Christopher Webber writes:

>I find Satoshi Akima's sustained Wagnerian rhapsodies to be sorry examples
>of the hieratic utterance that serves to put so many "ordinary music
>lovers" off opera, in Boston or anywhere else!

I am afraid we are destined to eternally disagree on our interpretation of
Wagner.  I think we need to accept that.

I must however add that I agree perfectly with much of what Christopher
Webber says about opera and its delights.  I however seek something deeper,
although darker and profounder from music.  That is what makes me a
committed Wagnerian.  That is why Christopher Webber is not a true
Wagnerian.

>[Wagner] threw over his mistily formulated (and unoriginal)
>Gesamtkunstwerk ideal in favour of more conventionally structured -
>and musically more subtle - works from "Tristan" onwards.  And he did
>this because, in the course of that long, dark musical Night of the Soul
>following Act 2 of Siegfried, he was practical enough to work out that his
>dramatic theory wasn't coming off in musical practise.  That's why his use
>of the Leitmotif becomes, shall we say, more "flexible" - the material is
>put to purely musical use rather than used as a series of cheap,
>referential calling cards.

Well I'm afraid I don't think he did do away with the ideals of
Gesamtkunstwerk.  I don't think there is anything vague or mistily
formulated about it.  Also I think come Act 3 of das Rheingold he had
already reached his maturity.  There is nothing even remotely cheap about
his Leitmotiv technique after that.

>>The only way to listen to mature Wagner is to listen symphonically.
>
>A curious and unsatisfactory conclusion. What possible evidence is there
>for it in practise, whatever the man said?

You seem to take the view that Wagner's works are just giant potpourris of
delightfully entertaining numbers.

>I hadn't realised it was possible to understand "The Ring" in its
>totality.

That really is the ONLY way to understand it.  If you don't think so you
will never be a true Wagnerian.  Even Boulez agrees with me in saying this
- that man for whom rigorous musical structure means everything.  He argues
that the Ring demonstrates absolute structural music integrity from the
opening of das Rheingold through to the concluding passages of die
Goetterdaemmerung.  It is a unity which is musical - pure and absolute.
See also Carl Dahlhaus the 'Idea of Absolute Music'.

>'Aria' is just Italian for what the Spanish might call a 'romanza', the
>English a 'song', and the Germans a 'lied'.  It has no special musical
>connotation.  What else are 'Wintersturme' in Act 1 of "Die Walkure"? the
>forging songs in "Siegfried"? the Rhinemaidens' song in "Gotterdammerung"?
>I'm sorry if you don't find all these delightful!

Wagner did not conceive them as arias or Lieder.  They are thoroughly
structured on the basis of Leitmotivic technique and thus are integrated
into the totality structure to which they belong.  Anyone who sees in
the singing of the Rheintoechter only 'delightfulness' misunderstands the
whole Ring cycle.  They sing to Siegfried to warn him of his impending
doom.  Thus their words are tainted with blood as they sing that the only
true Free Hero must also succumb to the power of Destiny.  He must die an
agonising death overwhelmed with fear and anguish.  The Winterstuerme scene
is one of incest, an act which is doomed to end in pain and death.  The
forging 'song' too is much more structurally intricate in that it virtually
has a roughly ABA'B" type of structure as Siegfried and Mimi enter
alternately, each entry triggering off an ever more complex Leitmotivic
development, while driving the whole act on relentlessly to its structural
climax.  I fail to see anything delightful in Mime's evil and Hitlerian
plans to murder Siegfried and to gain absolute power over the world.  I am
moved to tears at the total obliviousness of Siegfried to the tragic fate
of his parents as he naively asks "Notung why did thou have to shatter?"

>Wagner's libretti, judged as pseudo-philosophical poesy, are the
>laughing stock of the German literary world.

If this is so why did he influence Thomas Mann so deeply? In fact a whole
generation of German literary writers after him were completely under
Wagner's spell.  There is nothing pseudo-philosophical about the Ring.  It
is more deeply philosophical than any literary work I know.  I appreciate
that it takes years to understand this.  For example the death of the Free
Hero Siegfried is meaningful in that he succumbs to Destiny, because if
HE is not free then nobody is.  We are then all the playthings of Destiny.
That is what Schopenhauer believed and argued in his World as Will and
Representation.  But the conclusion of Goetterdaemmerung is significant in
that a path to a redemption after acceptance of the Destiny of the Gods is
realised and fully accepted.  It is a freedom through the free acceptance
of death, and the rejection of the blind will to power.  This is way too
complex to explain in one sitting I appreciate.  But in this works one sees
the destiny of man and the cosmos flash before one's eyes.  Yes, one sees
the world end.

>I once heard the only half-jesting Wolfgang Wagner opine that it was a
>pity Andrew Porter's English translation couldn't be translated back into
>German, so that he and many others could understand his Grandfather's
>verbiage!

This is because Wagner writes in a very complicated archaic literary
German which requires that German speakers study the text carefully before
hearing the Ring.  It does not help that there are allusions in the work
to ideas which are Hegelian (another German writer renown for being so
difficult to read as to be almost impossible) or Schopenhauerian (not an
easy writer to read either).  English translations also struggle to convey
the philosophical complexities inherent in the text, but in doing so make
the work more accessible for those who just want to enjoy the potpourri of
'rollicking good numbers' removed of superfluous philosophical impediments.
In other words it helps turns Wagner into opera.

>And does not your intensive, forensic study of the text in isolation
>undermine your earlier plea to regard Wagner's scores as "absolute
>music"?

No.  Because the profundity of the text is made truly meaningful only by
the power of the music, which in its power transcends all philosophical
considerations - as I have repeatedly said, attains its 'dissolution' into
music.

>>Only Wagner achieved the total 'dissolution' of the whole cosmos into
>>Absolute Music.
>
>...but he certainly didn't achieve it.

I see you have yet to see the world end.  As I say, here we will eternally
fail to see eye to eye.  Let us agree to disagree.

Before I finish, one last point:

>I'm aware that we seem to be grazing off topic...

Oh mais non!  You've missed my whole point.  My belief in Wagner is my
belief in Absolute Music.  That is why I agree with Wagner's anti-operatic
stance.  Which brings us back to what the discussion was originally all
about.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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