ottmar hörl wagner dirigiert bayreuth - Maisenbacher-art.com

writing his works explicitly for a period following a major upheaval.He said: for my art to work, everything around it first has to change;the way things are now, it makes no sense.People can sometimes forget the motives that lie behind artistic statements.The end of territorial fragmentation, the vision of a single, unitedGermany, all of that is understandable. And since we‘re still veryfoolish today, I don‘t know what we want to blame someone for, justbecause he appears foolish from our present-day point of view, even ifhe wasn‘t by the standards of the time. Just imagine: we were beingruled by a cretin like Ludwig II. That that mentally and morally depravedman was the leader of our nation, even though he was incapable ofgoverning. That he bore the responsibility for the people, for the resources,for a lot of money. It might occur to you that the system was actuallyuntenable. That‘s what was in the air at the time. It had to stop.There‘s a second factor in all of this that we shouldn‘t forget. Wagneras a megalomaniac genius, Wagner as a Jew hater – if you putit like that it all sounds very slick; it‘s wonderfully simple and lendsitself readily to headlines. Can we do justice to history and musicin this way?If we confuse things with one another, then no. And especially not ifyou don‘t know anything about music. But if you understand somethingabout music, and realize that, from the age of twenty-seven onwards,Wagner only wrote intelligent music – indeed the most intelligent musicof the time, which was, after all, a time of many great composers – thenyou can talk about it. But to do that you have to be able to appreciatehim. If, for example, you‘re of the opinion that Picasso was an idiot,that your children can paint better than he could, then that‘s youropinion, but with that attitude towards culture we are catapulting ourselvesback to the Middle Ages.Sometimes it‘s just hard to accept that things that can‘t be measuredor counted can nonetheless have weight.The problem is that there are too few people willing to truly engagewith these things. People just accept the explanations they are given.But first of all you have to ask yourself: what is anti-Semitism actually,and how can we differentiate it? How did we arrive at this historicalconsensus that the Jews in Central Europe were always the scapegoats?That‘s stupid and incorrect, we know that. And for that very reason I‘dlike to see a better response, instead of everybody just turning on Wagnerand blaming him for that evil. I find that a bit too simplistic. Andthen we have to ask ourselves: Do we want to be political, historicallyconscious people, or do we just want to give credence to our own prejudicesin a particular way, as it suits our needs at a given time, now inone direction and now in another?How did you become involved with the subject of Wagner?I read the biography of Wagner by Martin Gregor-Dellin when I wasthirty; that‘s where it started. I‘m no stranger to music; I consider myselfa dilettante with a highly developed interest.What I find so interesting about Wagner is the entanglement and interweavingof communication and graphic information. That‘s the sameway Hollywood also uses music. There‘s the famous scene in ApocalypseNow by Francis Ford Coppola, where the helicopters attack a Vietnamesevillage with the Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background. One ofthe greatest scenes in movie history and a good example of how dramaturgyfunctions in Wagner. As a visual artist, I also find it very interestinghow, ideally, Wagner‘s music functions with modern conceptsof imagery. As the accentuation of a particular emotion. As a constantvariation on emotions. As if someone had said: the image on its own– 19 –