Not much comment about Wagner? I've tried listening to all the episodes so far, so will try to make a comment at the end of the week. I found the story of the struggles involved in staging The Ring at Bayreuth amusing.
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Maybe too tricky to give more than a VERY brief sketch of many Wagner 'pieces' / chunks given length / operatic context etc? -
Just finished listening on Sounds and have to say I enjoyed it ….. I may even be warming to the music …. But not the man …..Comment
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A few weeks ago I went to a concert with Siegfied Idyll. I thought I liked the music - I played in it once - or maybe twice - but I have to say I now found it tediously boring as a listener. I used to think it at least had some beautiful sounds, but more recently I don't think I can get on with it. I thought it was a short piece, but it wasn't short enough for me!Comment
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And yet, the enharmonic movements it contains - the way chords transmogrify where some of the modulations take place - are fascinating, and, as in parts of Parsifal, this can only work on the psyche at very slow tempo. This is also fascinating, suggestive as it might be of the low rate of change that takes place in most of nature: I believe Messiaen would take from this in his early organ work Le Banquet Céleste, and use it in his later music. For the stage of musical evolution this might seem proximately analogous to the slow, superficially aimless rate of harmonic change in Renaissance sacred polyphony, in which where the music is moving assumes greater importance in the listening experience than its final end state, though it is in fact part of a much larger scale tonal post-Beethovenian structural narrative; Wagner was effectively having his cake and eating it!Originally posted by Dave2002 View Post
Some people find this characteristic also applying in slow Bruckner movements - certainly as struggles with inner states they vie with grief in Mahler's.
Had Wagner composed more stand alone pieces - apart from the overtures, which are treated as such in concert programmes - I feel sure he would have wider appeal to the hippy generation.
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According to Cosima's diaries he made various references to writing a symphony in his last years. She said he enjoyed working with orchestras, and less so with singers. Various themes occurred to him and some sketches exist. He thought of dedicating it to his son, Siegfried, which would have been a nice touch. Unfortunately, he died before anything materialised.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
Had Wagner composed more stand alone pieces - apart from the overtures, which are treated as such in concert programmes - I feel sure he would have wider appeal to the hippy generation.Comment
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And wasn't there also an opera on the life of the Buddha in his mind, as I seem to remember Jonathan Harvey saying?Originally posted by gurnemanz View PostComment
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