# Does Wagner's music command/sustain 4 hours of your attention?



## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Do you feel that Wagner's music (4 hour operas) contain 4 hours of noteworthy music? At no point does the music wain due to the composer's obligation to explain to fulfill the story. Are the leitmotif's capable of providing form to something perceptibly without a real structure. 

I can grasp Wagner's genius in little tidbits, but I never want to listen to an entire opera of his. It gets boring very fast and eventually it starts to sound repetitive. I'm sure a Wagnerite would disagree, but it is this never-ending / almost-formless continuation of music which I feel is just too far from real absolute greatness. I feel like Wagner's operas demonstrate genius without being wholly musically magnificent. 

How do you feel about this?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm similar in vibe to you. I get what you're saying. I don't deny Wagner's significance in the history of music though.

An acquaintance of mine compared Wagner to a 10 or 20 course meal. Way over the top. But then like me, he's not really an opera fanatic.

I'm basically with Rossini in his flippant remark "Wagner is a composer who has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours." Rossini was not lightweight, eg. he was using leitmotifs way before Wagner. But Rossini, or other composers like Erkel in his operas or Liszt and Berlioz in their instrumental works, didn't make such a huge impact at large as Wagner did with his innovations, or refinements of other's innovations (call it what you will). One reason is the Wagner Cult, the Bayreuth Festival and all that stuff. His fans think they're going on some holy pilgramage like Tannhauser or something.

I don't agree he doesn't have "real structure." It's just that he was pioneering a new form of opera. Not based on the traditional "numbers opera," eg. you have an aria, then some chorus, then maybe an orchestral interlude, then a duet or tableau, etc. With Wagner, it's all one seamless organic kind of unified entity. Big words, but that's how I can express it. Like the _Liebestod_ from _Tristan und Isolde _goes for like half an hour. It's like music that grows and grows from a small seed of the lietmotif.

So what I'm saying is Wagner is pretty much unique and not really typical of opera overall. If you don't like Wagner, doesn't mean you can't like probably the majority of other say 19th century opera. I like quite a bit of that myself, although Wagner is not a favourite. Things like the Italian and French opera composers I like quite a bit. Of course, a number of them did end up copying Wagner - I think Lalo with his _Le Roi D'Ys _ & Chausson's _Le Roi Arthus _- but again, I don't think they're typical of what went on outside of Germany.

There were two strands as successors to Wagner. One was R. Strauss, more in the romantic vein, and then Berg, who pushed Wagner's innovations to more modernist aesthetic...


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

You can't look at Wagner a little piece at a time. The whole is integral to the function of each individual part. He didn't write his work as music separate to the drama. It all relates to everything else. That's why you can never fully understand or appreciate Wagner without jumping in with both feet and viewing it as opera. When you do that, you realize the superhuman scale he was operating on.


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Not 4 minutes.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Well, I think the Ring is worth 10 hours out of 14, so that's a pretty great achievement, I'd say. The only other Wagner I've experienced that really clicks with me is Meistersinger, and I would say that it is definitely worth the 4+ hour time investment.


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

Nope :lol:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

What is funny is that Wagner's opera's are not composed at all in the traditional manner of overture-recitative-aria-recitative-aria-duet-trio-recitative-duet-recitative-etc... In other words, it is not a collection of musical numbers tied together with the recitative during which the majority of the narrative is spelled and acted out. Rather, Wagner's operas are "through composed" as an uninterrupted musical drama. In this manner they are closer to the tradition of the grand symphony than the traditional opera. Wagner's use of the leitmotif is but a single element of this through-composed drama which most certainly had precedent in the works of Berlioz and Weber among others... but most importantly in the work of Beethoven who uses the repetitive theme as one means of tying the larger symphonic drama together.

I cannot understand anyone struggling to grasp the structure of Wagner if they are at all able to grasp the same in the equally sprawling symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner or a majority of post-Wagnerian opera including Puccini, Mussorgsky, Debussy, Strauss, and even Britten. But is this really a legitimate question... or rather one more attempt to prove that your own dislike of Wagner is rooted in objective flaws that those who love Wagner are somehow blind to?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Wagner does indeed drag in parts if you're listening to a recording or watching it on your laptop. But this is not how Wagner's music was ever intended to be consumed. 

I would challenge you to throw caution into the wind and attend the February 11th Met Live in HD broadcast of Götterdämmerung. Yes, the running time with intermission is predicted to be 6.5 hours. But you'd be surprised how quickly the intermissions arrive when you make an actual event of it; you're there, focused on the opera without distraction unlike at home. 

I found Siegfried flew by in November, and Siegfried, all things considered, is probably his dullest opera. Also, although Götterdämmerung is the conclusion of the Ring Cycle it makes an excellent self-contained watch on its own, if fact Wagner even gives you the "story thus far" treatment in the prologue. Do it!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> You can't look at Wagner a little piece at a time. The whole is integral to the function of each individual part. He didn't write his work as music separate to the drama. It all relates to everything else. ...


I would say it is okay to take in one installment of _The Ring _set.

I watched on dvd _Gotterdammerung_ just over a year ago and it was good as a one-off. I actually did it over a long weekend here during the xmas holidays.

It is probably more holistic, "big picture," etc. to view all the four "episodes," but it depends on what the listener wants, what their tastes are, etc.

As for what you say of "superhuman scale," as I said it's exactly what turns a lot of people off Wagner. I call it music on steroids. Of course same could be said of symphonic composers like Bruckner or Mahler. They do ask a lot. I personally connect with at least the human aspects of their works - eg. the autobiographical, the images of Austrian landscape, the use of dance tunes and other things - whereas with Wagner, there is little relevance to me in these purely epic things. Or what comes across as that. It is a relevant criticism, it's balanced, Wagner is still not universally loved by over 90 per cent of classical music listeners, probably never will be. Unlike say J.S. Bach, who though I'm not an idolator of his, I admit his primacy. All of the people I know who are into classical to more or less extent like and in many cases love his music. I was the odd one out with BAch, but with Wagner, I have met a fair number of people on my "side" of this debate...


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

It really isn't an election. It doesn't matter if you know people who couldn't sit through Walkure, because I know plenty of folks who wouldn't even sit through Traviata. Wagner is not for those with ADD. That's for sure.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

No.

But the fact that I have predominantly inattentive ADHD may just have something to do with that.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Personally, I'm fine just listening to Wagner in smaller bits at a time. I don't think there is any rule stating it is wrong for me to enjoy Wagner in this way or that it degrades the quality of my experience. I don't listen to any composers for 4 hours straight. Watching a live performance is a different thing all together, but when that is not possible I'm fine with just breaking it down into smaller pieces.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Are you following the libretto word for word? That can change things. I tried to "just listen" to the music but found that tiresome, so I ordered a kindle and downloaded the libretto English/German side by side and followed alone. Only then did everything make more sense.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

tdc said:


> Personally, I'm fine just listening to Wagner in smaller bits at a time. I don't think there is any rule stating it is wrong for me to enjoy Wagner in this way or that it degrades the quality of my experience. I don't listen to any composers for 4 hours straight. Watching a live performance is a different thing all together, but when that is not possible I'm fine with just breaking it down into smaller pieces.


Do you know who also listened to bits of Wagner after dinner? Hitler.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The other thing is the vague tonality. Not a problem for me, but potentially for some. Even in shorter works, eg. Scriabin's _Poem of Ecstasy_, I'm often hanging out for the final resolving chord the whole way through. Even with composers I really dig, eg. Aussie Peter Sculthorpe, some works of his that do this I feel the same. You're kind of up in the air until the final moment. Again, I'm not that worried about this with Wagner, but some listeners may well be.



Couchie said:


> Do you know who also listened to bits of Wagner after dinner? Hitler.


:lol:...he also probably listened to Sibelius & Lehar, in bits or full. He loved those as well. The slow movement of Bruckner's 7th symphony was played on German radio when Adolf died. Who cares about all this?...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> ...Wagner is not for those with ADD. That's for sure.


Nope, Wagner is not for those with _normal_ or _average_ attention spans. So his fans claim -it's not explicitly stated, but that's what you're doing, aren't you - some kind of superiority above the rest of the hoi polloi who don't listen to this type of long-winded stuff as a general rule.

Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. Well it seems that Wagner to his fans is like a kind of drug as well. But an exclusive drug, for the few & not the masses. So it's a better drug than religion. It's as some say not a religion but a cult...


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I don't understand the constant need to psychoanalyze those who like Wagner and continually put forth some non-musical explanation as to why they do. I like Wagner simply because his music... and his operas as a unified dramatic or theatrical experience are damn good. No one suggests that people who like Satie have a clear inferiority complex (and I like Satie and Wagner so where does that place me? A titanic inferiority complex?:lol or that those who like Brahms are afraid of opera (I like him too) or that those who like like Schoenberg or Berg are incurable iconoclasts (I still admittedly struggle with Schoenberg, but I love Berg).

As for the attention span... well there are many other operas that are quite lengthy. Even _Le Nozze di Figaro_ is far from brief. But then again... I've sat through the _Godfather I_ and II back to back, through the uncut directors take of _Apocalypse Now!_, through _Gone with the Wind_ and read any number of epic length novels and poems.


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## eorrific (May 14, 2011)

It's Gesamtkunstwerk. I must admit that Wagner's music does not always get my attention throughout the whole opera, because it does sound long winded at times (which is also the case in most of the operas I've watched, though usually to a lesser degree). You can always pay attention to the libretto, or if you're watching instead of listening to them, pay attention to the stage, etc, and as a whole, I find Wagner's operas to be excellent despite containing slow parts.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

As with everyone else who wrote epic opera, not every piece of music that Wagner wrote for his longer works can maintain the same level of sublimity - and when it doesn't the richness of the imagery (scene-setting, mood painting, characters &c.) when conjured up in my mind's eye is often so strong I'm usually carried along without effort anyway.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I don't understand the constant need to psychoanalyze those who like Wagner and continually put forth some non-musical explanation as to why they do. I like Wagner simply because his music... and his operas as a unified dramatic or theatrical experience are damn good. No one suggests that people who like Satie have a clear inferiority complex (and I like Satie and Wagner so where does that place me? A titanic inferiority complex?:lol or that those who like Brahms are afraid of opera (I like him too) or that those who like like Schoenberg or Berg are incurable iconoclasts (I still admittedly struggle with Schoenberg, but I love Berg).
> 
> As for the attention span... well there are many other operas that are quite lengthy. Even _Le Nozze di Figaro_ is far from brief. But then again... I've sat through the _Godfather I_ and II back to back, through the uncut directors take of _Apocalypse Now!_, through _Gone with the Wind_ and read any number of epic length novels and poems.


I agree, I am currently watching the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings, which is almost as long as the Ring Cycle (and when it gets its "Das Rheingold", "The Hobbit" next year, it will be). I suppose it's more of a matter of plot pacing than raw length. People are much more likely to complain that a 2 hour Bergman film is "long" than a 3 hour Harry Potter film. It's difficult to not admit that Wagner is impressively long-winded at times, such as Act 1 of Tristan which consists of mostly Isolde relating the backstory to her and Tristan's relationship; this could be accomplished by any self-respecting film director in a 2-minute flashback. So I do sympathize with Sid James' sentiment to some extent.


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## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

It’s like everything if you’ve developed a love for it you’ll be able to sustain it for hours.
I personally find Wagner overblown and heavy going, but then I can sit through hours of harpsichord music and get enormous pleasure from it, much to the bemusement of my wife.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Once I got to listen to *Parsifal* 3 times ! Nearly 14 hours ! and it was an audio recording not a VHS/DVD production of the work, so just listening to the music. I'm not a big Wagner fan at all, but can still remember 7 or 8 years ago when I got the orchestral score of *Tristan und Isolde*, spent hours and hours reading and copying the score. 
Personally, I admire *Wagner* as a great orchestrator, an innovator of new orchestral timbres (mostly in *Nibelungen*) that's all ! I'd rather listen to Italian and French operas with more elegant texture, more melodic, and if someone asks me about his declamations so-called _the endless melody_ as a great achievement in the history of dramatic music, I'd answer both *Mussorgsky* and *Janacek* derived their tunes almost literally from the text but kept the beauty of the melody as well.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think the comparison with long films is apt. I studied film theory but it was before _Lord of the Rings _trilogy came out (but I've seen that as well). Directors of ages ago like the great Andrei Tarkovsky pushed the audience's attention span in terms of time as well as those long panning shots where on the surface nothing much happens. His _Andrei Rublev _lasts for over 3 hours. These long & epic films are probably fair to say not typical of cinema, but it doesn't mean they are better or worse than the average length film.

So I went overboard with the cult thing, but I was upset by the manipulation of ADHD, a medical condition which I don't like to make fun of.

But it comes down to this with any music we like, it's the passion -



presto said:


> It's like everything if you've developed a love for it you'll be able to sustain it for hours.
> I personally find Wagner overblown and heavy going, but then I can sit through hours of harpsichord music and get enormous pleasure from it, much to the bemusement of my wife.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I like Wagner, but not for the length of his music dramas. Maybe make them all one and a half to two and a half hours long and I _might_ be able to sit through one. I've got a performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and although it is his greatest work in my opinion, I couldn't watch more than the 90 minute first act and half of the second act. It doeas seem to drag on a bit even for someone who has a long attention span.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I attended a Ring cycle in Seattle that was performed in a single week, the way Wagner wanted it to be. Four operas in five days. I wasn't bored for a single second of it.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Pretty much what our good buddy Presto said...I can play three hour sets with no problem or watch jam bands on for four hours but even then that gets a bit much...yet, I can easily sit through the entire Beethoven keyboard works followed by everything Mozart wrote for the board and then have Bach for dessert (yeah, Van, you got me thinking of music in terms of food now!). By then, you're looking at more than half a day. 

Besides, I don't even make the effort to say vog-ner;...to me he's just Wag (as in dog's tail) Ner.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

Let's just Anglicise him and call him Dick Cartwright.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Sid James said:


> :lol:...he also probably listened to Sibelius & Lehar, in bits or full. He loved those as well. The slow movement of Bruckner's 7th symphony was played on German radio when Adolf died. Who cares about all this?...


According to Albert Speer (and Wikipedia), Brünnhilde's Immolation was the last thing the Berlin Philharmonic performed before they evacuated Berlin at the end of WWII, which is just wonderfully ironic for them, being about redemption through destruction and all...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Yes, I remember reading a historian's book on WWII, and he said that the final days before the fall of Berlin where like _Gotterdammerung_ becoming a horrible reality (the destruction, loss of lives, etc.). Maybe he got the comparison from what Albert Speer said?...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Why do folks spend half of summer watching cricket here in Australia, or hours of football/rugby, or hours of tennis, or entire series of _Sex & the City_ without getting bored? Why don't we have a thread about that?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Why do folks spend half of summer watching cricket here in Australia, or hours of football/rugby, or hours of tennis, or entire series of _Sex & the City_ without getting bored? Why don't we have a thread about that?


I don't watch any of that crap. I prefer to spend my time doing "The Cosby Show" marathons. Sad really


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Not usually, because usually I'm listening to music while doing other things - this has sadly become the norm because most music simply doesn't merit all of my attention or my concentration. 

However, when I have a libretto in hand and am not distracted by anything else - yes, it does command my attention - not for 4 hours straight, I have to pee sometimes you know? 

Question: Does Mahler's 3rd command your attention for all 90+ minutes?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Not usually, because usually I'm listening to music while doing other things - this has sadly become the norm because most music simply doesn't merit all of my attention or my concentration.
> 
> However, when I have a libretto in hand and am not distracted by anything else - yes, it does command my attention - not for 4 hours straight, I have to pee sometimes you know?
> 
> Question: Does Mahler's 3rd command your attention for all 90+ minutes?


Yes, to the question.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Mahler.... zzzZzzZZzzZzzzzZzzz


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