Yippeeeee ... ahem

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Wagner is a fungus.

I don't find Wagner's an organic, necessary art. Wagner's music is fungal. I think Wagner is a fungus. It's a sort of unnatural growth. It's parasitic in a sense – on its models, on its material. His material doesn't grow symphonically – it doesn't grow through a musical logic – it grows parasitically. It has a laboratory atmosphere.

Thomas Adès and Tom Service in conversation .... very cogent comment on Wagner that explains to me why i can not listen to the operas ... ....

[Thropplenoggin]

I don't get on with Wagner at all (yet). This may change with time. Adès comes across as insufferable in this interview, though. Let's see where his music is in 100 years' time. He's not exactly the next Beethoven, is he?!

[teamsaint]

if you listen to a lot a Wagner, there isn't mushroom for anything else in your life......

[Petrushka]

if you listen to a lot a Wagner, there isn't mushroom for anything else in your life......

And Alberich does turn himself into a toad(stool).

[salymap]

He does go on rather but the BC are lovely [in this one case]

Not really BCs either. Some of the overtures tell the whole story of the opera, or as much as I need.

In my concert going and working days, the three pieces from Meistersinger, excepts from other operas and gorgeous overtures like Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi were all we heard at the RAH.

Runs for cover .......

[vinteuil]

He does go on rather but the BC are lovely

.......

[... for this baroque-period man, it took a moment for the pfennig to drop ]


... basso continuo?

ah, no, of course, his famous Bassoon Concertos!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And Alberich does turn himself into a toad(stool).

... but otherwise, he's not much of a fun guy.












YOU WERE ALL THINKING IT!!!!

[Northender]

... but otherwise, he's not much of a fun guy.












YOU WERE ALL THINKING IT!!!!

..and was just about to post it!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[/COLOR][/B]

..and was just about to post it!

[salymap]

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were a heaven and Anna Russell bumped into Richard Wagner.

'I'm not making it up,you know'

[Flosshilde]

Wagner is a fungus.



Thomas Adès and Tom Service in conversation .... very cogent comment on Wagner that explains to me why i can not listen to the operas ... ....

Full of such insights as this -

TS But the music in Tristan – that's surely the fate that drives them, that they can't escape from? … The whole thing is about an unstable situation from bar one, which ends up in an image of stability, which the whole thing is striving for and reaches only at the end of the piece – it's a place that they're all trapped in until the very end.

TA: I don't know, I find it a bit too long.

[Serial_Apologist]

From what I have heard of Thomas Ades's music, I think what we have here is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[Petrushka]

I like Ades' music but his nonsensical warblings on Wagner make me wonder if he was taking the ****.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

When the two Toms met on Music Matters three or so years ago, they both got very drunk and incoherent. I hope that that's Ades' excuse this time. Not liking Wagner's Music is one thing (poor sod!) - but to try to "explain" (/"justify") this by saying that this is because it isn't "organic" makes as much sense as saying that its because it doesn't have any violas!


(And, anyway; aren't Fungi "organic"?)

[heliocentric]

very cogent comment on Wagner

"It's a sort of unnatural growth. It's parasitic in a sense – on its models, on its material. His material doesn't grow symphonically – it doesn't grow through a musical logic – it grows parasitically. It has a laboratory atmosphere."

Frankly I'd like to know what is supposed to be cogent about that. In what sense is Wagner's music "parasitic" on its models? (Which models? Beethoven? Weber? Hardly.) What does it mean to say it's "parasitic" on its material? In what sense does it not grow symphonically - I would say that's exactly what it does do - the application of the idea of symphonic development to opera is one of the radical aspects that distinguishes it from its predecessors. And I can't fathom what might be meant by "laboratory atmosphere" in this connection. Not that I think everyone, or even every composer, has to appreciate Wagner's music. I'm just a bit surprised that Tom Service is obviously so much in awe of Adès that he has to reproduce this superficial rambling as if it were insightful. Or maybe it's so profound I'm just not getting it. Calum?