Our second Canon Club event took place in London at the Sekforde on Tuesday 16th January, where Paul Lay spoke on Richard Wagner. We had a few problems with the camera but hopefully everything comes through!
0:00 Introduction
3:42 Talk
1:02:20 Questions
Paul Lay is Senior Editor of Engelsberg Ideas, and the author of Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (Head of Zeus).
The musical accompaniement Paul selected for the talk is Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung: https://youtu.be/guKdhAlp-Kc?feature=shared&t=207
Suggestions (topics and/or speakers) for future canon club events are welcome, please send them to the email address on the channel’s ‘About’ page.
Welcome everyone um thanks for coming this is our second Canon Club event um I think it’s been a while since the last one I remember it was very hot I seem to remember sweating the whole evening so it must have been quite a while ago um this is um
Thanks so much for for everyone um this is looking around I’m just going to see if it’s the same people as last time so I can just repeat the same speech but um so as everyone probably knows been here last year I wrote a piece about wanting
To set up a salon where people could just learn more and fill in holes in their knowledge um in on the western Cannon about the great musicians philosophers artists writers um and it’s partly my own holes in my own s knowledge which is very embarrassing um which I’m very ashamed about but I
Suppose we shouldn’t be ashamed and the whole theme of this is that there’s no harm in asking questions even if you think it’s makes you sound stupid because many of us won’t know about this subject which is a very sort highbrow and um difficult subject um so sorry I was GNA
Say yeah so anyway the subject tonight is uh Richard Vagner and we have a very a Doan of the history profession with us tonight Paul L who’s senior editor at englesberg ideas former editor of history today with the most high status of History magazines he’s also the author should
Say of a fantastic book about Cromwell uh Providence lost which kind of made me change my opinion of the Lord protector although I won’t be debating Irish relatives about that issue um and Paul is also a massive Opera buff if that’s the right words Opera fan he actually
Took me to glind born last year that’s the first time I saw this you know great cultural uh event and he’s um I think he told me he’s been there dozens of times or a dozen times and uh he’s also been to bayro is that the right pronunciation
Why broid see I’m such an neign years of just watching television uh which you know which is the mecca of Opera if you can still say that not anymore is it not anymore no um so you the subject which is Vagner is obviously uh it’s an area I
I admit I’m very ashamed I don’t know that much about I know it’s ride the Valkyries is the helicopter scene in The Apocalypse Now obviously I’m glad you’ve said that I know he wrot he WR like five day operas but I don’t know if that’s from black hather but I think it’s four
Days that true um and I know he apparently popularized the idea of Vikings having helmets in their heads which um and I know he was also patronized by Mad King ludig so I know what kind of you know the the unimportant stuff uh and obviously um we
Know he’s a big figure in German nationalism and he had some opinions which I think think the kids would now say are problematic which I think we will um get to but um Paul is going to explain it all and the speech is going to be about 45 minutes um long and um
And then we have a little break and then we’ll have questions and then it’s pretty much open and feel free to ask any questions and I should say Paul was made a Freeman of the city of London today so um very distinguished guest which I think believes means he can um
Yeah let’s give a little so he he can uh Drive sheep over the London Bridge still I think that one is still true I don’t know about the naked sword or you can’t be arrested for being drunk in the city is that right uh no I think I can kill people with certain
Medieval weapons as but outside the boundaries I should say that that’s very true anyway thanks so much Paul and looking forward to well thank you Ed and and everyone has been involved in uh this um it’s a great idea uh to talk about what we call the Western Canon what we think
The Western Cannon might be um at a time when it’s often disparaged uh these great works then I think it’s time to at least uh acknowledge them to engage with them and think about what that Cannon might be how it might have changed what remains um I’ll kick off this evening with a
Very bold claim one that I believe quite sincerely that Richard Wagner who was born uh in Leipzig on the 22nd of May 1813 at a time when uh the continent of Europe has been been through this terrible Napoleonic uh tragedy as one would see it and who died in
Venice established pretty much as the greatest cultural figure of his time on the 13th of February 1883 having all that um lived his is allotted three years and 10 and my goodness did any single figure achieve so much in their three years and 10 as vogner and that’s why I will claim that
He is the greatest single artistic genius that Western Civilization has given us that’s a big claim it means he surpasses moart cre creator of perfect works perfect works that rare thing like the marriage of figuro for example surpassing Beethoven who was his great hero surpassing Dante Michelangelo even Shakespeare in his
Achievements and in fact I think the comparison with Shakespeare is instructive because as the great uh Vagner scholar Michael Tanner whose two works on Vagner remain I think the best introductions in the English language to his work and um his life as Michael T has pointed out Vagner is
Problematic to use Michael Tanner’s words he is suspect as Shakespeare is not in part that’s because we know almost nothing about Shakespeare’s life but we know almost everything about vogner not least because Vagner tells us so much through his Diaries through his letters his copious correspondence and much of what we know
Not least his anti-Semitism his virulent anti-Semitism is unedifying to talk about the life of Vagner is is a very difficult one but I think it’s probably the best place to start when we’re talking about him to try and get a grasp of who this person
Is so I shall try and race through a rather brief um biography of him as I said he was born in 1813 but this intensely problematic dramatic almost catastrophic period in European history of the heart of the Napoleonic tragedy in Saxony his father Carl to whom he was
The ninth and last of his children uh died soon after and that has always been as Vagner himself knew a question over his paternity and this resonates this idea of the Lost person the person trying to discover themsel we see this in Len grin we see this right through to the final Opera
Paral this the lone figure who turns up in an alien world seeking their identity seeking meaning and this question of paternity uh surrounds a figure a painter and actor called ludvig Gia uh who in 182 one married uh vogner’s mother and there is very strong evidence that GAA was actually vogner’s father
And indeed for much of his childhood he was known as Richard guy but not long after marrying his mother guia himself died and Richard was taken into Care by a younger brother he’s very unusual Vagner in being one of the great musicians one of the great composers of the western canon
In that he was no musical prodigy he did uh enroll in 1822 I think it was so he’d be eight or nine years of age at dresden’s K school he had piano lessons uh he seems to have be entranced by uh vas deut um which is a key Opera uh still part of
The cannon uh now but it seems to have been a key moment a German nationalist Opera about hunting about forests about all these deep German ideas that resonate uh throughout this Proto German nationalism at this time but importantly much more important than these piano lessons than the music
Lessons he’s having he begins to study Greek and if we want to understand Vagner we have to connect him I think most of all to the Greek tragedians like Sophocles these are the people to whom he who I think the greatest de at the age of eight or nine he starts
Writing epics the words with music come before the music and it’s important to recognize I think when we think about Vagner that he is as great a writer as he is a composer the words and music are the same thing to Vagner he does not have as Mozart had a Deonte a
Litis to whom he works with he works only with himself this massive ego that thinks it can achieve all and ultimately does achieve all in 1828 so he’s about 14 or 15 he goes back to lipic but he very much part of this Saxon World between leig
Dresen deep deep Germany and he takes composition lessons there for the first time and demonstrates I think an extraordinary gift for harmony he does write great Melodies vogner but what is most important about him is his understanding of Harmony I think he becomes passionate about his two great musical Heroes German of
Course Germanic at least Mozart and Boven and I think Beethoven is particularly important he’s absorbed the lessons of the late Beethoven the great works of Beethoven which are his chamber Works uh he composes piano sonatas and a string quet which of course is what Boven above everyone else
Excelled at particularly towards the end of his life and r new things to open and the chamber music aspect of Vagner cannot dist stressed enough you mentioned it I’m so glad you mentioned it is the idea that when we think of v in the popular imagination we see Choppers we see
Robert Deval we see a Vietnamese Beach and we hear the Ride of the Valkyries and we see that male aggressive violent VI anyone who knows the work of Vagner knows that that is so untypical of the works of Vagner because Vagner is almost entirely chamber
Music if you listen to the 14 and a half hours of the Ring Cycle 14 and a half hours barely an hour is of drama almost nothing happens for 13 and a half hours it is people talking about what has happened it is people in conversation usually two people about what might
Happen and it is sometimes people are talking about what is happening the set pieces like the ride of the VES like SE Freed’s murder and SE for its funeral March barely I’ve actually done I’ve actually worked this out in some s it barely reaches an hour of
Drama of what we would think of drama the rest is just contemplation and conversation this is chamber music is one of the reasons why I think one of the greatest of all uh Vagner conductors at least of by ro is Clemens Krauss who understood when you
Listen to his work it’s quiet we have this concept of Vagner being the great bombast V noise and it is anything but there is so little volume in most of vman it is intimate chamber music so I think that’s a really important thing to say I think the all the other thing
About vogner this has been written about by other Scholars his the role of women in his work the key figures in all of vogner’s works are women is zala of course interesting the zala run Hilda but even beneath that there’s always this deeper architecture and when we look at the
Ring cycle the most important figure in the ring cycle is Ed the Earth mother who controls everything women are the people in control even in vu’s domestic world it is fra that runs the rot his wife uh despite votan infidelities it is always the women who come out on top who dictate what
Happens interesting you say that about Cromwell there I think there’s an interesting point about great men’s relationship with women one of the great feminist is probably too much but should we say a Proto feminist is Cromwell being brought up by within the company of seven women a mother and Six
Sisters his relationships with women are extraordinary I think it has something to do with the way in which they engage with the world VNA is something similar has this love of women that I think is not unpr problematic but I think is really crucial to his understanding of
The world and the complexities of his vision of the world when he’s about 17 or 18 he becomes while he’s still in light Zig and still going through his life here of course of course this long and dramatic life he becomes this composition student of Theodor Vin leue
Of the Thomas ker uh in leig anyone who knows about the Thomas Le who knows about classical music will know that Thomas ker is the church that is associated holy with Johan Sebastian bar so he ties in again to this Saxon this East German tradition it’s profound
German tradition uh of words and music and the following year he writes his first Symphony perfectly adequate the First Symphony uh but it is very rarely performed I I can’t think of a performance in my lifetime I’d love to go to one but I’ve never heard one there
Are recordings but it’s he’s plainly not that interested in Symphonies his vision is fundamentally theatrical the theater and the word mean to him as much as music and so there you can see why he doesn’t become seduced by this idea of writing symphonist round about the age of 19 or
20 he writes the text of his first opera and it’s really interesting that he writes the texts first for all his operas the first one is called defend the fairies uh not hugely successful he gains a post as choir master in verburg thanks to his brother Albert and it looks as though
Things are looking up round about the age of 2021 having completed the music for deine he then sketches the text for an opera uh that’s lius for um based B on Shakespeare’s measure for measure he’s obsessed by Shakespeare right to the end of his life he reads Shakespeare out loud almost every
Evening um he meets the actress Mina PLA and becomes director of Music at the theater in magador however at the age of 2425 um the premiere of the lius robort takes place it’s a complete disaster as his his marriage to mina which lasts longer than he never should
For decades she leaves him repeatedly so these infidelities are on both sides them uh they marry in karnburg he gets a position in R so he’s at the farthest edges of the Germanic World here really going nowhere while the center of the operatic world is over in the West in Paris with
Its ideas of gram theater uh most associated with mayaba at this point lots of ballet lots of input of money huge orchestras huge sets this is what operates the exact opposite of Varner’s vision of this conversational text based for which he calls of course um he calls ultimately a kind of
Consecration of the stage um one of the most important things that happens to the young Vagner is with Mina to whom he’s now married he takes a sea Voyage from Ria to London uh that almost ends in disaster is it it is a traumatic event that are crashed against
Rocks they only just survive but this becomes the inspiration for his first truly great work of what we might call the middle period of Vagner which is the Flying Dutchman and with the Overture of the Flying Dutchman he announces himself to the world we listen to it now it’s still
Thrilling one of the problems with doing a 45 minute um account of Varner’s life and work is that I can’t give you these pieces you’ll just have to take this for granted and and and listen to the Overture to the Flying Dutchman but but there it is the announcement that this
Is really quite something special but that’s a way off for the moment he’s in Paris trying to enter this world this center of the operatic world in the 1840s but he’s destitute ignored sidelined marginalized but he continues to run right and he continues to compose in this frenzied way that he never ever
Gives in and I think this is something about Vagner that he simply has this almost frenzied approach to the world a staggering self-belief almost providential idea that ultimately he will win he will convince the world of what he is it is an almost superhuman mentality it is both what makes him
Attractive and repulsive because if ever a person was an egomaniac then it is Richard Vagner but when one looks at what he achieves one thinks well it was all worth it but at this point all you can see is the egom mania this kind of chronic self-belief that he has in
Himself one of the interesting things I think about brid is that there are those who would argue he’s a conservative he was anything but uh he was a revolutionary he was deeply influenced by The Works of Marx and foak L foak uh and in 1849 he took part in the revolution in Dres
As a radical uh this was the whole wave of revolutions that took place after 1848 throughout Europe these great liberal revolutions which have been brilliantly um analyzed and narrated by uh Christopher Clark in his recent book revolutionary spring which I do strongly recommend you read really one of the
Best books produced last year uh and Vagner plays a significant role in that I’ve spoken uh to to to Christopher about uh how important the revolutions were to um to uh Vagner he escapes by the skin of his teeth to Zurich and it’s there uh many of his friends and
Colleagues are thrown into prison and it’s there that he does one great thing which is he begins to embark on the sketches of what becomes the ring cycle but he also writes Judaism in music which is one of the most repulsive repellent and stupid uh articles of anti-Semitism ever written um I don’t
Want to go on about that too much that vogner was a vient anti-i is clear how much that informs his music uh I think it does possibly inform some of the characters in The Ring cycle I think particularly of alberic the dwarf uh the malignant dwarf May embody certain ideas of
Anti-Semitism the Vagner has but I don’t think that that has been proved and I think there has been perhaps too much of an obsession with it in recent years by Otherwise very fine uh Scholars of Vagner such as Barry Millington Stuart Spencers um I’m not sure whether um the
Anti-Semitism which is real in vogner’s worldview is actually there explicitly in the operas but it is something that one has to consider another thing that Vagner is brilliant at is persuading patrons wealthy patrons to support him one of whom around this time while he is in Exile in
Switzerland is the silk Merchant hugely wealthy silk Merchant uto vanor and of course in classic arner style he seduces his wife Matilda while poor old Otto was given him this lovely little house on his grounds and this is so um vaging it is what he
Does and one looks at V it’s only about five foot six tall he has a very strangely shaped head one has to say he’s not an obviously he’s not an obvious bab magnet I think it’s fair to say but he obviously is a compelling personality in the way that he can
Manipulate both male and female figures in his life and he has a mendacious capacity to reject and leave and exploit people for the higher calling that he sees that he has and when I listen to his music I thank God he did but anyway but we’re not talking about a great moralist
Here at this point he’s immersed in the ring he’s got round about to 23 of the third part of the four operas of the ring uh so he’s two3 through SE freed when he abandons it and at that point he composes music to five poems written by Matilda
Vendon his lover uh in this adulterous Affair in which we first of all have this incredible revolutionary Sonic world that we see in its greatest manifestation in Tristan and disorder literally which changes the nature of western music from then on mainly through you can see it it’s embodied in the famous Tristan
Cord he has a hellish time with Mina quite understandably uh that’s his one wife Min and then his entire world changes with the visit of two people in the relationship that he develops with them in the early 1860s he’s visited by the esteemed conductor and penist Hans Von wer who is married to
Kima the illegitimate daughter of of France list who is vogner’s coast friend and if you if you go to um byro you will see that the vanf freed the Vagner house is literally next door to List’s house there they were very very close figures they develop a relationship kma and um Richard
Vagner and they in 1864 soon after he meets the single most important figure he will ever meet who enables all the Ambitions that he has that’s the 18yearold utterly besotted King ludvig II of Bavaria mad king ludvig um I do recommend uh which you know Visconti’s uh great uh film of uh King
Ludi he settled all of Richard vogner’s debts which by this time are colossal absolutely extraordinary while just around the same time kma gives birth to a daughter who is called with such a lack of ego isala um Tristan and his older receives it first performance in 1865 and Mina dies in
1866 there’s a kind of freedom of fulfillment that has become vogner’s by this point this is where the mature Vagner the master kicks in and it’s around this time also so he’d be um late 40s mid to late 40s by now he develops a friendship with um
N uh another stable um selfless figure you can imagine the two of them getting on very well um and in 1872 because of uh ludvig’s patronage the foundation stove is laid at byro this small provincial Bavarian town uh which becomes this place of pilgrimage and you can’t underestimate I
Don’t think the religious nature of uh vogner’s music both his concept of it in religious terms and the way in which others perceive it as pilgrimage and even now going to BU Roy is a kind of pilgrimage when you go to the van Fred there are several signs in German and
English that say this is not a shrine to vman it is entirely Shrine of AR so when you go you go down into the very vaults there is a kind of Chapel in which you enter that has a golden bust of the great man there as you pass through his
Various beautifully scores it is entirely a religious Pilgrim’s experience um they move into that house two years after um uh laying the foundation stone for the theater byro uh in that house of VF freed and they become the toast of Europe he is by this point in his 60s
Exhausted physically exhausted it is no surprise there is no figure in Western Europe that pack more into his 70 years almost 70 years than him he writes his final and I would argue greatest work passal and then dies and this is the one work that was written specifically for the theater of byro
With those Acoustics in mind and regardless of whatever any director German director usually what travesty a German director will put on that stage the music resonates like nothing else on Earth it is the greatest acoustic of any theater in the world and having completed pal fall he
Dies in kimon in Venice on the 13th of February 186 3 and he’s buried at byid 5 days later where he remains now the great Russian pianist fat RoR there’s a there’s a great quote from him I think who on listening to um f vanger’s um uh recording of Tristan and his old
The 53 recording said this I’m convinced that it’s impossible to wish for anything better this is true happiness I can understand why Vagner is so inaccessible to the vast majority of listens they fail to lift themselves up to the same height Unfortunately they are too lazy to mean spirited lacking in the necessary
Imagination between them and Vagner lies a gigantic Gulf there is something that’s true about that I think is that there is a fear of Vagner and I ask you to get rid of that fear of Vagner have the courage to embrace it and listen through it I did it in
Reverse the first time and go to the theater to do it there are many many great recordings of Vagner but only when you see it in the theater does it really worked you get the full idea of what it is about which is the closest we have to the Greek the great Greek
Tragedies um it takes courage it takes persistence it doesn’t come easily but you simply wallow and I I did it in reverse as I said starting paral paral was the first opera that I saw in many ways the most difficult but I think importantly the most musically seductive
Because it is the most beautiful and if you let yourself wallow in that then the rest becomes possible but it doesn’t matter really where you start because his greatness is announced as I’ve already said in that first overture in the Flying Dutchman and I think he ass attained in
The Forbe the Prelude to um Len grin there is a wonderful piece on YouTube if you want to see the beauty of that because when Charlie Chaplain in The Great Dictator has this wonderful spoof of his hitlerian dictator and although it’s a comic scene the beauty of that forb which is I think
In my mind vogner’s first truly great revolutionary moment when it’s chromatic it is not trying to uh make a prey of the rest of the work it works on its own terms chaplain has a similar Grace a similar humor and he plays with it in a way that does
No damage to the actual beauty of the work it’s well worth seeing both and capture the Sur of course chaplain himself was a formidable musician there is I think people um think about it that it’s often contested there there is a an ABS of the great voices of the past to most
People who really get into vogner um there was a golden age that came after the second world war when the investment let’s be honest about this of a rather dodgy German State uh produced voices of extraordinary ability I’m thinking of people like Astra Van Martin mle Hans
Hotter uh and people from Mad the Norwegian Kiren flagstad um who along with the Productions of vand vogner who um was Richard’s uh great grandson tried to appease the excesses of the 1930s and 40s which is why the 1950s become such a golden age perhaps the early 1960s of vagna singing
Of vagna Productions of vagna conducting now and I would point you if you wish to engage with this to that period conductors like vilam fingler Hans nappet bush in particular when it comes to um the uh ring cycle uh to people like kybert all producing work at BYO during the 1950s
Um and we come to uh the seven mature operas which I first came into contact not in terms of the theater that was much later but when they were shown uh on the BBC um which I think is fair so is a rather different institution than it is
Now which devoted and this is true I’m not lying here devoted 10 weekends during the early 1980s to showing the 1976 Centenary ring cycl byid so it had been the first uh production was in 1876 in 1976 there was this great opportunity to reimagine it uh conducted by Pier
Boues who was a great um uh a great engager a great master of public engagement for all his pretensions and it was directed by patri sheru and it was seen as a Marxist interpretation I don’t think that’s necessarily A criticism of it because as I’ve said Vagner was profoundly influenced by Marx foyar
Hagel German idealism um and so it made a great deal of sense it was a brilliant production it was shown act by act for 10 weekends on the BBC imagine that now and having that taster I then worked my way backwards I’ve talked about um I mean
That’s a wonderful production much of it available on YouTube there’s also the one that came later by har cuper there are many many examples of this I’ve talked about the great uh conductors they you can pick up you can engage with Le but I Cann not emphasize enough that
There is no remote substitute for seeing vogner’s Works live in the theater I’ve seen brilliant Productions usually spare and what’s most intriguing about the state of VNA production at the moment is that the best stuff is done here in the UK uh there may be reasons for that the German Austrian tradition
Because of the historical baggage of Vagner tries to deconstruct to subvert and it’s now become an almost kind of parody of itself that’s fine when you’re in by ro you can always close your eyes you have the acoustic but the UK now I would argue is the PowerHouse of vagan
Production certainly the two greatest Productions that I’ve seen of the Ring cycle over the last 10 years have been Opera North’s production uh under the brilliant tutelage of Richard fars who’s a truly great productor most of all the production that’s now at What’s called
The BYO in the cot wal at longor a 400 seater house that is has the musical director Anthony negas who was the uh who was mentored by Reginal Goodall uh who many Germans think was the greatest uh vogan conductor of his generation but he had a slightly dodgy
Past as he was a member of the British Union of fascists and so never never quite was accepted by the British establishment maybe some kind of qualification one needs to be a truly great vagian uh conductor I don’t know um one should also say um that we’re rather polite in this
Country towards Bogner one of the thing I really enjoy about the German uh speaking world is the way in which they boo um quite extraordinary the museum at Myro for example actually displays a whistle that a patron brought H specifically to express his anger at the 1976 Patric Sho ring cycle and it’s
Engraved with the date of use as did he come along this I I have become convinced that there are people who will spend many hundreds of Euros just simply to go into some inexpressible Madness of booing uh that goes on at the end of of something at byro or at Saltsburg or
Something like that H it is it is quite extraordinary anyway I’ve seen them all a lot many times and I’ve come to sort of tentative conclusions of what I think are among um the most Sublime utterances of the human Spirit uh um if we look at the seven mature operas of
Vagner there are 19 acts in total so I thought I’d finish off with going through each of those individual acts and trying to summarize them and give my uh take on them if you like so we start with the first of the um ring cycle uh that’s rold
Um first of the TR it begins in the most extraordinary way uh with this the emergence of an E flat motive that probably takes 30 seconds for you to realize it’s going it literally emerges from the bowels of the Earth because it is essentially talking about the creation of that world the lit
The bit in between that and its Sublime ending can test one’s patience a little bit but there’s a wonderful descent to neble Heim with anvils between uh scenes two and three which always um Thrills and this preliminary evening is is wonderful Vagner uh who loved the comedies of Shakespeare uh claimed rather
Surprisingly this is quoted by um Thomas man that he had a profound lack of seriousness which is not always apparent uh we could we could discuss that to the ends of the Earth um but always there is this kind of serious nature because despite some of the comedy that takes place in best
Rangol the central character is Eda who appears very briefly a kind of allseeing Earth Mother a cosmic gossip who signals the moment when comedy or at least irony turns fully to tragedy and from then on in the ring cycle the fate of the Gods is one of Destruction
The one Opera the next one the valur in particularly the First Act is the one that I think most people would see as the moment when they are grasp it is so erotic if you go to love tube and watch the duet between Sigmund and siglinda the unknowing vom twins vogner has very
Challenging I thinking about incest uh Sig freed is the illegitimate son of an incestous Union between Sigmund uh and siglinda who are both children of votan uh by IM Mortals so I mean really difficult stuff in the uh in in in the 21st century but um there’s this it’s a kind of
Infallible work that First Act of devalk it’s a three roll chamber drama that climaxes literally with the most dazzlingly erotic shag for one of a better world in all artist the best and the best I think introduction to Richard vgas MIT works I I feel if you don’t feel the thrill at
The end of that then you really are dead um second act of of of the valkur is much more um conversational I love the scenes with frer Von’s wife understandably AG grieved described as trouble and strife in some English translations though some people think
It’s accused of a kind of bit of a plot so far the third Act of The Valkyrie begins with the Ride of the Valkyries and ends almost unbearably it is impossible not to shed a tear with this then votan bids farewell well his favorite banished daughter Brun Hilder I
I mean I’m not a terribly lacrose uh figure but anyone who’s a parent perhaps even anyone who’s a child uh will be in tears I don’t think anyone quite gets the tensions and love between Generations quite like Vagner SE freed the third Opera of the
Ring cycle is a bit of a problem for some uh the simple Warrior of pure blood has obviously difficult connotations but actually I think it’s become my favorite part of the ring in many ways what that says about me uh I don’t know but um the First Act of SE it’s fabulous the
Prelude is certainly most extraordinary in the whole of the cycle and I have to say that the last 20 minutes is out of this world the second act I just uh love it Fatma the dragon uh an old grump who needs a bit of a cuddle I think it’s fair to say
Last two minutes of breathtaking um Vagner at um J most breathtaking and the third act this is where Vagner picks up um from deciding to write Tres old just toss off tresman Z and Dem near and come back to this later uh the Prelude track three I think it’s uh we’re now safely
In the territory of the great mature Vagner the master of all e surveys and by the First Act of goad demeron the final work in the ring cycle with magnificent love duet awesome orchestral transitions a drama of extraordinary psychological truth possibly the most perfect structured really long piece of music ever
Written the second act moment when it’s clear uh that there’s something of the Parisian composer of grand opera survive there the great villain haran summons his vassals in kind of thrilling uh Trio of Vengeance and then finally we have third act uh I mean talk about going out on a
High um the proportions a little bit over the place but the ending the emulation scene which we may come to later is in my opinion the greatest P piece of music ever made and it’s also worth pointing out going back to this point about B Vagner the
Writer uh the perhaps in devel Cura because he writes the music forward but he writes the drama backwards so he starts with got wrong which is which is known as seed’s death in the first one seed is the young SE and he goes back but he writes the music
Forward so it’s actually uh more sophisticated I think by the point he reaches deur that melding Is is so perfect and that’s uh the kind of perfection of this idea of a litera um writing that’s called star um if you want to see a complete ring
Cycle uh it will be repeated at longor but unfortunately it’s sold out before any tickets went on General sale um it’s only a 400 seat of house um we’ll come to the end of this stuff now the Meister singer Von nberg described as Varner’s only comedy though I think by the arguably
Anti-semitic lampooning of the p and six Speck Meer that sense of humor may not be apparent to everyone I think it’s fair to say um it has the First Act has a really dazzling piece of Daring a holy authentic Pastiche of a bark Coral remember he’s a student of
The Thomas ker here uh otherwise Wise It’s really rather something of a board meeting uh and so he goes on but I think at the the end of that is the one moment when an appeal is made towards what is called deut higher const holy German art as the rest of Europe comes
And like a pins movement towards Germany this is the Germany of the 16th century threatened with destruction it is no surprise that de singer was the most popular of all the operas during the 1940s particularly 42 and 43 when Germany faced a similar obliteration and this appeal to um Hala DEA const is
Problematic is the only point where I think maybe I’m I’m not so keen on this of course um one wonders about the performance history of the piece and maybe one or two of the people who liked it rather too much historical figures Tristan well many will argue that the last 75
Minutes of Tristan third Act is the greatest piece of music ever composed it’s impossible not to be swept up by the lias the love death in toone by is older a Sheen turn is swept up by her own mortality it is literally a deadly orgasm a literal climax as this long
Peerless piece of music drama is resolved by the resolution of the most famous cord in history and I remember once seeing a woman in BYO who had the Tristan cord tattooed on her arm I thought that’s my kind of woman now we come to the final work par
Ofal I think it’s the greatest of all perhaps V’s most controversial work first of his works that I saw in the theater I was captured by this complete intoxicating sound world Listen to the Prelude there’s an old I think it’s a bogus tradition essentially they don’t
Applaud at the end of the First Act but just walk out in silence and Consecration and I think here V reaches the peak of his powers from the Prelude as I’ve mentioned which are by then otherwise contemptuous nature thought admitted to being Sublime Vagner called bov seventh Symphony the apotheosis of the dance
It’s not that it’s what takes place towards the end of parel’s first act that is the apotheosis of the dance in the transformation scene as chorus and Orchestra intertwin in a rhythmic Grace unparalleled in all music listen the hand snapped bushes BYO recording on Phillips easily available if you need
Proof here as gaman The Works narrator tells pass here space and time become one and they do and it’s hear that another Obsession of mine I should mention have I got time yeah good Paul McCartney um always been obsessed by Paul McCartney um and I’ve never really understood why Paul McCartney never
Produced much that was any good after the age of 30 I’m thinking how can someone who wrote Elena rby at 23 he Jude at 26 or whatever black bird these wonderful Melodies produced so little after well even to that Vagner has the answer uh one of the many extraordinary
Gifts that Vagner has is the ability to create Melodies of inordinate length but which are instantly memorable examples the woodbird song in SE freed the pry song in De Meister singer he’s an extraordinary melodist I think he gets Paul McCartney in a bit from the Meister singer V Nunu
When Han saaks the Meister singer considers how few artists manage the leap from youth to maturity so he says in one of his aors this is a rough translation from German in joyful days of Youth when first our souls are captured in Joy Of Love en raptured when hearts are beating
Proud and high the gift of song is given to All by kindly Heaven it is spring that sings not we and then he goes on through summer fall and Winters chill when cares of Life are pressing though marriage brings its blessing children and business Strife ill will only those who still
Kept then this gift of song from heaven then Masters they will be and throughout these three score years and 10 Vagner surpassed each previous Monumental work of which between 10 and seven of them depending on your point of view your opinion are Transcendent masterpieces they suffice to call him
Great indeed I would argue as I said at the beginning the greatest who else could imagine and portray the end of the world in word and music as we will see in a moment there’s a wonderful place in thean Fred where you see the score go through
You don’t have to read music but you get some sense of the sheer Genius the mind of the man to orchestrate all the light motifs of the Ring cycle together ideas of transformation ideas of redemption of a place like Valhalla of a person like votan andron Hilda and you see it at the
End of ring cycle in the final passage the emulation scene of goedang and I managed to find something on YouTube that just highlights uh looking at the score the use of light motifs to um bring it all together after 14 and a half hours of music and if that
Is not greatness I don’t know what is thank you um thanks very much Paul that was fantastic that was um a to to force as they say in the rest history and um I’m gonna ask I’m gonna open it up to the audience to ask some questions and and
Feel free to ask anything or to if you have an opinion and an expert on it please feel free um to make your opinion um I mean what really struck me about that was you been reading that book by Peter Watson about the German genius and you describe he going around rer and
Kingsburg um and all these places that were part of this kind of great sort of German cultural area uh which are no longer um which are no longer sort of dominated by German culture and hasn’t been since 1933 and and reading that book it was interesting how much certain areas like
Chemistry or egyptology or archaeology were so completely dominated by German that you almost need Germany need to speak German almost but most of all music um and is that is it true to say that is no longer the case I mean is is Vagner I get the impression that
The Germans spend huge amounts on sort of States subsidized Opera and they’re always going to the Opera but maybe that’s not not so true I mean it’s Varner decreased in popularity there uh can we just interrupt there two plates of chips back to British culture let’s get some anglosaxon
Pragmatism what I’m saying is that varisized that kind of Highly German culture which is is is trees and has been for a century well I suppose um how do you overcome the legacy of 33 to 45 uh of which he’s embodied there and I think that’s part of the problem with um
The way in which Productions in German speaking world you know which throw an awful lot of money I mean I I had some statistic I don’t know whether it’s true or not that the Bavarian government’s uh um funding of the Bavarian State Opera uh is greater than the whole of
The Arts Council of England’s funding uh certainly I mean just staggering the amount of investment and yet as I said uh earlier actually the focus um the real place where all the good uh vagian um operatic stuff is done is in the UK uh is that because we don’t doesn’t
Have the same baggage here I don’t I think we don’t have the same baggage uh we’re also used to the idea of being quite Fleet of foot uh and escaping State institutions so so my like longer for example which I would argue as I said uh produced the
Finest ring cycle of recent years is has no Public Funding at all uh is entirely dependent upon uh private donations uh is a 400 seater converted cattle shap that is the the that that is um stocked by um the seats that were given them by the Royal opera house when
It refurbished uh you know that’s the way that it works and I think that sort of free to for produce that’s not to say that I haven’t seen great things um in German or Austrian Opera Houses I have and where I think the difference is is
That they can afford to pay the best singers that’s you the quality of singing in uh those German speaking theaters is very very high uh but I don’t think you know ultimately it’s not it’s not simp it’s not as simple as that particular V which is very kind of
Ensemble based as I very conversational you don’t have to have the greatest singers in the world in order to make a great um dramatic moment um and so Opera North again has uh that ability to do that again very little uh funding um you know maybe there’s an argument
For spareness I think this is particularly true um of uh vagno that conversational quality that I have about that chamber mus is equality habit is that less is more right I mean it’s hard to avoid this you know this Shadow hanging over him that you know you
Talked about sort of young man who was failing but with a sort of providential superhuman belief in himself and that the world know the greatness um and Vagner is sort of Tainted more than anyone by his fans one fan particular I mean how much could he talk but I mean
How much is you how much is he is he to blame for um because I mean it had a huge kind of cultural influence on on Nazism as a in more ways than most music or writing I mean the they were they were all Prof Fanatics I
Mean well and the sort of the ch ch Mania the sort of the obsession with German I mean it’s very Pagan isn’t it I mean it’s the vogner family was pernicious in this in this whole thing Kima uh set up the mythology around him uh vined Vagner um the Welsh
Orphan we should always blame the Welsh for these things um is um H who married uh sea freed his grandson was particularly pernicious and early advocate of narcism opened up uh the um the home of arred to um uh Hitler it’s particularly chilling when you go into
The family home that’s next VF freed there you see the table uh where seed and Vin Fred and those people that you know welcomed uh Hitler with open arms I can’t help thinking that what on Earth did Hitler see in the ring cycle which is the death of political power
All through that he could possibly engage with and I think it’s interesting that during 42 and 43 when the nazzi regime suddenly realized it was on uh the back foot uh with defeats at Stalingrad and and and so on that suddenly the only thing that’s produced from then on is Meister
Singer because Meister singer is the one that’s really problematic particularly the third act and this idea of holy German art of this idea of holding out there is something um that uh one could see the appeal to and and to Hitler I mean I I think we over state this idea that
Um Vagner was the kind of state composer of the Nazi Germany you know most um uh German officials and politicians were bored out of their minds by they couldn’t stand him Hitler was an obsessive that goes back to seeing actually the the turning point for Hitler was his engagement with
Renzi which is the third of vogner’s uh young youth beautiful operas not great success there a couple of good um Aras in it but it’s by no means you know part of his core Cannon um that was the turning point for Hitler um I think what what may have engaged with Hitler is
This precipitous kind of nature of this this daring of of Vagner this idea of power Ma you know um but there is no way that one could engage with something like the ring cycle and think that this is come some kind of stamp of approval for what
Hitler is doing it is a warning against all of that it is a warning about power the death of gods you know we talk about you know it is much if you want to interpret it as many people are as much a Marxist hegelian work the influence of
Forbach as it is anything else else and I think It ultimately you see the contingency of the political and cultural situation which it came forward but like all great artworks it’s endlessly manipulative towards it can be endlessly manipulated towards the time and say you say the same with
Shakespeare yeah you could do the same with k l i mean V was also like an ansite so I mean if he hadn’t been then well I have no idea but we don’t know what what Shakespeare was I mean there’s yeah I mean there’s anti-Semitism in Shakespeare
W right but it’s less it’s less I mean as you say we don’t know that much about life we don’t know enough about that’s the point is that vagna tells us everything about it kind the mixture of someone this paganistic nationalism and the antisemitism yeah and the grandiosity was is obviously a
Very grandiosity well yes there you know the huge set pieces I mean but that’s what I’m arguing against is that there’s not many set pieces right I don’t think it is as grandios I think we read that almost in hindsight about partner uh there are some set pieces but there
Aren’t many it’s it’s quite interesting watching um the World at War uh endlessly repeated um whenever uh the there’s a sort of German apocalypse that say Stalingrad or k or something it’s seek for its funeral music that’s played he just thinking how’s that work you know um it’s become
So associated with that period that it’s very very difficult to escape it but it’s not it is not born of that period it is born of the 1850s 60s 7s 80s um I’ll open up in a minute but I wonder you said he’s it’s like a very Saxon
Worldy grow up you know now be e did did the DDR ever claim him as a sort of or they just well there’s a very embarass I wish I had a picture of it actually there’s an extremely embarrass in p uh statue of him in uh leig which is his
Birthplace of course but um the only two uh memorials to him in Li are a plaque on uh a dodgy supermarket in a badly restored place of blue plaque uh that says that Richard B was born here on a really kind of brutalist supermarket and
Then as you get out of town there is quite possibly the worst um statue to any great uh figure um which looks like a kind of airfix model of uh one of those painted air fix models of Richard vogner uh which I think must have been constructed about 10 years ago but the
DDR had a very very difficult relationship with him because of uh the relationship with Hitler with with with fash and narcism all that stuff um and uh he was not uh widely performed there he was performed there but not widely per it wasn’t like a ban like in Israel was it
Was just no it wasn’t banned uh and in fact it has been performed in Israel I mean people i’ Z meta wheni it was banned for a while though it is still banned the performance of Varner is banned in Israel to this day right uh
It’s just a few people you know you have to have the gravitus but Daniel Baron boy right to say play you know something like secreet idal or an overture but um that’s not going to change and before ask um open it up uh Paul says he’s
Gonna create a Spotify he’s gonna make a Spotify playlist if anyone wants to be introduced I don’t know how I I don’t know if we have an email list or if I put up on the substack or something but um means you can sort of you know have
An intro into VNA um so any questions lady there I have two questions first of them you just mentioned um I would like to hear your comments on because I’m in love with that lo I love that and it’s not so talked about it’s kind of like you know bit
Underrated but and second question is as a historian how do you explain this um hatred in these Geniuses yeah how does that happen because if you look at LNA and how he can write SE fre idle someone so tender and so and incredible you know I mean beyond our imagination the
Humanity that he understands and he delivers but then yet he says such incredible horrid things in his article Jing yeah of course and then he describes Jewish people being physically unfit to produce art because they can’t pronounce certain sounds in European language so they therefore they could
Never create great art there are other things there rather than just not liking Jews or not wanting Jews in Germany it’s towards like like an obsession you know someone I was mentioned to my husband you don’t like someone maybe and you talk about them but then there’s a
Certain point where you realize that person is not just not liking that person there’s actually something wrong with him not the person that he doesn’t like so how does that happen these people come to that point I know it’s like maybe a question to a psychiatrist
But as a historian how do you how you what’s your take uh well I mean there is no answer to it I I you know that’s that’s the nature of kind of Genius I suppose I think it was George Steiner as first person who came
Across this who was a great um uh voger and of course Jewish as well as and and indeed one most interesting things that many of of the most articulate um practitioners uh most uh uh articulate critics have been Jewish uh in in fact many of of um my friends uh it tends to
Be quite manin is that Jewish friends of mine tend to read be obsessed by V and think he’s fantastic or they just don’t listen to him at all it’s like you know the state of Israel he’s just banned um uh there is no explanation that I could possibly give you because you know
Greater minds the mine have considered this and there is no explanation I don’t know what it is what I would agree with is that is that secret idle is absolutely fantastic um and I think it’s I think he you well you wonder if he wrote the SE
Freed ID because as I mentioned earlier that moment uh the third Act of SE freed which is those themes of the secred idle uh that he picks up on is the moment when he when I think he becomes truly great that’s the moment and I think he
Probably realized that uh uh he gave up to um uh that was the great gift um on the birth of SE freed there’s an I suppose rather than my commentary as a gentile if you want a Jewish commentary on that there is the Fantastic episode of Kier enthusiasm which is based around SEC
Fre uh where Larry David seet it or coming out of a theater and a person says a fellow Jewish person says are you a self-hating Jew and he says what are you talking about he says you’re you’re you know you’re humming Vagner and then it ends with him finally serenading um Cheryl
With um sred ID I mean it’s that’s the kind of how do you deal with this stuff I mean I don’t know um he he is an appalling anti-semite there’s there’s no um there there’s no getting out of that and yet at the same time as you say he
Makes these things of such Transcendent Beauty and illumination that people like Daniel Baron bo uh who is Jewish who is Israeli can turn around there and articulate why that greatness is there I remember being uh at the Royal Albert Hall after his ring cycle which he do
New we gave one of the most Artic um speeches that I’ve ever known about the greatness of arner um without conceding for a moment that he wasn’t also a terrible person um there is no is the truth um Joseph thank you very much for fantastic talk to come back to Hitler again
What AR of historians like Ian k Waters that in the last few months of Hitler’s life the idea of s of destruction of Never Surrender of suicide of Master that he’s bringing sort of influences from Wagner this is the the god of D Twilight of the Gods this is the
Apocalypse coming yeah yeah and certain biographers of him certain historians of the third right make this reference to yeah is there any power to that is there any truth to that do you think well uh I don’t know um again going back to those uh World at War um they often use
Themes from goserong when they’re talking about the end of of of um uh Germany in 1945 when there over Berlin the banker all that kinds of stuff uh so far as what Germany did um it seems to have been obsessed by and Hitler seems to been obsessed by Meister singer
There is there are very very few Productions of any of the Ring Psy or anything else after to 4142 it’s all m sing of Von nberg which seems to be one of those or is perceived so far as I understand as something to encourage you know Germany uh in the
Final Act of the third Act of um to my singer to encourage a kind of resistance that we will survive despite what these people will do to our great holy lands and you know this Holy Roman Empire here that they’re talking about um so I don’t know I mean there’s
There’s an extraordinary recording of De singer that’s in 1945 where you can hear the bombs you can hear the bombs outside uh I think it’s I think it’s F Bang is the conductor at the time who was not greatly in favor I mean a lot of uh
German musicians who we associate in the west with um the Hitler regime actually did not prosp particularly uh they weren’t incarcerated or anything but Strauss for example was marginalized uh F wengler was marginalized the only person who really prospered is supposed was Hans fitzner uh as a composer as an opera composer and
Um uh probably Clemens Krauss uh who was um part tried to help stros with various things but it it was it was not an easy place to be a conductor or composer at that point even if you were not a you know explicit opponent of the regime um there’s a
There’s a fantastic recording uh by um Peter Anders and Michael risen of Schubert’s Vint Riser again when you can hear the bombs falling outside Berlin they’re in a Berlin uh recording studio in March 45 I think I imagine uh what it must have been like almost and
It’s sung almost as though it’s like the last breath of German culture um but I I get the sense and in I no exper it’s been some very good work on this that no one really wanted to confront the message of what the ring cycle uh in particular said about German
Culture because it wasn’t performed know the only thing performed at byro from 42 onwards Me singer which you can see is a propaganda work if if you want to I mean it’s it’s of course it’s much more subtle than that it’s much greater than that but it is it is the
One uh work of of vogner’s mature period where you feel uncomfortable about the ideology where you could feel uncomfortable about the ideology um is that Paul yeah a few brief comments and the questions there’s some interesting Link in what youve talked about um in terms of the link between V
And hler one also not not only win but another um childin law which was Houston St chamber of um an interesting link you mentioned Phillips um between Marx and and ra and Philips the Phillips family of course were um the um company was founded by Marx’s Uncle as perhaps you know
Yeah um passiv all itself um Garner insisted was conducted by a Jewish conductor um for its first performance so there’s so there’s so much riches and complexity there I had one question really which is about an encounter I had with um uh a philosopher who stressed the influence of shophow
On and he Brian Mcgee I met him um fortuitously in 2014 performance of um Tristan his aler at um c garden by himself and we had a very interesting chat i’ read his stuff and his view is that moment and you’ve identified it from the third Act of zre where he
Abandons the ring brought everything after that that’s truly great that’s the greatest the latest and greatest and McGee’s view was very much that it was reading shophow that triggered this extraordin final and Brilliant creative bir and I wonder whether that’s something you looked at I agree entirely
With that because I think what he what he took from chop uh uh is that um I mean shophow was very critical of him he tried to engage with shopen as he did with Nisha and he just thought he was awful I mean he was so critical of
Vogner I mean app paing he treated him very very badly uh in the advances he made towards him but what I think uh Vagner did from the third Act of SE freed onwards was he took account of schopenhauer’s idea that music was more important than the
Words uh and he makes that very explicit I think Sho says that music is the Transcendent art forget the words uh and so there’s probably that moment in uh the first actor of Valkyrie probably probably the whole of Valkyrie where the words and music are so aligned so
Brilliant with this St Al brine uh but then the music takes over uh and you see it in I mean in passal in particular uh you have uh those those moments are just knock you out completely even n who was really critical of him uh when he wrote P he
Wrote the most disparaging stuff in his personal D about him but he says about the the Forbe the prelude P all this is the best thing he’s ever done you know this is this is fantastic and he’s right so you hear uh the prud um the absolutely unbelievable transformation music that
Takes place in at the end of the First Act of par ofal uh which is you know the apotheosis of the dance you know in the way that even Bas and seven Symphonies not and then you have things like the good friday music you know you you have
Those moments when g a man said at the end of uh before the transformation music in act one says you know here space and time become one you know you have these just short utterances and then the music takes over so the words still count but they’re
Very much beneath the music and you know when uh gance again announces the glory of Good Friday in the third act you have the Good Friday music uh and you just think my goodness this is just this is just something else you just not quite as Pagan as it and not not to
Christianity oh well I mean that’s that’s the big that’s the big argument of all I remember is it a Christian work or is it not uh there’s a really good piece in the Cambridge companion to apal by uh a woman uh Lucy Becket who makes a very
Very strong case or it’s a Christian work a really compelling case even Michael Tanner admits that uh but then there are others who say you know it’s it’s it’s it’s not at all it is an anti-christian work it’s it’s it’s gone beyond that stuff uh you know that’s the
Ambivalence of great Arts you know we will discuss it forever uh but I think Passa follows the moment when the music takes over from everything it he he has mastered everything musical by the time he comes to FAL and almost the whole thing can be said in music it’s almost as though these
Utterances are just they’re almost punctuations what what was his religious if we know everything about him what was his religious being uh he was a he was a East German Protestant uh in upbringing uh Lutheran but by culture or belief I mean was he was by culture
Yeah no not particular I well I don’t get the sense that he’s um particularly fath TR what he is is he’s U he’s very open uh to ideas uh sh and Har ideas connected to budhism uh he certainly there were plans to uh this is round about the time of
Passal he always had plans to write an opera about something but he wanted to write uh an opera on the Life of Christ for which he made sketches uh so this is obviously uh important to him I mean that would have been fascinating uh to to see that happen um uh but he
Was yeah he was he just took ideas from from from from where he wanted where he’s very interested in Hinduism very interested in Buddhism interested in eastern ideas he was interested in everything I mean I just think he he would take ideas and use them it’s it’s it’s interesting when
You look at the ring cycle um so you have uh the Nea lungan lead as the basis but then adapting that if it doesn’t work out in quite the way he wants it he’ll go to another source you know a saga or something that that that
He can use to make his beliefs um uh explicit so he’s he’s a jackor who adapts everything think uh but you know his his his cultural roots are Protestant Lutheran Saxony uh but you know he it was much too capacious a mind to be restricted to that and the guy on
The right there that’s you coule questions about um one um that’s the only relatively short I’ve ever heard um is that right I mean did he because you talk about him a brilliant effective became CH a composer but did he write anyes is their instrumental
Work that’s not used and this also to is influence I think St a great successor the one who really writes operas which are BL and so on but does everybody get changed by what he does in harra is it going on just anyway and given that he only writes these gigantic
Operas yeah how many other musicians and composers 1879s actually knew that much about him because it’s not that they can play his or yeah yeah no that’s that’s a very good question um let me try and remember them all um I mean he was uh
Immensely in I mean if you look at uh those byro performances um the great uh figures of European music were there even those who opposed him like deusi was quite a fierce opponent and yet at the same time it was impossible not to absorb him
Because if you listen I mean I think the most vagian Opera post Vagner is is deuses pelis I mean it’s it’s it’s full of paral in terms of that slightly of hazy woozy kind of atmosphere that it has you know there is no way that you could have Strauss you could have deusi
You could have sherberg you could have Berg you couldn’t have any of these people without Vagner he changes the whole thing um and the Tristan cold changes that you know and the if you look even going back to um the chromatic nature of the the Prelude um of Len Gren
Uh it changes everything it sounds like I mean it sounds like nothing on earth now God knows what it must have sounded like in the 1870s or something just extraordinary and then you listen to um uh the PA ofal Prelude you know there’s that’s it’s very very difficult to
Imagine anything by deusi anything by Stravinsky anything even people who oppose him and Deus in stravinski anti varians but you can’t imagine them using their radical music without him uh he he changed everything he changed everything not only for those who became what you might call his disciples
Uh in the in the ustr German tradition but those in the Franco tradition of course he was he was the there any other group he did like from the Germans obviously well he played for Queen Victoria it’s quite fun with her but she was German anyway
Um um uh so but where were what were the other question there mention oh Miniatures yes um yeah there’s there’s there is the secret do there’s the First Symphony um uh which is not much of a work there is I think which is really great is the vand Don leader which is
Not of course purely instrumental obviously uh but that’s a really great work and I think it’s a kind of transitional work um uh where he tries where he deals with that chromaticism uh those really revolutionary changes that that are there most explicit in uh Tristan but
It’s very much a sketch for what Tristan is I mean there are chords and Melodies that are directly transposed into trist from that and of course that was born of his affair uh with Theon donk um uh H name vason Doner but it’s her poems that are there as
Well so um that’s inspiration but no no there’s not much there’s there’s not a lot no I mean you know uh except for the fact that there are Miniatures throughout you know it it goes back to the idea of being chamber music so much know there are Miniatures it goes back
To this idea of The Melodies that he produces um I always think it’s it’s staggering secet the The Melody of the woodbird which is so prolonged a Melody uh and yet you always remember it when you hear it it’s it it’s so extraordinary beautiful to have the
Confidence to write a melody so long so extended uh so complicated and yet so uh instantly memorable it’s extraordinary how did he do it so so B has expl or he wrote down that these Tunes would just come into his head and all he had to do was get it out did he
Did V Beyond his colossal ego did did he inspired by himself where did it come from was it Pagan was it Christian what was it that made how did he get this stuff out oh God I mean yeah I’ve have no idea I mean I mean
Certainly it it was it it was born at immense physical cost uh there’s there’s no doubt about it I mean everyone talks about if you if you look at any um uh references to him any Uh any biographical references it’s a man of like colossal energy uh he’s he’s constantly engaged with text as a man will be you know dominate all proceedings completely complete ego Maniac he will he reads every evening out loud Shakespeare Gerta Dante all his uh favorite authors I mean it it’s
Almost as though the man never slep he’s working all the time of course he has these endless affairs with people where does he get the time you know this man I mean the the energy is is is colossal um I think he burns himself out
It’s fair to say where it comes from I I really I really don’t know because the mystery is is that he’s the least precocious of all the great composers you know he he really has to love learn and work at this stuff in the way that mad certainly and Schubert and B and
People did not he’s not a particularly um he’s not a brilliant pianist he’s not a he’s not a virtuoso in any sense uh none of those things are true of him in the way that they’re true of the other great composers um I don’t know he’s a man of the
Theater uh but you know that is it’s there’s nothing more I can say than it’s a miracle I mean it’s it’s it is a miraculous uh um achievement in the way that I even Mozart Beethoven Schubert his great um forebears or even those who come after him just it’s it’s almost through sheer
Force of will and much of it is done relatively late in life it’s the last 20 years in which the great works are done they’ve been sketched out but the achievements are almost entirely in the last 20 years of of his yeah possibly I mean I mean there there are
There are people who achieve things I mean know Yan is a classic I think he wrote his first Great opera in 62 or something you know that that uh all inspired by a unconsummated love affair with a 25y old or something I mean it’s there’s you know people get
These you know how does it work I don’t know but he is unique um in being not a particularly talented musician obviously in in in that kind of precociousness uh um that that is the uniqueness and it’s almost as though the malign nature of him is difficult to explain when you you
Talked about the anti-Semitism and everything and and and pernicious stuff like that but so is the good stuff it’s it’s equally um Beyond Comprehension the whole thing is beyond comprehension um I don’t know how it’s done if if if we could understand how it done we’d have more of them he is unique
In that sense could you explain a bit more about you said about reolution way to8 a Democrat to um well he was very much of the idea I think that um uh if I mean if you look at the ring cycle which is probably the most explicit is that it’s
It’s the death of Gods uh and the people will take over that’s why I think uh something like P Patrice shu’s production 76 centenary produ production uh which is you know nominally Marxist production Works quite well uh you know he’s a god killer uh as at this period he’s still a friend of
Nature the God Is Dead uh that it’s for the people to take over there’s that idea of the vul you know with within the 1848 revolutions so that so um he he’s a kind of uh Democrat uh he’s a you know he he is a person of
Of of the people as he would say it as Against The Gods the aristocrats that’s very much what the ring cycle is about with a relatively simplistic reading of course because it’s because great work of AR it’s more complex than that but I think that would be his view in 1849
When he goes into Exile because the other thing about um V is he loves luxury uh there’s there’s a really great um chapter in I think the vogner compendium of just how much he spends on luxurious clothes there’s a really great um you know nothing is too good for Vagner uh
And the debts he’s created by the time ludig II writes them off they’re quite staggering uh you know you’re talking about in modern terms millions that he’s acre uh from from various people most mostly clothes uh well his property clo I mean it’s basic production of you know orchestras and
Theaters take a lot of money um as we know but um but I think he’s not um he does think this art form is for everyone and he talks about an art form of the future and he never talks about it as Opera he never talks
It’s Gant V it is the complete work of art that Embraces theater music you know poetry everything it’s it’s complete and even by the time you know of um past talking about the consecration work of of the theater um so I he’s he’s a German nationalist uh but I think he’s one who
Would support uh populist ideas of democracy of um uh of the people of the Vault so um yeah that that’s what the ring is about it’s about the death of gods killing gods and um and inheriting the Earth I’m probably only got time for like two more questions so
Um gentleman over there yeah I suppose what related to the some of the previous questions I suppose what occurred to me is um his relationships with s contemporary is clearly well he’s clearly a contous man to not the best not the philosopher I was rning more about the composers particular fellow Opera
Composers we know explain well inspired yeah there any contary I mean married this daughter I presume he had positive feelings towards himself some minties and personality I dare say um for example I mean the Shakespeare S I didn’t before that he was soly impacted by Shakespeare I mean Mendelson his
Relationship is pretty famous wrote some positive comments I think that ended pretty quickly overcome by menson one famous bit of instrumental music to shakespare above all verie was a great adapter of Shakespeare and really made it his thing um so perhaps very perhaps the others you know what
Was the relationship what was his opinion of others to say on that well he was a big fan of verie uh respectful of of verie and I think verie was quite respectful of him uh he was he was quite encouraged by mayab beer uh who I think recognized his talent in
Um well yes yeah despite being very different um and but that was shortlived uh I think the probably the person he had the most interesting relationship with which which he did fall out with was Bas who I think was similarly uh um a oneoff in that sense uh interested in
Uh classical Greek Theater uh think of the Trojans for example uh I think he recognized a fellow sort of perverse composer was slightly outside the mainstream there um and I I remember that the Romeo and Juliet Overture of uh BOS influenced one of his works and I
Forget which one but the I think he even quotes from the Romeo uh and Juliet Overture of B so he was quite he was quite fascinated by that I think that the obsession with the classical of both of them probably uh but but he fell out with with him did he know
Troski I don’t think did no no although he he went to buy roids I’m not I’m not sure did you see much of the influence he had I mean influenced by him already I mean I suppose in his early career was oh God no I think if you listen to bini’s
Work uh particularly any Intero of of it’s all there there will be there will be no Pini with Vagner and I you know people are quite sniffy about bini and of course there’s the famous phrase uh I can’t remember who said it that bini’s music is uh better hang on sounds better
Than it is and Vagner is better than it sounds um but I think that’s that’s an important point is that they’re both closely related they’re both Masters of Harmony m masters of orchestration Masters of drama and it’s sad that we that I think there tends to be think
That V is the great intellectual you know the heavy German the is just for the you know the punters and he packs the seats they they’re really really close together and I think that if if you look at you know bini and Vagner are really closely related and they’re the
Two great dramatists of Opera of absolutely f fantastic both of them I won’t have a word said against fantastic one more quick question and then we’re going to gentleman right the back in the middle over Christmas I mentioned to my stepdad I was com to Club about Western can Heritage
Innovation and then I mentioned V one I was going to and he kind of gord and said no he was more of a revolutionary he was kind of as a discontinuation or kind of counter what we think Wern ideas I thought maybe you could just comment
Right well he is a revolutionary and uh he well I mean he’s a revolutionary music uh he transformed uh the nature of music I mean as I’ve said you know there’s a lot of music uh that’s now held as canonical that wouldn’t have been possible without bner uh and really Revolution like sh
The B would not have been possible uh without V but for better or worse is also a kind of revolutionary figure you know every you know we we’ve talked about um Hitler and national socialism you know all evening those are revolutionary movements as well they may
Not be uh some revolutions that we think of but they are um he is a very very modern figure um and a postmodern figure and that’s why I come back to this idea that you know the the person perhaps he’s closest to is I think Shakespeare uh in terms that he’s all
Things to all men and women and um that he has that endlessly malleable we we will continue um to uh produce him in in all kinds of different ways forever I think uh just as we have done with Shakespeare last 500 years we will do so with vogner the next 500 years because
It’s it it there are no limits to this Stu it is of unimaginable inexhaustable depth um we can interpret it in so many ways we will continue to interpret it uh in so many ways and and that’s that’s the enduring Mark of greatness that’s that’s that’s what it is and we will
Focus our concerns on it as we do with Shakespeare and in a 100 200 years time people will focus their concerns on it just as they focus their concerns on in the past and in a multiplicity of ways because that’s genius and that’s that’s that’s what great art is that’s what
Transcend does it transcends that’s great thanks very much Paul that was an absolutely wonderful talk yeah always going to make a playlist for us all listen to on Spotify I don’t know how I send it out I don’t if main list but um we can all spend the
Week I love the idea there 10 10 weekends in a BBC V I just I don’t know that’s the reason I want to set up this club I think this should be on the BBC but um yeah maybe one day but any thanks so much pleasure Pleasure