Number 201: APRIL 2011 - Wagner Society of England

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The extracts from Wagner’s musical oeuvre that accompany Fry’s journey round his idol succeed remarkably well in whetting the appetite for the viewer’s next encounter. We see a short section of Siegfried Idyll on the stairs at Wahnfried with Fry sitting spellbound on the stairs where, in one of the DVD bonus items, he is shown entranced by the playing of Traume. We get chunks of the Ring including the inevitable Ride of the Valkyries which Fry suggests is possibly the best known tune in the world (an arguable proposition), the Prelude to Tannhäuser and the love duet from Act II of Tristan und Isolde (Fry intimating, not uniquely, that Wagner is quite deliberate in suggesting coitus interruptus at the arrival of King Marke on the scene). He goes into ecstatic overdrive when Dr Sven Friedrich (Director of the Wagner Archive and Museum) shows him the autograph score for the Norns scene in Götterdämmerung with marginal notes inscribed by the composer. Wearing white gloves Fry practically salivates as we hear him ruminating, again in an extra item within the DVD, that “surely Götterdämmerung has to be one of the greatest works of art ever written” though, seemingly, he is unaware of the dismissive view of George Bernard Shaw on the conclusion to the Ring cycle. This section of the DVD runs on into an orchestral recital of subsequent scenes of the drama while Fry is shown ambling through the empty theatre. Our intrepid traveller (perhaps unconsciously emulating the Wanderer that was Wagner) is shown chatting briefly with a non-committal Eva Wagner-Pasquier who now directs the Festival with her half sister Katharina Wagner who Fry evidently was unable to interview. The extras also show the twenty first century version of the Wanderer chatting to a chorus member, enquiring whether her Jewish ancestry had ever caused her any problems during her three seasons in Bayreuth and receiving an emphatic negative. (I suspect she was singled out by Stephen Fry so he could pose that specific question.) Despite trying to balance his adoration of Wagner’s music dramas against the horrendous consequences for European Jewry of Hitler’s misappropriation of the composer’s herculean conceptions, Fry does ultimately acknowledge that the task is effectively impossible. For all that, the journey conducted by the ubiquitous Stephen Fry through the physical and intellectual landscape inhabited by Richard Wagner is exceedingly rewarding, even if this reviewer did experience a modicum of envy. ARE THESE OUR YOUNGEST READERS? Photo: Stewart Maclean Hello to brother and sister Bob (9 years old) and Catrin (6) of the Maclean household in Scotland. Here they are snapped whilst looking through their Nanny and Grandad’s Wagner News. Catrin explained: “We like the pictures”. Giants, a dragon, magic fire, flying horses, a young hero who can be daft as a brush – it’s not so surprising, really, is it? Ed. – 32 –
RICHARD WAGNER AND THE CENTRALITY OF LOVE Book review by Dr Paul Dawson-Bowling This is a difficult book, but uncommonly interesting. There are times when a person might think that there can be nothing more to say about Wagner, and then something comes along like this, full of novel suggestions and bold, original angles. The purpose behind it (or “telos” as Mr Emslie prefers it) is not absolutely clear, but it is a valiant effort to come to terms with the warring aspects of Wagner’s nature in new ways. Its author does better at unpicking (one of his favourite words) Wagner’s attempt at a synthesis and explaining it, than most other analysts from Ernest Newman onwards. Many of these have simply taken and exaggerated Newman’s line of an unbridgeable gulf between man – the horrible, detestable man – and the glorious artist. Mr Emslie analyses the conflicted elements both in Wagner’s character and his artistic agenda, and he attempts the heroic task of explaining how far Wagner succeeded in knitting everything together, how far he failed, and why. In the process he offers many valuable insights. He is clearer than George Bernard Shaw’s The Perfect Wagnerite when it comes to teasing out the disjunctions in The Ring. He is also excellent at explaining why Götterdämmerung and the redemption finally offered by the all-wise, all-knowing Brünnhilde are so completely at odds both with the plot and the ideological programme which Wagner built into the Ring. He argues persuasively how Wagner’s prose output and his ten great works for stage interpenetrated each other, although I think he sometimes pushes his arguments too far. He engages my sympathy by clarifying an unsettled feeling about the length of Waltraute’s narration in Götterdämmerung in that it holds back the action too far. Carl Dahlhaus went the other way and contrasted Waltraute’s narration unfavourably with Wotan’s monologue in Act II of Die Walküre, but Barry Emslie validates my impression that Wotan’s monologue is gripping in every last syllable while Waltraute’s narration hangs fire. His book still remains difficult, and any kind of resumé would need another book. I can do no more than sample its ideas while explaining why its difficulties are not simply a matter of my personal failings. I do wish that Mr Emslie’s book had had an editor to persuade him to use a style less convoluted. Long tracts of it are elegant and lucid, but others almost make Milton’s Areopagitica seem easy. Another problem is Mr Emslie’s addiction to jargon, to strings of terms which may be common coin for the learned academics and social philosophers who devised them, such as telos, trope, hermeneutics, ontology, epistemology, but which are not easy for those outside the charmed circle. A further difficulty is his tendency, like Humpty Dumpty, to make words mean exactly what he wants them to mean. “Polemic” as he uses it simply seems to mean any intellectual exposition, without the usual idea of something war-like, banner-carrying and combative. Sometimes Mr Emslie does make it clear when he is changing a meaning. Wagner’s works are a “swindle”, so he tells us, but then goes on to explain that he does not mean that as a criticism, simply that Wagner deceptively and cleverly makes us suspend disbelief and judgement in ways that are the necessary in art. He refers to Wagner’s thinking as a “stew” and his prose works as “waffle”. It may be that here too he does not intend anything disparaging, but a disparaging view of Wagner by Mr Emslie is the impression that these expressions leave. It creates another difficulty in that while he may justify redefining ordinary terms to mean something different, it is – 33 –
Page 1 and 2: Number 201: April 2011
Page 3 and 4: EDITOR’S NOTE WRITE FOR WAGNER NE
Page 5 and 6: FROM THE CHAIR-ELECT There have bee
Page 7 and 8: During the Ride of the Valkyries th
Page 9 and 10: ungainly bustle to reveal black rid
Page 11 and 12: WOLFRAM WAS THE STAR OF THE EVENING
Page 13 and 14: way of presenting the scene, and sh
Page 15 and 16: his fatal inability to declare hims
Page 17 and 18: “BEHIND THE SCENES AT BAYREUTH”
Page 19 and 20: - 19 -
Page 21 and 22: e allowed to look more surprised at
Page 23 and 24: The emasculated sorcerer has usurpe
Page 25 and 26: audience, and their goggles and gas
Page 27 and 28: acting in this scene is horrifyingl
Page 29 and 30: Received after the January issue of
Page 31: Mathilde Wesendonck, his devious ex
Page 35 and 36: emembering first and foremost that
Page 37 and 38: From Colin Humphreys LETTERS I smil
Page 39 and 40: President: Dame Gwyneth Jones Vice

Number 201: APRIL 2011 - Wagner Society of England

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?