AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts saturday afternoon 155
The paper then turns to the much earlier period of the 1880s when Dujardin actually developed
stream of consciousness prose. Rather than viewing it in isolation against a Wagnerian
foil as Dujardin himself did, I situate the technique within a broad range of his little-studied
literary practices at that time and show similarities of syntax and diction between stream of
consciousness prose and other genres that he produced. These include: literal translations
of Wagner’s librettos; an important “paraphrase” of Amfortas’ monologue in the first act of
Parsifal; and prose poems and free verse on Wagnerian subjects. They also include Dujardin’s
song cycle to his own vers libres called Litanies, six mélopées pour chant et piano (1888), virtually
unnoticed by critics then and now. The choice of “mélopée” is provocative: often applied
with derision to Wagner’s post-Lohengrin works by hostile French critics, here it appears as an
implicit marker of healthy experimentation. The local-level formlessness implied by the term
is its very link to stream of consciousness writing.
In sum, the paper will illustrate how the origin of stream of consciousness prose lies in the
same pool of resources explored by Symbolist writers in Wagner’s wake. In broad narratives of
music history, progressive French culture at the fin de siècle is often described as both an extension
of Wagner’s art and reaction to it. One thinks, for example, of Debussy’s claim to write
music après Wagner (and not d’après Wagner) or Mallarmé’s musings on Wagner’s limitations.
Dujardin’s Litanies are as bold as any piece by Debussy or Satie in this period, his heterogeneous
writings as cutting-edge as those of the leading Symbolists. Yet he voiced little anxiety
about Wagner as an influence, favoring welcoming embrace over Oedipal response.
“TRISTAN FüR ANFäNGER”: IRONIC SELF-
PARODY IN die MeiSterSiNger
Christopher Alan Williams
Bowling Green State University
To paraphrase Hans Sachs’s famous Flieder-Monolog, die Meistersinger is a work that is difficult
to grasp yet impossible to forget. This elusive, “unermesslich” difficulty partly lies in the
fact that listeners are distracted by its apparent harmonic and melodic clarity and episodic
simplicity, especially compared to its endlessly-discussed predecessor, tristan und isolde. After
all, how can the tunes, set-pieces, and unremitting C-major of Meistersinger’s last act betoken
something as worthy of attention as the previous opera’s relentlessly difficult philosophical
and chromatic probing? This goes double for scholarly commentators, who recently have
fixated on its overtones of nationalism and undertones of anti-Semitism, to devastating effect.
These aspects played an undeniable role in the work’s reception, especially during the
Nazi and post-war eras (for opposite reasons), but they deflect attention from the work’s
oft-vaunted “humanity” and its central theme: the role of modern art in bourgeois society.
In Wagner: Beyond good and evil, John Deathridge even explains his avoidance of discussing
Meistersinger, not just because of his personal distaste for “singing contests,” but because
that eminent Wagnerian feels that the work’s “smug” complacency puts it on a lower level of
achievement than his other works. Yet, given Meistersinger’s long gestation, Wagner’s obsession
with spinning his operas into cohesive wholes, and his evident pride in the work, it seems
unlikely that he had lessened his seriousness of purpose significantly after tristan, despite its
sunny, comedic atmosphere.
Ironically, the episode that causes Hans Sachs and the other masters the most consternation
is among the least examined episodes in the entire opera: Walther’s trial song, “Fanget