# Wagner's Business, Not Ours



## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

Some few years ago I published a brief article on S&F titled _Wagner's Business, Not Ours_ that set off a storm of protest on a Wagner Usenet Newsgroup the ferocity of which was unexpected but on second thought shouldn't have been as the article seemed to call into question (although it actually doesn't) the very validity of a thriving, scholarly/academic cottage industry. Let me post that brief article here to see what thoughts, if any, you folks might have about it.

=== Begin Quote ===
At some point in the early 20th century (we're guessing at the dating here; we've never actually traced the history of this nonsense) there emerged the pernicious notion that in order for one to understand Wagner's _Der Ring des Nibelungen_ properly one must have an at least basic knowledge of the content of Wagner's original sources for the tetralogy as Wagner expected his audiences to be in possession of such knowledge.

The notion is, of course, thoroughly preposterous, but that hasn't prevented it from taking hold in some quarters of the Wagnerian world, mostly among those of scholarly bent and also among those academics desperate for fodder for the fulfilling of the imperative of their publish-or-perish mandate. The notion would be harmless enough in itself (as opposed to its effect on potential audiences for the _Ring_) were it not for the tendency to treat such knowledge as the final authority on all matters pertaining to the _Ring_, and, worse, to use such knowledge in a misguided attempt to clarify ambiguities in Wagner's text or fill in what seem blanks or elisions in that text. Such thinking and such attempts almost always mislead at best and often produce outright misunderstanding.

To give a simple example of the latter, we recently came across an otherwise Wagner-knowledgeable individual of scholarly bent who insisted that the giants Fasolt and Fafner should never be portrayed onstage as giant-sized creatures as they more properly should be "more or less compatible in size with the gods" as, according to this individual, that's how they're portrayed in the original sources. We felt constrained to point out to this individual that - quite apart from the fact that it makes no bloody difference how the giants are portrayed in the original sources as the original sources count for nothing in the _Ring_ after the fact and Wagner's music and text everything - Wagner clearly did NOT intend HIS giants to be "more or less compatible in size with the gods" as his stage directions specifically and unambiguously describe Fasolt and Fafner as being of "riesiger Gestalt" (gigantic or colossal form or shape). Even in the face of such irrefutable evidence, this individual would have none of it so committed was he to the notion that Wagner's original sources are the final authority on all matters pertaining to the _Ring_ as they're, well, original sources.

That's sad enough all by itself. But sadder still is the pernicious effect such a notion regarding Wagner's sources has on potential new audiences for the _Ring_. "What's that?" they rightly will say. "You expect us to take a course in Norse and Germanic mythology and legend before we enter the opera house to hear the _Ring_?"

No one, of course, except, perhaps, misguided souls of the sort referred to above, expects or requires them to do anything of the kind, least of all Wagner himself. Nor does the work itself expect or require it of them. The fact of the matter is that Wagner, being a man of the theater to the very core, had no expectation that his audiences would have even minimal knowledge of the content of the sources he consulted in his creation of the _Ring_. He knew full well that through his music and text he would provide everything necessary for an audience's understanding of his cosmic, epic drama. All he and the work would require of them is that they give their close and undivided attention to the work put before them. That would be entirely sufficient and all that would be necessary, no knowledge of the content of the original sources required.

And such, of course, is the real case. As always in the matter of understanding any of Wagner's music-dramas, his original sources are his business exclusively and none of ours (plural ours).
=== End Quote ===

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Enter Woodduck


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

You are absolutely right.

I would only say that investigating Wagner's sources gives us insight into the depth of his scholarship and his ability to select and synthesize according to his needs, and sets into relief the ways in which the personal mythology he so ingeniously created out of his source material is both highly original and truly modern. What we learn is how very _unlike_ their sources his works are.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Enter Woodduck


There. You happy?


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> There. You happy?


Always happy to read your Wagner posts.


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You are absolutely right.
> 
> I would only say that investigating Wagner's sources gives us insight into the depth of his scholarship and his ability to select and synthesize according to his needs, and sets into relief the ways in which the personal mythology he so ingeniously created out of his source material is both highly original and truly modern. What we learn is how very unlike their sources his works are.


An investigation into W's sources does indeed teach us all of that and a fascinating - and valuable - exercise it is, too; one I would recommend not only to all students of the _Ring_ but to all those who love the work.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Having read some Norse Mythology before encountering Wagner's Opera _The Ring_, I can certainly see some influence there. I do find the subject material in the Wagner Operas quite intriguing at times, but not as interesting to me from a literary standpoint as the original mythology. His music more than makes up for any shortcomings in the narrative though.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

tdc said:


> Having read some Norse Mythology before encountering Wagner's Opera _The Ring_, I can certainly see some influence there. I do find the subject material in the Wagner Operas quite intriguing at times, but not as interesting to me from a literary standpoint as the original mythology. His music more than makes up for any shortcomings in the narrative though.


Dercyk Cooke's _I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring_, while sadly left unfinished at the author's death, goes into meticulous detail about Wagner's adaptation of his sources to fit his own artistic needs. Reading this account, one can't help but admire the way Wagner imposed a structural and thematic unity on his disparate Norse and Germanic materials, fusing them into "as valid and coherent a dramatic synthesis of the complex mythology of Northern Europe as we are ever likely to get" (86).


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I've no doubt studying the sources gives some insight into Wagner's rather tedious libretti but as I go to Wagner for his genius as a composer rather his less-than-genius as a librettist it hardly seems worth it.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

amfortas said:


> Dercyk Cooke's _I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring_, while sadly left unfinished at the author's death, goes into meticulous detail about Wagner's adaptation of his sources to fit his own artistic needs. Reading this account, one can't help but admire the way Wagner imposed a structural and thematic unity on his disparate Norse and Germanic materials, fusing them into "as valid and coherent a dramatic synthesis of the complex mythology of Northern Europe as we are ever likely to get" (86).


Can you post any sections of the libretti that you feel are particularly poetic, and beautiful? Sections that have a certain aesthetic quality in the wording itself?


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

tdc said:


> Having read some Norse Mythology before encountering Wagner's Opera _The Ring_, I can certainly see some influence there. I do find the subject material in the Wagner Operas quite intriguing at times, but not as interesting to me from a literary standpoint as the original mythology. His music more than makes up for any shortcomings in the narrative though.





tdc said:


> Can you post any sections of the libretti that you feel are particularly poetic, and beautiful? Sections that have a certain aesthetic quality in the wording itself?





DavidA said:


> I've no doubt studying the sources gives some insight into Wagner's rather tedious libretti but as I go to Wagner for his genius as a composer rather his less-than-genius as a librettist it hardly seems worth it.


(Below is a response to the above (3) posts: (2) by "tdc" and (1) by "DavidA".)

Just what is it you two gentlemen imagine you're commenting on? The _Ring_ is neither a book nor a stage play, and a libretto - any libretto, but most especially Wagner's libretto (libretti) for the _Ring_ - is NOT a stand-alone literary creation. A libretto is but the armature of a musico-dramatic work be it an opera or a music-drama; that which provides those narrative and concrete details music alone is incapable of providing and about which the musico-dramatic work is constructed. Libretti are brick-and-mortar, nuts-and-bolts stuff exclusively. The poetry - ALL the poetry -resides in the synthesis of music and text, most particularly so in Wagner's music-dramas where that synthesis is unfailingly organic and where the libretti have been masterfully crafted to fulfill their special purpose. That Wagner initially thought of his libretti as "poems" in their own right is quite beside the point as he was quickly disabused of that notion when he first began scoring the _Ring_ after which he could not bear to read or hear those "poems" absent the music to which they were intended to be wed.

That being said, Wagner did make a few slipups in the _Ring_ where he got lost in the poetry of the situation and gave vent to his feelings in words instead of letting his music do the work the most famous instance being, I suppose, the "Winterstürme" and "Du bist der Lenz" songs in Act I _Walküre_ and then for the rest of his life had to warn singers NOT to sing them as if they were two arias or a duet (which they essentially are).

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

AC Douglas said:


> (Below is a response to the above (3) posts: (2) by "tdc" and (1) by "DavidA".)
> 
> Just what is it you two gentlemen imagine you're commenting on? The _Ring_ is neither a book nor a stage play, and a libretto - any libretto, but most especially Wagner's libretto (libretti) for the _Ring_ - is NOT a stand-alone literary creation. A libretto is but the armature of a musico-dramatic work be it an opera or a music-drama; that which provides those narrative and concrete details music alone is incapable of providing and about which the musico-dramatic work is constructed. Libretti are brick-and-mortar, nuts-and-bolts stuff exclusively. The poetry - ALL the poetry -resides in the synthesis of music and text, most particularly so in Wagner's music-dramas where that synthesis is unfailingly organic and where the libretti have been masterfully crafted to fulfill their special purpose. That Wagner initially thought of his libretti as "poems" in their own right is quite beside the point as he was quickly disabused of that notion when he first began scoring the _Ring_ after which he could not bear to read or hear those "poems" absent the music to which they were intended to be wed.
> 
> ...


This essentially agrees with what I said - the libretti in itself isn't something that stands up well on its own without the music. I do admire his ambition and agree he managed to make something coherent that fits the music - and has some thought provoking ideas. I don't question his musical genius but in comparison with the source material I find the other elements utilitarian but not particularly inspired.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I don't think anybody should take a course in Germanic mythology before hearing the Ring, but having at least some idea about who those gods and heroes are and where they come from, certainly would not hurt. A little bit of knowledge about the cultural and historical context of Wagner's other operas would not hurt either. "Parsifal" and "Lohengrin" are two where such knowledge would certainly be helpful. The latter contains some lines that ignorant or agenda-driven people can easily misinterpret.


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

tdc said:


> This essentially agrees with what I said - the libretti in itself isn't something that stands up well on its own without the music. I do admire his ambition and agree he managed to make something coherent that fits the music - and has some thought provoking ideas. I don't question his musical genius but in comparison with the source material I find the other elements utilitarian but not particularly inspired.


But if one wants to read the saga of the _Ring_ one has no choice but to read W's libretto (libretti) as that saga exists nowhere in W's sources nor anywhere else.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I don't think anybody should take a course in Germanic mythology before hearing the Ring, but having at least some idea about who those gods and heroes are and where they come from, certainly would not hurt.


It would indeed hurt if one imagines W created his _Ring_ characters to conform to and "musicalize" those gods and heroes as they appear in Norse and German legend and mythology.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

tdc said:


> This essentially agrees with what I said - the libretti in itself isn't something that stands up well on its own without the music. I do admire his ambition and agree he managed to make something coherent that fits the music - and has some thought provoking ideas. I don't question his musical genius but in comparison with the source material I find the other elements utilitarian but not particularly inspired.


I find great inspiration in The Ring, even apart from the music. But I feel Wagner's artistic vision reached its culmination in the second of the four dramas, _Die Walküre_. Though the concluding work, _Götterdämmerung_, contains the germ of The Ring--the story Wagner originally set out to tell--I've always felt it hinges on a narrative Wagner's conception had in significant ways outgrown as his plan for the tetralogy expanded. While I might not go as far as George Bernard Shaw and dismiss this final installment as "nothing but opera," I can understand the impulse behind such a judgment.


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

amfortas said:


> I find great inspiration in The Ring, even apart from the music. But I feel Wagner's artistic vision reached its culmination in the second of the four dramas, _Die Walküre_. Though the concluding work, _Götterdämmerung_, contains the germ of The Ring--the story Wagner originally set out to tell--I've always felt it hinges on a narrative Wagner's conception had in significant ways outgrown as his plan for the tetralogy expanded. While I might not go as far as George Bernard Shaw and dismiss this final installment as "nothing but opera," I can understand the impulse behind such a judgment.


That's pretty much my feeling as well vis-à-vis _Götterdämmerung_. I wrote at length (some 1500 words) on the matter back in 2005 in a post on S&F titled "The Trouble With _Götterdämmerung_" which, for those interested, can be read at URL http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/02/the_trouble_wit.html.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

AC Douglas said:


> That's pretty much my feeling as well vis-à-vis _Götterdämmerung_. I wrote at length (some 1500 words) on the matter back in 2005 in a post on S&F titled "The Trouble With _Götterdämmerung_" which, for those interested, can be read at URL http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/02/the_trouble_wit.html.


Well here's a surprise.

As you may recall, I have never hesitated to voice my disagreements with you. But after reading your cited post, I can only concur with you on just about all its points. Wagner did indeed end up making Wotan his true central character, while the supposed hero of the tetralogy, Siegfried, ultimately fails as a protagonist, largely because he remains an oblivious dupe and shows little significant change over the course of the drama. And while I probably wouldn't be quite as sharply critical of _Götterdämmerung_ as a whole, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the work's strengths and weaknesses.

Will wonders never cease?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AC Douglas said:


> That's pretty much my feeling as well vis-à-vis _Götterdämmerung_. I wrote at length (some 1500 words) on the matter back in 2005 in a post on S&F titled "The Trouble With _Götterdämmerung_" which, for those interested, can be read at URL http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/02/the_trouble_wit.html.
> 
> --
> ACD
> http://www.soundsandfury.com/


Your essay is so forceful that I almost wish I could concur with it more completely, but I probably do agree as far as your major points are concerned. That Wotan became the major focus of the _Ring_ and had to be retired to make way for a hero who fails is a bit awkward, and Siegfried hardly has the weight to occupy center stage in _Gotterdammerung;_ it's Brunnhilde who assumes that position, and Siegfried's great funeral procession can only be felt as appropriate if we feel it as a threnody for the whole Walsung line and Wotan's dashed hopes. The "greatest of heroes" Siegfried is not. Yet I don't feel quite the disappointment in the opera that you do. To begin with, the music is, you must admit, magnificent: even the weakest section - the Gibichung scene of act 1 - is fine by any but Wagner's exalted standard; I don't find it "foursquare" (_Lohengrin_ is foursquare!), the material is varied and constantly apt, and the use of somewhat more conventional forms, as in Siegfried and Gunther's oath of brotherhood and the Act 2 gathering of the vassals and hailing of Brunnhilde's arrival, suits well the conventionality of these human social rituals (we are after all in human society now, with its rank and protocol). Honestly, I find your comparison of Wagner's music to early Verdi inapt and almost as insulting to Verdi as to Wagner, and I'd be very much surprised if you actually found these scenes "cringe-inducing" (but go ahead, surprise me!). In any case I think they work quite well as what they are, and any suspicion that Wagner is reverting to an earlier style in these moments is quickly erased and swallowed up in the magnificence that surrounds them.

Sure, it would have been a fine thing if Wagner could have worked out the dramatic difficulties with his hero who is not a hero. Yet the failure of Siegfried to live up to his billing was felt by Wagner to be a necessary consequence of the greater failure of the entire "redemption by love" ideal which had motivated his life's work, in opera after opera, up until then. Schopenhauer and _Tristan_ changed everything for Wagner's art: the hero of that opera is not redeemed but destroyed by love, and it would not be until Parsifal that Wagner would find a new meaning for the concepts of love and heroism. Meanwhile Siegfried was left hanging between two incompatible worldviews, and as the unwitting pawn in Wotan's failed scheme he had to fail at the hero's role assigned to him. The dramatic device by which Wagner engineered his failure is unfortunately crude, and it's hard to know what to make of the "forgetfulness potion" that allows him to betray his love. But it was clear to Wagner, post-_Tristan_, that love had to fail too - love, which had been the hoped-for antidote to the world-corruption wrought by love's antipode, the lust for power. Wagner's youthful idealism had vanished - his belief in love and heroic action as the joint solution to the world's ills - and so the idealism of the _Ring_ had to vanish too. In the end, Brunnhilde's eulogy to Siegfried as hero can be felt as a eulogy to heroism itself, much as Siegfried's funeral music can be felt as Wagner's final tribute to an ideal which has died. And Brunnhilde's relinquishment of the ring and the purging of heaven and earth by fire and flood are not a redemption - that final leitmotif was misnamed - but an erasure: at best, a chance to start over. This was not Wagner's original plan, but it was where the logic of his life and art took him.

I would not put Wagner's failure to solve the problems of _Gotterdammerung_ down to hubris. He knew very well what a dilemma he had on his hands, and I think he did his best with what may well have been an insoluble problem. During the conception and composition of the _Ring_ he had become a different artist and a different man, and it really is one of the miracles of art that he completed this immense project and made it as coherent as he did. As you've said, we are still shattered by its power in the end.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

WOW, What a post.:tiphat:


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Very interesting and informative. It's a reminder that we must not and cannot equate greatness/genius with perfection. It seems to me the greater we perceive something to be, the more we _want_ it to be perfect; but of course it never can be. There seems no better example of this than the Ring Cycle, its plot and character difficulties pointed out in this thread.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

I find the melodrama of _Götterdämmerung_ to fit wonderfully with the overall story being told. The cycle is about change. It is quite brilliant that the final opera does not feel like _Das Rheingold_ or even _Die Walküre_.

Wotan's power is entirely gone; he is only present as legend. The gods have been replaced by a chorus of humans; myth has given way to melodrama.

I have been under the impression that Wagner really did think of Siegfried as his ideal hero but that is something I need to study further.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> I find the melodrama of _Götterdämmerung_ to fit wonderfully with the overall story being told. The cycle is about change. It is quite brilliant that the final opera does not feel like _Das Rheingold_ or even _Die Walküre_.
> 
> Wotan's power is entirely gone; he is only present as legend. *The gods have been replaced by a chorus of humans; myth has given way to melodrama.*
> 
> I have been under the impression that Wagner really did think of Siegfried as his ideal hero but that is something I need to study further.


We might recall here that Wagner conceived the _Ring_ during his youthful "revolutionary" days, and that in his naive brand of anarchism the goal and hope for humanity was the freeing of man's natural impulses of love and heroism from religious and social convention. We can recognize this line of thought in Wotan's argument with Fricka, and in the actions of Wotan's progeny, Siegmund, Sieglinde and Siegfried. By the time he returned to composing the _Ring_ after _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_, Wagner's thinking about society and politics had changed radically - hence the conversion in midstream of the _Ring's_ essence from hero tale to "twilight of the world." The cycle is indeed about change - but the change is not what the young Wagner and his mouthpiece, Wotan, had planned on. The handing over of responsibility for the course of events from gods to humans was to have brought redemption, but it only ends up accelerating the end.

I can't help feeling that Wagner's naive prophesies about the future of society gave way to a much truer, and more truly prophetic, view of what the reign of mankind would actually do to the world. The very sordidness of _Gotterdammerung_, reeling toward catastrophe, is a pretty compelling mirror held up to humanity in an age when the very life of the planet hangs in the balance of our knowledge, wisdom, and goodwill.


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

Thank you, *Woodduck*, for your extensive and thoughtful response.

We Wagnerians (and I assume you consider yourself among their number as do I), are long familiar with attempts, however Byzantine, to find artistically and/or biographically plausible excuses for W's infrequent lapses and missteps and I have to say your excuse for W's vulgar drinking song in Act I (which I do indeed find "cringe-inducing"), which is the only thing I singled out and compared with Verdi at his most early-opera vulgar, is, I feel constrained to say, a doozy. Beyond that, the static foursquare-ness of the Act I Gibichung episode is unmistakable and inexcusable and is, I think, an irresistible fallback to the music W "heard" when he was writing the libretto ("poem") of _Siegfrieds Tod_ as it was always W's way to "hear" at least the "shape" of the music associated with the words he was writing even though that music had yet to be written and not so much as a note of it existed at the time.

As for your ingenious apologia for W's failures in _Götterdämmerung_ centering on his Schopenhauerian enlightenment, while that certainly applies vis-à-vis the close of the music-drama (and of the tetralogy) it is, I think, going too far, way too far, to write off the creative failure of the _Götterdämmerung_ Siegfried by invoking it. Nor can the creative failure of an intended self-sacrificing Brünnhilde as world-redeemer be blamed on it. W could have handled that last perfectly well within Schopenhauerian lines had he but rethought/rewritten certain episodes involving B preceding her impassioned ultimate peroration.

In short, my dear Woodduck, and with all due respect, I stand by my S&F article's explanations and conclusions, Schopenhauer notwithstanding.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AC Douglas said:


> Thank you, *Woodduck*, for your extensive and thoughtful response.
> 
> We Wagnerians (and I assume you consider yourself among their number as do I), are long familiar with attempts, however Byzantine, to find artistically or biographically plausible excuses for W's infrequent lapses and missteps and I have to say your excuse for W's vulgar drinking song in Act I (which I do indeed find "cringe-inducing"), which is the only thing I singled out and compared with Verdi at his most early-opera vulgar, is, I feel constrained to say, a doozy. Beyond that, the static foursquare-ness of the Act I Gibichung episode is unmistakable and inexcusable and is, I think, an irresistible fallback to the original music W "heard" when he was writing the libretto ("poem") for _Siegfrieds Tod_ as it was always W's way to "hear" at least the "shape" of the music associated with the words he was writing even though that music had yet to be written and not so much as a note of it existed at the time.
> 
> ...


It does indeed pain me most grievously, my dear AC, to hear that your confession of being made literally to cringe by certain atavistic features of Herr Wagner's penultimate opus was not merely a hyperbolic outburst occasioned by temporary fustian autointoxication but was in truth a spontaneous and unavoidable reflex of a sensibility refined by profound understanding of not only Herr Wagner's stylistic development but that of his vulgar Latinate contemporary as well. Still...

I love Gotterdammerung, its weaknesses notwithstanding. And, though you have obviously not much respect for what you consider my "ingenious apologia" and "Byzantine attempts to find artistically or biographically plausible excuses for W's lapses and missteps" - which I actually intended as attempts at understanding rather than condemnation or exoneration - I suppose I can still bring myself to talk to you.


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## AC Douglas (Jan 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I love Gotterdammerung, its weaknesses notwithstanding. And, though you have obviously not much respect for what you consider my "ingenious apologia" and "Byzantine attempts to find artistically or biographically plausible excuses for W's lapses and missteps" - which I actually intended as attempts at understanding rather than condemnation or exoneration - I suppose I can still bring myself to talk to you.




Ditto, my dear Woodduck.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com/


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