This is KZSU Stanford. Robert Harrison for entitled opinions. We're back with you with Professor
Carl Berger from the Department of Music for the second hour of our conversation about
the composer and dramatist Richard Wagner. I want to emphasize dramatist Carol. Welcome back,
by the way. It's nice to be here, I think. We ended our last hour on the importance that drama
played for Schopenhauer and the relationship between drama and music. Could you just say a few more
words about Wagner the dramatist before we turn to some of the musical excerpts and talk about them?
I am actually very grateful that you asked this question because the standard opinion that one
often hears is of course that like most operadists, these dramas are nonsense and kitch and all that.
But the musical themes it's great. I belong to perhaps a minority of those who actually treat
Wagner seriously also as a dramatic artist not only as a composer, of course he is. I mean as a musician
he is by far this is his strongest point. But I think he does things in his as a dramatist that are
very innovative and very interesting and that have tremendous impact on later artists, artists
working in the first decades of you know last decade of the 19th and first decade of the
20th century in particular this is the high point of his direct influence. He stops being so
important after the first world war. So several things that I would stress as being of real significance.
One is his rehabilitation of myth. This is something that is very important to him. He
myth is the the material in which he bases his work and I think it is with him that the
he's perhaps not the only one certainly not the only one but I think he is one of the key figures
that put myth back on the intellectual and artistic agenda for over a century because I think there
are echoes of this still in the second half of the of the century with Blau Shaw with
La Vichtors and so on. And it is not simply that he thinks that mythical materials are interesting.
So let's let's use them. It is also not simply that he is a kind of a counter-enlightment figure.
So he wants to rehabilitate what the enlightenment debunked, right? For the enlightenment myth
is awful because myth is the traditional unexamined belief, gods, all these things that we
don't want we want reason and rational argument and so on. So to a certain extent of course
Wagner is counter-enlightment in this sense. He wants to go beyond reason. There's no
doubt about this. But he does something more than simply taking Germanic gods and putting them in modern
dress. He actually thinks I think quite profoundly how mythical materials could be used today,
what they could mean today in the middle and later 19th century. And he comes up with very arresting
proposals and answers. Don't forget a myth is essentially a moment where a human encounters a god.
This is what myth does. And this encounter between the human and the divine is invariably transforming
for usually for the human. We learn something about ourselves. These encounters are more often
than not devastating. In ancient myths it's very rarely doing anything to the divine. It does
something to the human. Wagner thinks otherwise. When he puts gods and humans together,
this is what happens. One of the few moments in the ring when a goddess and a human being are
together on stage is in the second act of the valcure. This is where this teenage callous divinity
Brunhilde who has absolutely no interest in human beings other than dead bodies of warriors that
she brings to Valhalla as a kind of a Praetorian guard for her father. Votan, when she meets
this very sympathetic tragic human hero, Zigman Zigman will eventually have already managed
conceive. I hope this is the word. His son Zigfried will be the main hero here. In any case,
this is a meeting in extremely beautiful scene by the way of truly Eskele and power. I think this
is one of those scenes in the ring where Wagner's pretensions could be taken seriously. This is a
scene that leaves Zigman actually where he was, but Brunhilde is completely transformed. It is the
divine that has been transformed. This is a moment when Brunhilde, for the first time, discovers
human love, discovers human suffering, discovers compassion. She is put on the way that eventually
will make of her human being. As a result, we'll make of her someone capable of the world
historical role that she has been assigned in the ring. That seems to me it's not cheap modernization.
It is really thinking about what the myth can do today in a very innovative fashion.
Let me give you one or two more examples of where I think Wagner is interesting as a writer,
as a dramatist. He thinks about sex in a very serious way. He for him sex is not something that
needs to be swept under the thick Victorian carpet. Sex, sexual desire is actually a central
strand in establishing who we are in establishing human identity. Again, he dramatizes
a very interesting way. Once again, what comes to mind is the
devalculary, the first Agdist time where this Zigman I have mentioned a moment ago,
very young man, one often forgets about it, when one sees these tenors in their 50s.
So, but Zigman is very young. He is confused. He has no idea really who he is. He doesn't even know
his own name. He doesn't know who his father is and so on. During this first act, he actually
establishes his identity. He establishes his identity by getting a name for himself,
by getting a weapon with which to fight his enemies and by getting a woman that he would love,
who happens to be his to insist there, but there's another story. He, Wagner sees sexual
sexuality as very central to the effort of establishing one's identities. Often, maybe not often,
but occasionally, he reaches regions that will be explored, good half-century later by Freud,
by Proost, by early 20th century figures, you think of this central pivotal moment in
Parcival in the middle of the Second Act when Kundri, this adaptorist, gives this naive,
young boy Parcival a kiss, his first kiss that is supposed to end up awake in him.
To mature sexuality. She administers this sacrament, telling him that this is the first kiss of love,
but it is also distant greeting from his long deceased mother. Here, we are very close to the
world that Freud will explore, and maybe even more to the world that Parost will explore. You remember,
after all, the anxieties around the kiss of his mother that narrate or goes through in the early
pages of this novel and how they establish pattern for his whole mature sexuality and so on.
So I take it, this is going to be an important motif in the book that you're working on on Wagner.
It will be one of the motifs, of course, not the only one.
Are you going to actually venture into establishing these correlations with Freud and
post another modernist? To a certain extent, because they are indeed very striking.
There are other things that are, let me give you one more, more,
Bruce the Anferoidian example. Wagner is a great discover of the importance of memory,
and not just memory, but the earliest memories, again for our discovering who we actually are.
The third act of Tristan is basically almost the whole length of this enormous act.
It's gigantic monologue of dying, groovy, seriously wounded, Tristan lying and monologuing.
It is really the first psychoanalytic session in the European art.
This is late 1850s. There are really striking prophetic, dramatic moment.
Artistic moments of this kind. Maybe above all, Wagner is a great artist of interiority,
great artist of monologue. If you think about his dramas,
almost nothing happens in them. You have an act which can last an hour and 15 minutes,
hour and 30 minutes. Maximum one important event taking part. The rest is taking,
taken by the characters thinking about what happens, thinking what it means, meditating.
Interior monologue is Wagner's great invention, and once again it seems to me that this will not
be without echoes in later art. Yes, he is a great musician. He is an extremely influential musician,
but I think his dramatic art is also to be taken seriously.
What you said reminded me of passage of our comrade Nietzsche again, where in Nietzsche,
Konta Wagner, in the section where in Titles where I admire Wagner, he says that
"None can equal him in the colors of late fall in the indescribably moving happiness of the last,
truly last, truly shortest joy. He knows a sound for those quiet,
disquieting midnight of the soul, where cause and effect seemed to be out of joint and where at
any moment something might originate out of nothing, and he draws most happily of all out of the
profoundest depth of human loneliness, and he took you to be agreeing that there are
thoughts of loneliness. More than agreeing, I think it is passages like this in Nietzsche's writing
that make me forgive him so much else. I think they show sense in the news. What would you
correct in his critique of Wagner or his account of Wagner?
Ah, well. The histrionics is a severe indictment of Wagner as his
taryonics. Histrionics. Everything aimed at effect and so forth. Is that something that?
Wagner the actor. That is the accusation. I think Nietzsche is right. Wagner is the actor.
He is the man of the theater. He sees himself like this, where I am confused is why is anything
wrong about this? Well, can I venture an answer? Yes. Because I've done a number of music shows
and title opinions, not mostly actually different kinds of music. However, one thing that runs
that I believe is that music that has any notes of insincerity in it have a jarring effect
on me and many other people. It's impossible to give some kind of objective criteria for
where music is sincere, where is insincere, and certainly a lot of listen to my Italian friends,
just love that. Insincerity of the Belkantu, Italiano, which for me is full of insincerity.
But it's particularly jarring if you have someone who is pretending sincerity and who's
notes actually create a sense that it's not being sincere to itself. This might be the risk that
Wagner runs through his posturing of being totally earnest and the melancholy act is interiority, introspection.
This is my true self. But if you get a sense at all this is playacting, it creates a dissonance
between your expectation and what's being delivered there. But Robert, he is an artist. He is creating
a work of art. He cannot be putting his soul on the plate in front of you every moment.
But the listener thinks he is. That's the power captivating power of Wagner is that he convinces
you, that his soul is in there. He convinces you that it is zachs' soul, that is in there. He's
creating dramatic works. And in these dramatic works, yes, he does occasionally speak in his own name,
because he is, we may talk about it in a moment later. But he is something between a drama
descent and novel is there is something like a narrative narrator's voice in his in his
operas. But for the most part, these are dramatic works. And what I demand is a proper expression
of what is going on inside Tristan, not what is going on inside Mr. Wagner, who may have a headache or
dinner this time and so on. In other words, I don't quite buy these accusations of insincerity.
I have never seen Nietzsche actually being able to point to an insincere moment specifically.
I don't quite see that here. Fair enough. Shall we listen to some Wagner finally?
Of course. Let's do this because after all, this is the main thing. This is why we even talk about
all these other things at all. So his impact on later music is in in calculus level. There is no
aspect of music that has not been touched by him and that has not been transformed by him.
In other words, he's not just an important figure in the history of opera. He is a historical figure
in history of music. There will be no music after him that we have without him having been
being there. Let's start with the very simplest things because even Nietzsche, even the most
the him and the tractors of Wagner admit one thing. He's a master of single pregnant gesture.
Can find a rhythmic figure or a melodic figure or orchestral color which somehow within a few
notes captures the essence of the situation of the of the feeling of the scenery and so on.
Yes, I think that is very true. Let's listen to a few examples. What I would like to start with
something that shows him at his most at the same time at his most simple and at the same time
at his most radical. So the very beginning of the ring, the prelude to the first evening of the
ring, the sryngol. Let's get the beginning of this great cycle here.
[Music]
So I have kept you quite long on on this deliberately because I wanted you to see
here that he keeps the audience for a very long time on basically nothing on a single harmony and
this is going on much longer. It is going on over four minutes. Four minutes in music is very much.
Very long. This is a gesture of absolutely elemental simplicity. Basically one harmony kept
for a very very long time if flat major without any change. Nothing like this
would be even imaginable to any musician of the 19th century. In fact, nothing like this
was imaginable to most musicians until the very late 20th century until the minimalist
came along. And of course he is not doing it just to say I am a radical. I am doing something that
other artists were not able to do. Now he's doing it because there is a dramatic reason for
for doing this. He wants to depict the world as it is before history, before humans, before gods.
The world of pure and solid nature, the world of river Rhine, timelessness in other words,
no change. It is the gods and the humans that will introduce history, that will introduce change,
that will introduce motion. He wants this complete status. And he finds a musical emblem of this,
which is absolutely perfect. Nothing changes one chord kept for very very long time.
So this is an example of this very elemental, very simple inventions that he has. Would you like more?
Absolutely yes. All right. So here is another one. This is the end of a scene in which
Zigmund and Ziglin, that is siblings that fall in love are falling in love. And then
there has been unfortunately the hunters, the hut in which they find themselves,
wounding. So it is what I would like to hear is the very ending of the love music and then the way
wounding interrupts it. Here we go.
[Music]
And this absolutely wonderful melting love music is interrupted by this.
[Music]
So the two lovers are brought to assess, they would be by the entrance of the husband,
but husband is characterized I think again very economically and to perfection this
brutish primitive tribesmen that he is and these powerful chords, brass chords I think
captured with great simplicity but at the same time in an unmistakable fashion.
Would you like to hear more?
I'm here to hear.
Well then let's try something very different, a very quiet music it comes also from the
srine goals from the first operand in the ring cycle. Albury is trying on a new toy that he got
tarnhone which is a device that allows him to transform himself into any shape he wants,
make himself invisible or make himself into a great snake or whatever he wants.
It's a perfect, perfect instrument for a plutocrat who works with his money behind the scenes to
influence the course of the world. Here is what Wagner's music for tarnhone.
[Music]
So this is a little act of veritable harmonic sorcery, if Agnes of course a great master of
tonal harmony but what he does here is something very simple and very sophisticated at the same
time. He's using completely consonant triads, in as well as the simplest chords possible,
you know for for someone famous for chromatic dissonant complexity. He is going in a completely opposite
direction, these are just the simplest chords possible but they are related in such a way that
they very subtly destabilize one another and we don't quite know where the ground is. I'm not going to
go into technical details to explain how he specifically does it but it is really quite clever.
Is it by modifying the chords?
You know it is not so much by he's using the tonic chord and then a chord which is a third
above it and a chord which is a third below it but in the chord which is a third below it he
flattens the third component and as a result the original tonic gets twisted so the firm ground gets lost
in this in this way.
Brilliant indeed.
So do we continue Carl here?
Sure let me give you another very short and very of course maybe the most famous
to measure written by Wagner the very beginning of Tristan on the result at the beginning of the
prelude to Tristan.
And what should we be listening for here?
This is an opposite end of the spectrum and in the time example his chords are triadic
very simple very consonant here he is giving us and his successors a lesson in chromatic dissonance.
The first of these chords resolving through chromatic motions to the second one.
That's really it.
That's all that there is to it.
There is a very dissonant chord resolving chromatically to a somewhat less dissonant but still dissonant
chord.
Maybe we'll be less here that again.
But not resolving any further.
The tonic which is implied here the the final resolution is not provided and in fact it won't be
provided until many hours later until the very last moments of the opera.
Why not?
Because Wagner wants to create the sense of infinity, the sense of infinite longing of
this Chopin-Hawarian willing which never reaches a sense of achievement and resolution.
I will in fact if you allow me later maybe return to this moment.
But can I also interject here that there this is a way in which he was a precursor of some of the what
Chopinberg called the emancipation of dissonance.
Of course he doesn't entirely emancipate dissonance but he brings it to that point where dissonance
can be sustained long enough that it's looking at its full emancipation.
And there is no doubt that without him Schoenberg would not be possible but there is also no doubt
that he's very different from Schoenberg precisely because he doesn't emancipate dissonance.
Emancipation of dissonance means obliteration of dissonance and he his harmonic art depends on the
distinction between more and less dissonant as well as dissonance and consonance.
So these distinctions cannot be emancipated out of existence so to speak as they will be later on.
And when you were talking there I was thinking of Samuel Barber's Adadjo for strings which is
this beautiful piece of 20th century music that actually it ends without a return to the consonance.
So it's almost one step further where it's unlike the opera which goes back finally to the
tonic it will remain suspended and that longing kind of goes forward infinitely.
This would not be something that Wagner would like.
I'm not talking specifically about Barber but the idea of not resolving.
Wagner is looking for a solution. Wagner is looking for a redemption and the idea that one could
leave things in suspension and that maybe actually there is something good about leaving things
unresolved has not crossed his mind. This is one of his great weaknesses.
So for you this whole Wagnerian phenomenon of the endless melody you say that it's not really
endless because it finally comes to a resolution at some point.
Right well endless melody is a very loaded term which would probably require more
unpacking than we want to give it here. But Wagner certainly is interested in the kind of
phrasing, the kind of texture in which things are not very clearly delineated.
There are no clear arrival and then you start something new. One could say that his predecessors
work in this much with much more clear contours. You end one sentence and then you begin
next sentence. You end one section and then you begin next section. Wagner likes to
dissolve these moments of juncture, these moments of articulation into something much less clear.
He wants to go in a seamless way from one phrase to the next. Yes there are different phrases but
sometimes it is very hard to know where one has ended and the next started.
Is that why Nietzsche said it's a form of swimming rather than walking or dancing? Yes and he's
right about this. This is definitely, this is a wonderful metaphor I think Nietzsche of course
is a master of metaphors and here he hits the bull's eye. This is a music that doesn't dance,
that swims precisely for this reason and this is true about Wagner's harmonic language
but that is also true of his rhythmic and metric language. He dissolves the sense of
the tonic but he also dissolves to a large extent but not completely the sense of the downbeat.
It is both on harmonic level and on rhythmic level that he works with these less precise contours.
Where again I would question Nietzsche is in knowing why this is a bad thing. I think Nietzsche
often gives a correct description but then evaluates it in a way which is not entirely convincing for me.
Just a parenthetical question about the dissolving of the tonic because what we heard the first
track we heard from the Rangold it was that one tonic and we have a tonic chord essentially sustained
you said for about four minutes that is doing the opposite. Right of course and Wagner never
goes in the direction of complete eight tonal music. He often is quite close to the
Schoenbergen paradigm but he never gets there ever once really to get there. He has art
depends on tonality for its basic structural properties.
So what will we hear next and what should we be listening for? Well I would like to talk now
about something more than just these individual gestures. I would like perhaps to talk about how
these gestures are talking to one another, how they are combined because often what you hear
again from Wagner's detractors beginning with Nietzsche. Yes he is wonderful. This is gestures but these
are just individual gestures. They are sort of presented by him the way one presents visiting
cards. This is the club the BC who was of course in many ways very Wagnerian himself but
he says that these light motifs are like visiting cards and they are produced you know what
and is there so you produce these motifs things like this sort. This is a caricature. Actually Wagner
is able to use combination of these motifs of these gestures to tell a story and I would even
argue even claim to argue to produce an argument or at least to stimulate us to produce an argument.
And let me give you the very simplest example of how Wagnerian orchestra
think because now I'm going to talk mostly about the orchestra and about the voice that comes
into that is embodied by the orchestra. I have mentioned that Wagner is somewhere in between
drama and epic that he you know after all he is working in the greatest age of European novel and
I think that something like a novelistic narrator is present occasion not all the time but
occasionally in his orchestra this is his great invention actually introducing this orchestral
narrative voice and here is a very simple example of what the narrator can actually tell. I'm going
to play the transistral transition between the first two scenes in Das Reingold. In the first scene
we have seen Albury Robbing River Rhine and his daughters of the gold. He will fashion the ring
from it. This is this primal scene of a fall right? This is this robbing of the gold and the ring
will be fashioned from this. In the second scene we are elsewhere we are on mountain heights where
the gods live and we get the first glimpse of the newly built castle for Votan and his gods
Devalhala and this is the music which gets us from this first subterranean or even riverbed scene
to the mountain heights.
This is the motive of the ring and indeed this motive will be heard a lot will be repeated over and
over in this passage. Here it is again
and again
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And this repeated music of the ring is then followed at the very beginning of the next scene
with the music of the castle of the gods, the Valhalla.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There it is.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK.
You probably very quickly realized how similar the music of the Valhalla is to the music of the ring.
It is in fact the same music.
It has been transformed into another.
And you ask yourself, why so?
What do these two things have in common after all the ring is something
representing this dreadful albury and his last for power and financial
machinations and all that?
While Valhalla is this glorious abode of the most developed civilization on mountain heights and so on.
But Wagner is actually the narrator here is actually making an argument that these two things are related.
That they are both signs of the will to power.
That the Valhalla no less than the ring is the sign of the last for power on the part of Votan.
And by the way, maybe in the music of the Valhalla you do hear a bit of this insincerity that you were talking about.
But it is there because it should be there.
This is a false civilization.
It is a civilization which should be going down and which will be going down eventually.
And this is why this tone of insincerity and falsehood and sort of empty.
Would this be an example of in the beginning of our first hour you said that we will hear some examples of how thinking takes place in Wagner's music.
And you say this almost puts forward an argument in this.
This would be a very simple example.
But if you are not convinced, I want to give you a slightly more complex example if you have time for that.
This comes now from the other end of the ring.
For evenings later we are in the first act of Gauter Damagung and Hagen, he is the villain of the piece.
He is the son of Alberryt and basically two of Alberryt in his world historical schemes.
He has just managed to ensnare this naive hero, Zeke Freit.
And he is meditating about what Hagen is a broodings sort of character.
He has this magnificent scene in which he is meditating about where the situation is right now.
And first he talks about, he speaks his thoughts aloud.
But then he falls silent and the orchestra continues.
This is now no longer the voice of the narrator.
This is rather the voice of silent thoughts of Hagen.
And I would like you just to hear a brief moment from this post orchestral postlude.
The kind of motives, the kind of thoughts that go through Hagen's head.
There is the ring of course.
There is a sort of Zeke Freit.
And rather surprisingly, Hagen and his fair appear.
Once again the ring.
And again a sort of Zeke Freit.
And again it will be followed by the very loud music of Votan's fair.
Now, Votan's fair is not just his weapon.
It is an instrument.
It is a kind of a constitutional instrument.
This is where the runes of the legal arrangements that have accumulated through history are recorded.
By this time in this story, Votan's fair is no longer in existence.
It has been shattered by Zeke Freit in the previous opera.
What is it even doing here?
Well, Zeke Freit has come to earth to destroy all contracts.
He has come to earth to replace law with love.
This is his world historical role.
But no sooner does he encounter human or to human gibby-hong and live on the Rhine.
He immediately gets entangled by Hagen in new contracts, in new legal arrangements.
And I think in a way this is what this concatenations of motives is suggesting.
So I would suggest yes, Wagner's orchestra can actually produce some quite complex thinking.
Terrific.
Why don't we continue and finish our musical tracks and then I have a number of questions for you?
I would like for a moment to return to the beginning of Tristan.
But now, let's hear once again this opening measures of the prelude.
Then move directly to the last measures of the opera.
This is how the story starts and now this is how the story ends.
[Music]
So we have heard these famous chords, Tristan chord and its resolution, enormous number of time during the course of the opera.
But we have never heard it resolved.
We hear it resolved only now at the very end of the opera and moreover the resolution when it comes is unexpected.
Wagner resolves it somewhere else than we would actually expect it to be resolved.
He raises the level at which the pieces eventually result.
In other words, what this music is suggesting is not just that the suffering produced by these desires of these two characters.
Tristan and his older came to an end.
He also suggests that some sort of transfiguration to a higher level has occurred.
He never tells us what the content of this transfiguration actually is and what transfiguration means.
But he assures us and we are believing him because the music here is obviously telling the truth.
It is sincere that transfiguration did take place.
Now I am thinking about this example not only in the context of this particular opera.
I think it is an example also for Wagnerian sense of large scale thinking and large scale shaping of his dramas musically.
In other words, his large scale form because after all formlessness is one of the most common
points of criticism that one hears when one talks about Wagner and of course Nietzsche once again is the main source here.
The thing is that Wagnerian form is not like form of his predecessor.
So it is not a matter of thinking in architectonic building blocks and contrasting these blocks with one another.
This sort of form that can be captured by letters, ABA, contrasting middle section and return to the beginning at the end.
I think that the metaphor that captures Wagnerian sense of form is not architecture but web.
He is weaving a web out of this relatively limited number of the motific gestures that he puts forward and it is this web that extends through very large spans of time.
So he is a master of form of a new kind and perhaps this is why Nietzsche had such a hard time in capturing this aspect of his work.
So before we listen to the last track is the listener of the Tristan Opera has have enough memory to realize that there has been a resolution after it's been deferred for so long.
Does it come in our phenomenological perception and experience of it that we are finally getting the resolution or have we long forgotten it because our memory span is too limited.
We have not forgotten it because we have been reminded of it over and over again.
In other words, it is not that he has just presented it at the very beginning and then he returns to it at the end.
This is one of these figures, one of these passages of music that made strategic reappearances in every act in a number of times.
So there is no end to really strategically this music comes at the moment when they drink the potion, this music comes at the moment of Tristan's death and so on, it really appears in very crucial points.
So Wagner is practical enough to answer precisely this question.
He is not always practical enough. I think that he makes a tremendous miscalculation of exactly the kind that you are suggesting to in the ring.
When at the very end of the ring, he brings in an idea that he has not really been using since the last act of the Valkyrie and as a way it's too upper as a bag.
He wants us to remember that it was used to glorify Brun Hill that there and he is using it now to glorify Brun Hill that once again.
I think that this may be a miscalculation on his part.
But on the whole, I think he is very practical. He repeats when it is necessary.
And you what he was doing, no doubt about that.
He definitely did.
So I believe we have one more.
We can know it is just one and I would like to, this is a little bit different, this example.
I am now, no, no, this is a bit like these Nietzschean quotations that you brought in so beautiful twice during our conversation.
I would like to think a little bit about his most characteristic expressive world because every great or erratic, every great composer in general has a great palette of expressions.
But there are also some that are particularly characteristic of them, the tenderness of Mozart's and Andes in his piano concertos, which is really discovering a completely new world of sensibility, which wasn't there before.
The way, the way, the way of an in the midst of his most heroic, forward-looking motions suddenly gets abstracted and disappears into another world.
There is something like this with Wagner too.
I think Wagner's main subject is erotic longing, he is the most erotic composer of the 19th century.
But it is not just a pornographic music, it is erotic longing which is in very close proximity to suffering and death.
I think if I were to capture with one sentence what I think is most memorable about his expressive world, that is this.
And I would like to listen to the last passage in the prelude to Parcifale, which I think captured this expressive world in a very powerful and profound way.
[Music]
[BLANK_AUDIO]