings in scene 1 of act 1? - I like the rhythmic energy of that). I don't care for the story so I look for something in the music to catch my attention - and there is absolutely nothing appealing in the singing to me. I just don't get how this music can be considered by many among the greatest operas ever written, or even music in general irrespective of genre. I'm not a huge opera fan, though (I consider it an inferior genre to pure abstract music) and I do not rank a single opera among my top 100 classical works (actually I don't have a top 100 list but I hardly listen to opera so if I were to come up with such a list, I know no opera would make it )

I should add that I enjoy the earlier Wagner operas (The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser), albeit carefully abridged versions of them that Wagner purists would be horrified of.


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## Kreisler jr

The person Tristan does not really have a musical leitmotive. I am not sure which motive you mean. There is the rough mocking song by Kurwenal about Tristan killing Morold and there is the motive I have seen dubbed "happy voyage" that is rather rhythmic (it comes to dominate towards the end of act 1 with the arrival of the ship).
I agree with the above that Wagner is not rhythmically weak but it's subordinate (like everything with him to drama). The fast/Venus section of the Tannhäuser prelude has rhythmic motives, and there is the smithing in Rheingold and Siegfried. An aetheric piece like the Lohengrin prelude would not benefit from sharply etched rhythms.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Kreisler jr said:


> The person Tristan does not really have a musical leitmotive. I am not sure which motive you mean. There is the rough mocking song by Kurwenal about Tristan killing Morold and there is the motive I have seen dubbed "happy voyage" that is rather rhythmic (it comes to dominate towards the end of act 1 with the arrival of the ship).
> I agree with the above that Wagner is not rhythmically weak but it's subordinate (like everything with him to drama). The fast/Venus section of the Tannhäuser prelude has rhythmic motives, and there is the smithing in Rheingold and Siegfried. An aetheric piece like the Lohengrin prelude would not benefit from sharply etched rhythms.


The string motive starting at 13:08


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## Waehnen

Wagner was a genius. Then again, his operas are too long for me. So I concentrate on bits and pieces and have many recordings with only orchestral numbers. Gorgeous!

(I am not an opera fan.)


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## Couchie

I'm not the biggest fan of opera either. I often think of Wagner's music, especially Tristan, as "concertos for voice". Concertos are in fact my favorite musical genre.


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## SanAntone

Vocal music in general has always been my favorite form of Classical music, and opera has occupied a large part of my listening time. But my favored works had been Italian and Mozart. Only last year did I make a break through with Wagner, whose music had been a difficult slog for over 50 years of my trying to find the magic.

But find it I did, and now _The Ring_ and _Tristan_, are among my favorite works. _Parsifal_ is still a closed book to me, and I haven't even listened to the other operas.

Wagner's sound world is huge and complex, as are his narratives. His work brought opera to a new level and scale, some might say too much so. My absolute favorites are still Mozart and Verdi, but I can now at least understand why Wagner is considered great.


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## Waehnen

It happens quite often that I have my vast music library on Random Play. Then there is some great orchestral piece of music with some really nice chromatic string ostinatos, or some really imaginative and most effective orchestration. Quite often the man behind the greatest orchestral innovations happens to be Wagner. Even Strauss falls behind, although he´s the great second.


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## Couchie

SanAntone said:


> Vocal music in general has always been my favorite form of Classical music, and opera has occupied a large part of my listening time. But my favored works had been Italian and Mozart. Only last year did I make a break through with Wagner, whose music had been a difficult slog for over 50 years of my trying to find the magic.
> 
> But find it I did, and now _The Ring_ and _Tristan_, are among my favorite works. _Parsifal_ is still a closed book to me, and I haven't even listened to the other operas.
> 
> Wagner's sound world is huge and complex, as are his narratives. His work brought opera to a new level and scale, some might say too much so. My absolute favorites are still Mozart and Verdi, but I can now at least understand why Wagner is considered great.


You should try Lohengrin, the midway point between early and mature Wagner. It's lighter and more structured like an Italian opera. Even if you don't get past the prelude, just the prelude alone is worth hearing. Tchaikovsky said it was Wagner's best work.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Wagner was obviously a genius and I wish he had devoted some time to writing symphonies (I'm aware of his youth symphonic output but I'm talking about more mature Wagner) instead of focusing almost exclusively on opera.


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## Couchie

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Wagner was obviously a genius and I wish he had devoted some time to writing symphonies (I'm aware of his youth symphonic output but I'm talking about more mature Wagner) instead of focusing almost exclusively on opera.


He was going to after the completion of the Ring cycle, but King Ludwig insisted he write Parsifal instead. Unfortunately after Parsifal he died before we got any symphonies.


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## Kreisler jr

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The string motive starting at 13:08


yes, that's the "smooth sailing"/"happy voyage" motive.

Wishing that Wagner had written more symphonies is a bit like wishing Brahms or Chopin had written operas...


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Kreisler jr said:


> Wishing that Wagner had written more symphonies is a bit like wishing Brahms or Chopin had written operas...


Not to me: I like symphonies 

I think it's highly likely Wagner would have written a great symphony, judging from his purely instrumental output.


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## Kreisler jr

But he didn't. He wrote 1.5 mediocre early ones. Wagner wasn't interested in symphonies, apart from the wish being moot because of actual history, he obviously didn't care enough to ever write one later. It's not that he died in his 20s and therefore failed writing mature symphonies. 
He even made up some theoretical blather that after Beethoven one should write musical dramas or at most tone poems and symphonies were no longer the best way to express things in music (I am not aware of the exact details of his justification but I think that's the rough idea.) His "mission" as he understood it was to fuse all the art forms together in his musical dramas, not abstract symphonies.


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## SanAntone

I believe that Wagner wrote in a letter or told his wife, but there is a quote that after Parsifal he planned to devote the rest of his life writing symphonies. Or so the story goes ....


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## Kreisler jr

Even if this was a serious/honest claim, it still shows a lot that he couldn't be bothered with symphonies for the 40 years before that... And we have absolutely no idea how serious these plans were or how fruitful they might have been, had he lived longer. It's like Beethoven's oratorios and Faust? opera or whatever plans he entertained one time or another.


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## SanAntone

Kreisler jr said:


> Even if this was a serious/honest claim, it still shows a lot that he couldn't be bothered with symphonies for the 40 years before that... And we have absolutely no idea how serious these plans were or how fruitful they might have been, had he lived longer. It's like Beethoven's oratorios and Faust? opera or whatever plans he entertained one time or another.


We have a documented quote of his intentions - which of course you are free to ignore and continue with your baseless speculation. However, I think it could be said that Wagner had brought his operatic aspirations to their apogee with The Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal, and really, there was nowhere else for him to go other than in a completely new direction, i.e. instrumental orchestral music.


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## hammeredklavier

Kreisler jr said:


> 1.5 mediocre early ones


which pale so much in comparison to


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## Oldhoosierdude

I can take him or leave him. Mostly the latter.


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## Kreisler jr

SanAntone said:


> We have a documented quote of his intentions - which of course you are free to ignore and continue with your baseless speculation. However, I think it could be said that Wagner had brought his operatic aspirations to their apogee with The Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal, and really, there was nowhere else for him to go other than in a completely new direction, i.e. instrumental orchestral music.


We also have intentions from Beethoven about oratorios and operas and whatnot and similarly from other composers.
As long a there are no sketches, no specific plans or anything, it's every bit as speculative that Wagner would in fact have written late symphonies. His whole history as a composer speaks strongly against that. 
I'd bet quite a bit that Wagner would NEVER have written "abstract" three or four movement symphonies like his 1880s contemporaries. He might have written a bunch of tone poems along the lines of the Siegfried Idyll.


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## hammeredklavier

Kreisler jr said:


> We also have intentions from Beethoven about oratorios and operas and whatnot and *similarly from other composers.*


Such as?
I still think your point is valid regarding Beethoven, Wagner; since they did whatever they wanted to do as artists in their time. But the argument doesn't apply to the vast multitudes of pre-Romantic composers before them, who covered many genres, but did things their employers or audience wanted them to. For instance, it's overlooked that Haydn wasn't particularly more interested in any particular genre than others; he himself even said he was proud of his late masses (something he never said for the things he is mostly known today for, the symphonies or string quartets).
By the way-, with Die Schöpfung, the fuss seems mostly about the extended symphonic intro, not on any of the individual numbers of the main body. In terms of elegance and simplicity, in my subjective view, none of them is as memorable as the Gratias agimus tibi from the Theresienmesse.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Kreisler jr said:


> We also have intentions from Beethoven about oratorios and operas and whatnot and similarly from other composers.


So glad Beethoven did not waste his time on oratorios or more operas. In fact, I wish he hadn't spent so much of his time on Missa Solemnis and instead given us another symphony. He did put aside the 9th while working on the Missa.


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## Dick Johnson

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> So glad Beethoven did not waste his time on oratorios or more operas. In fact, I wish he hadn't spent so much of his time on Missa Solemnis and instead given us another symphony. He did put aside the 9th while working on the Missa.


I LOVE the Missa Solemnis and would rank it ahead of several of his symphonies. Agree with you on Fidelio. As a fan of both Beethoven and opera, it is surprising that such a great genius did not have a natural ability for opera composition - a limitation that he himself seemed to regret.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Dick Johnson said:


> I LOVE the Missa Solemnis and would rank it ahead of several of his symphonies. Agree with you on Fidelio. As a fan of both Beethoven and opera, it is surprising that such a great genius did not have a natural ability for opera composition - a limitation that he himself seemed to regret.


Not me. Most religious music bores me to death. I love Bach's keyboard music but his masses and cantatas are not for me. I love Beethoven's symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, concertos and a lot of other chamber music but Missa Solemnis bores me to death. Same with Brahms - love a lot of his music but The German Requiem is not my cup of tea.


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## superhorn

I wouldn't call myself a "fanatical " Wagnerian ( whatever that is )., but Wagner has been one of my favorite composers ( I can't possibly choose one favorite composer ). for decades since I was a teenager . Wagner has been an important part of my life since I was a teenager back in the 1960s . And I'm a Jew, though non-observant, secular and agnostic one I don't admire Wagner's anti-semitism even though it doesn't even come remotely close to being horrible ,insane and murderous as Hitler's anti-semitism was. I don't admire his womanizing and his cheating with other men's wives or his being such a blatant deadbeat . But I still don't think he was quite a horrible man as many claim he was . There are quite a few great composers who were. guilty of behavior at least as bad as Wagner , but nobody seems as angry about them as so many people are about Wagner's behavior .
And unfortunately, Hitler's idolization of Wagner has ruined Wagner's reputation in their minds . You just can't blame Wagner for Hitler, the Nazis , their horrendous atrocities and WW 2 . Hitler was born six years after Wagner's death in 1883 . When he discovered Wagner's music , something about it unleashed Hitler's inner demons . This is not Wagner's fault . 
I am also convinced that if Wagner could have come back in 1930s and 40s and seen. how monstrously tyrannical Hitler was and. the awful carnage of the second world war, and the atrocities. the Nazis committed in. Hitler's name not only against the Jews, he would have been absolutely horrified . He never advocated genocide against the Jews or any other group . 
Wagner had a rather low opinion of Jews as a whole , and he believed they were intrinsically incapable of creating great art . And as the old cliche goes , "some of his best friends were Jews ". Yes, there were quite a few Jews in his circle of friends, and as is well known, he chose the once famous German Jewish conductor Hermann Levi to conduct the world premiere of "Parsifal " at Bayreuth - simply because he felt Levi was the best conductor for the job - musically . Wagner's once famous associate, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bulow , who was also quite an anti-semite , is said to have sneered at Wagner for having so many Jewish friends . Bulow was the conductor of the historic premieres of Tristan and Die Meistersinger at the Royal opera in Munich, now the Bavarian state opera . 
People tend either to love or hate Wagner's music , or at least have problems with it and reservations about . But no one is indifferent to it ! Fortunately , I've never let Wagner the man get in the way of my profound love of his music and. his genius as a dramatist and poet .


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