Christopher Webber writes:

>If you can't grasp the spirituality in the operas and semi-operas of
>Handel, Purcell (or even Philip Glass) that, I fear, is your loss.

Please don't think I am blind and deaf to the splendid achievements
of a Handel or a Purcell in this genre.  I think I often like Handel's
operas better than Mozart's.  As you have probably guessed I am very much
a Wagnerian and if by that virtue were you to call me an opera lover I
would not be too badly offended.

>By the way, you misrepresent the great arch-pragmatist Wagner, who after
>long and largely academic toils with the serpentine concept of the Total
>Art Work ended up writing proper operas - call them what you will - such
>as 'The Twilight of the Gods' and 'Parsifal', filled with "delightful"
>duets,trios, ensembles, choruses and arias

As a Wagnerian I find almost everything other than Wagner to be almost
too superficial.  I am afraid I cannot possibly agree with the idea that
Goetterdaemmerung is filled with 'delightful' arias etc.  I am afraid this
is to listen to Wagner as though it were 'opera' as opposed to 'music
drama', to use Wagner's own terms.The only way to listen to mature Wagner
is to listen symphonically.  Certain sections function like expositions,
others are developmental in character and others take over the function of
a recapitulation.Vocal parts are like additional sections of the orchestra.
I should remind you that it was Wagner himself who viewed his later works
as Absolute Music.  However I cannot imagine anyone who has understood the
Ring in its totality will ever be able to talk of 'delightful arias' in the
work:  that on the other hand definitely is a grave (and all too common)
misrepresentation of the composer.

I notice Professor Chasan wants to leave coming to grips with the Ring
to his retirement and I must admit it took me years to understand the
philosophical (largely Schopenhauerian but also partly Hegelian), as
well as musical-dramatic aspects of the work.  It makes most of the drama
written for stage (of the non-musical variety) seem pretty superficial by
comparison I'm sorry to say.George Bernard Shaw - that hopelessly IMperfect
Wagnerite!  - took grave offence to the suggestion that Wagner was more
profound than Shakespeare, whereas in this regard I couldn't possibly agree
more.  I don't think I am misrepresenting Wagner at all by saying this,
it is simply another way of saying that poetry, visual art, philosophy,
theology the elements of all of which are contained in the Ring are but
imperfects manifestations of Music.  It is as though Wagner wants us to
see (following Schopenhauer) that these such things, along with Love, and
Death are in reality nought but Music.  It is just another way of saying
that music is the profoundest of all the arts.  That is why it is not
enough for the music to be a mere secondary accompaniment to the drama,
as in film music, or even its equal as in Verdi - for Verdi never ever did
surpass the Shakespeare from whom he borrowed much.  Only Wagner achieved
the total 'dissolution' of the whole cosmos into Absolute Music.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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