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 Classic CD
magazine in 1992 described him thus:
Richard
Wagner is the most awesome artistic phenomenon of the last two
centuries. He remains a subject of bitter controversy in a way that no
other genius of the front rank ever has.
No doubt some
readers have their reservations about Wagner (if not scepticism towards
or even dislike of him), and this introductory essay is by way of some
restorative advice to them.
Let’s begin with
Wagner the man, and ask the question on every lip: how could such an
unmitigated cad have written music worth wasting our time on? For, as
you know,
Wagner stole other people's wives (e.g. Jessie Laussot,
Mathilde Wesendonck, Cosima von Bülow)
He borrowed money recklessly (didn’t his genius
deserve it?) and, except when he couldn't get away with it, never
repaid a debt
He mistreated even his closest friends and supporters
He hated Jews, though never declined to use them to
his own financial or musical advantage
He had a big head (in both senses), to say nothing of
the mightiest mouth of the 19th century, the most luxurious tastes and
the longest pen (e.g. on top of everything else, he wrote 230 books
and 10,000 letters)
He saw himself not just as the greatest musician who
ever drew breath, but also as the world's finest living poet,
playwright, polemicist and philosopher.
Who will defend
this contemptible scoundrel and overweening egotist? Let's see what our
trusty mahogany-covered World of Music (1954) has to say. On the
matter in question it quotes from a famous radio talk, entitled A
Monster, given by American musician and critic Deems Taylor. (You
may remember Deems Taylor as the face and voice linking the various
musical items in Walt Disney's 1946 film Fantasia.)
[Wagner]
. . . was one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was a
great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses
that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living
. . . What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had
one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music . .
. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a
little mind . . . There is greatness about his worst mistakes . . . The
miracle is that what he did in the little space of 70 years could have
been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had
no time to be a man?
And here’s Milton
Cross in his Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music
(1962 ed.):
Without
that abnormal vanity and self-glorification, he would never have dared
to conceive a musical structure . . . [unparalleled] for immensity of
design and vastness of scope; or conceiving it, he would never have
found the strength to bring it into existence; or bringing it to life,
he would never have had the selling power to interest a skeptical world
in it.
But what about the
music? Surely the credentials of the nightingale or cuckoo will lie in
its singing, no matter what it steals or dreams of? So what we need to
do now is seek out some suitable examples of Wagner's work and put him
to the test.
A small point
before we switch on the CD player. Some people have difficulties with
the feelings Wagner's music evokes, so for them let us quote from a 1992
book by psychiatrist Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind:
I
think that people who are repelled by Wagner's music might well come to
appreciate its power and beauty if they realized more clearly what was
disturbing them. I believe that listeners to Wagner have to allow
themselves to be temporarily overwhelmed if they are fully to appreciate
the music. But many people are fearful of 'letting go' to this extent,
and consequently shy away from the intense emotional experience which
Wagner offers us.
With that
encouragement, let's recall the two cardinal rules for Wagner listening.
Yes, I know you normally enthuse quietly in whatever you enjoy,
but just this once
Turn up the volume; and
Repeat Rule 1.
Now some pieces to
listen to.
For various
reasons, the vocal parts can seem very fatiguing, and it's the singing
that puts most newcomers off. You'll be relieved to hear, therefore,
that you may delay that sort of gratification till later, and rely on
orchestral excerpts to begin with. There is an abundance of dazzling
pieces to choose from.
Colossally daunting
it may be, but the tetralogy of Der Ring des Nibelungen (Das
Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung) is not as bad
place to start as you might first think. Here's what George Bernard Shaw
wrote a century ago this year in The Perfect Wagnerite:
.
. . The Ring is full of extraordinarily attractive episodes, both
orchestral and dramatic. The nature music alone — music of river and
rainbow, fire and forest — is enough to bribe people with any love of
the country in them to endure the passages of political philosophy in
the sure hope of a prettier page to come. Everybody, too, can enjoy the
love music, the hammer and anvil music, the clumping of the giants, the
tune of the young woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon
music and nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion
of simple melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short, the
vast extent of common ground between The Ring and the ordinary
music we use for play and pleasure.
Do you like the Ride
of the Valkyries? (It introduces Act III of Die Walküre.)
Don't know it well? Give it another try, then, and listen to its
wonderful galloping progress. I reckon that, like me, you'll also grow
to savour the contrast between the heavy deep bass and the rushing runs
and trills higher up in the orchestra.
Incidentally,
Example
1 is a little ditty you can sing full-throttle to the tune of the Ride.
I found it in John Culshaw's Ring Resounding (1967), the story of
how the Decca Ring recordings were made, written by the producer
in charge of that long project.
Oh, you can’t
stand the Ride because of its hackneyed movie associations? Fair
enough. Well try some of these instead. Most are around ten minutes or
less in length, with the longest, the Siegfried Idyll, being just
over 22 minutes. A few were arranged for the concert hall by Wagner
himself from the full scores. As you listen, you're sure to become aware
of what an untold debt many of Hollywood's derivative composers owe to
Our Man in Bayreuth.
Der Fliegende Holländer: Overture —
a
marvellous, atmospheric tone-poem
Götterdämmerung: Immolation of the Gods
— the
magnificent and eminently satisfying orchestral culmination of the
whole Ring is built up almost entirely from seven leitmotivs
used throughout the tetralogy
Götterdämmerung: Siegfried's Death and Funeral March
— a splendid death march, worthy of the hero it laments — was
played at Wagner's own funeral
Götterdämmerung: Siegfried's Rhine Journey —
the intermezzo heard just before the Act I curtain goes up —
exultant, but full of foreboding hints
Lohengrin: Prelude — exquisite radiant musical
depiction of a vision of the Holy Grail
Lohengrin: Introduction to Act III —
joyful
music, evoking the pageantry of preparations for a mediaeval courtly
wedding
Die Meistersinger: Overture —
and they said that
Wagner was couldn’t write counterpoint — with the Ride of the
Valkyries and the Siegfried Idyll, the most accessible of
all Wagner's orchestral pieces — sumptuous
Parsifal: Prelude to Act I —
introduces Wagner's
last opera, one even more religious than Lohengrin — features
four themes: Last Supper, Holy Grail (different from that in Lohengrin),
Faith and Suffering
Das Rheingold: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla
across their Rainbow Bridge — a majestic conclusion to the opera
Rienzi: Overture — written in Wagner's
"older" style (the then prevailing grand manner of Meyerbeer)
— the overture is still worth hearing, even if the opera is rarely
performed today
Siegfried: Forest Murmurs — the definitive
Wagnerian nature sound-poem, depicting the peaceful beauty of the
forest with its many twittering birds
Siegfried Idyll —
despite its length, in every
respect a miniature by Wagnerian standards, particularly its modest
orchestration — weaves together several motives from Siegfried and
a folksong-like lullaby, but is also derived from sketches Wagner had
made for a string quartet — if you don't know already, we leave you
to your own devices to find out the special story of its first
performance
Tannhäuser: Overture — Wagner wrote two
versions of this, the (longer) concert piece probably the more
satisfying one — as far as I’m concerned, the point where the
brass re-enter with the solemn Pilgrims' Chorus (shown in Example
2)
towards the overture's end is just overpowering
Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act I and Isolde's Love
Death — two pieces, one from the beginning of the opera which,
at its fourth note, contains one of the most famous chords in all
music (see Example
3), the other from the stunning conclusion to the
tragedy, often performed in the concert hall as one seamless work —
but how to describe in mere words the emotional effect as wave after
wave of passion surges higher and higher towards the tranquil
conclusion of Isolde's death? — just listen and be swept away
Die Walküre: Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire Music
— to the accompaniment of some heart-rending music, the god Wotan
takes leave of his favourite daughter, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde,
before surrounding her with the fiery glow of her temporary prison
sleep.
By now, perhaps,
you want to buy some representative discs. To begin with, invest in some
compact discs on the Naxos label, that admirable boon to the impecunious
music lover. Its “Super Bargain Twin” album Wagner Orchestral
Highlights (8.520018) contains eight of the pieces just described,
and more. Another Naxos CD of Wagner orchestral music is Wagner, The
Ring (8.550211), with six items from our inventory above and no
duplications with the double album.
Having enjoyed the
orchestral pieces, you're now ready at last for some vocal selections.
How about these
three for starters?
Das Rheingold: Final part of Scene Four —
listen for Donner’s unforgettable "Heda! Heda! Hedo!", as
he calls up a storm (see Example
4) — complete with the
sounds of his hammer struck on a rock, lightening flashes and a
thunderclap — leads directly into the orchestral Entrance of the
Gods
Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Love Death
— the same transcendent music as above, here with Isolde's song of
sublimated passion — for me there’s unquestionably only one
version to get: Kirsten Flagstad’s from the early 1950s — what a
voice!
Die Walküre: Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire Music
— again, the same music already referred to, but with the added
poignancy of the voice of Wotan.
Should you buy more
expensive versions?
Here is not the
place to argue the case for or against the innumerable Wagner
performances available on disc — Abbado, Barenboim, Bernstein, Böhm,
Boulez, Challender, Furtwängler, Haitink, Janowski, von Karajan,
Klemperer, Knappertsbusch, Krauss, Levine, Maazel, Mackerras, Munch,
Ormandy, Reiner, Sinopoli, Solti, Szell, Tate, Toscanini, Tuckwell,
Simone Young . . . (to name but a few who’ve conducted Wagner).
But if you want to
explore the possibilities further, I suggest you first sign up for the
Internet and make straight for the P. Zazz site referred to in our Web
Line column, where many CD reviews are to be had for the
clicking.
Failing that, a
current annotated discography of the "Classical Music on CD"
type will assist.
In our Web
Line column we refer also to a site called A Beginner's Guide
to "Der Ring des Nibelungen". This offers further reliable
suggestions for the Ring neophyte, and is well worth a look. One
piece of advice it gives is to read synopses of the operas and then hire
a video. To that we might add “or buy a complete recording of an opera
that has gripped you”.
Regarding a short Ring
synopsis, by the way, you can do a lot worse than the irrepressible,
irreplaceable source Olive Conduit honours in our later article The
Tin Voice Laughed.
All right, yes, his
music may be an acquired taste, but why not give the utter bastard one
more chance?
Sneak up on him
cunningly, choosing your pieces carefully, and then get ready to
luxuriate in some of the most staggeringly gorgeous music ever written.
Let yourself go.
Listener rejoice.
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