Original texts - how many of you have read...

[Parzival]

the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde? By
"original" I also mean english (or any other language ) translations. I am
rather shocked by the amount of Wagner enthusiast who never bother to read
the poems that inspired the operas. Simple relationships like Brangane
being a Isolde's "Maid" are view in a far different light after you read
the poem ( A lady's "maid" being another noble women as only slightly lesser
rank - not a 'maid" servant.)

Or more puzzling to me are the oddly inspired productions looking to make
the opera's more interesting (NOT) to the modern viewer by making placing
them in the board room or on the subway, etc - instead of drawing on the
poems for inspriration for sets and motives. Why not have a hideous Kundry
in act I and a fair maid in act II? or red armor on Parsifal? How about
Amfortas in a peacock plumed hat?(!).. a gral progression with Repanse de
Schonye? or have Feirifiz in the finally among the grail knights? how
about, as mentioned before, present Brangane as a near equal? How many of
you are aware of how deep the relationship between Tristan and Marke really
is? or that Brangane slept with Marke to save Isolde from having to do so?

[REP]

Post by Parzival
the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde?

By

Post by Parzival
"original" I also mean english (or any other language ) translations.

I think everyone here has read at least one of Wagner's sources. I've read
Parzival. I'm not sure what Wagner's sources for Tristan und Isolde were,
though; there are a handful of primary sources for that legend, all pretty
different.

And you do know that Wagner's operas are self-contained works, right?

REP

[leonora]

I have read all these, in fact I did an M.A. in Medieval Studies...my
interest in medieval studies was sparked by my love of Wagner, which
isn't often the case. I think I mentioned in a previous mailing (maybe
not in this group?) that most medievalists absolutely HATE Wagner!! But
as you say, it's a bit odd that many Wagnerians never read the medieval
sources.

In the Covent Garden PARSIFAL of 2001, there was a very clear reference
to Wolfram's PARZIVAL. Read here:
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/parsifal.html

Leonora
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/ring1.html

[Parzival]

Nice link. Thanks!


Interestingly as you can see by reading it the writer has never read the
poem. He mistakes the use of the long table in Act I as a reference to
the Last Supper when it is an addition from the poem:

"The stone
Was amply wide and amply long,
Cut thin, for lightness' sake, but strong,
To make a table of it.
The rich host ate above it."

And I disagree with the previous statement about Wagner's works being self
contained. Very few artist draw more strongly on myths and legends and
national symbols; I don't see how one can have a deep understanding of the
works without understanding the sources and influences. True they are
varied and drawn from more than the poem with corresponding names but the
more you study what Wagner studied the better you can understand his works
to me. How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
by someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar with the legend
of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self contained" as Wagner, but
what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone and style without
understanding those references?

Post by leonora
I have read all these, in fact I did an M.A. in Medieval Studies...my
interest in medieval studies was sparked by my love of Wagner, which
isn't often the case. I think I mentioned in a previous mailing (maybe
not in this group?) that most medievalists absolutely HATE Wagner!! But
as you say, it's a bit odd that many Wagnerians never read the medieval
sources.
In the Covent Garden PARSIFAL of 2001, there was a very clear reference
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/parsifal.html
Leonora
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/ring1.html

[Richard Loeb]

This topic has come up before - one can certainly enjoy Wagner's works
without researching his sources but the deeper understanding that does come
from reading further into the source material is undeniable. Richard

Post by Parzival
Nice link. Thanks!
Interestingly as you can see by reading it the writer has never read the
poem. He mistakes the use of the long table in Act I as a reference to
"The stone
Was amply wide and amply long,
Cut thin, for lightness' sake, but strong,
To make a table of it.
The rich host ate above it."
And I disagree with the previous statement about Wagner's works being self
contained. Very few artist draw more strongly on myths and legends and
national symbols; I don't see how one can have a deep understanding of
the works without understanding the sources and influences. True they are
varied and drawn from more than the poem with corresponding names but the
more you study what Wagner studied the better you can understand his works
to me. How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus by someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar
with the legend of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self
contained" as Wagner, but what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone
and style without understanding those references?

Post by leonora
I have read all these, in fact I did an M.A. in Medieval Studies...my
interest in medieval studies was sparked by my love of Wagner, which
isn't often the case. I think I mentioned in a previous mailing (maybe
not in this group?) that most medievalists absolutely HATE Wagner!! But
as you say, it's a bit odd that many Wagnerians never read the medieval
sources.
In the Covent Garden PARSIFAL of 2001, there was a very clear reference
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/parsifal.html
Leonora
http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/leonora/ring1.html

[Bert Coules]

How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus by
someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar with the legend
of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self contained" as Wagner,
but what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone and style without
understanding those references?

Obviously I don't know this for a fact, but it's certainly my belief that
Shakespeare didn't write to be analysed, or "understood" in the academic
sense. He wrote for an audience who paid their money in the expectation
that they would be entertained, gripped, moved and uplifted.

And obviously I don't know *this* for a fact either, but again I'd certainly
like to think that Wagner was writing as much for a non-academic audience as
a scholarly one, if not more so.

The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and nothing
else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not worthless...

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Herman van der Woude]

In nieuws:42d66dfa$0$6311$***@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net, schreef
Bert Coules <***@bertcoules.co.uk>:

[snip]

| And obviously I don't know *this* for a fact either, but again I'd
| certainly like to think that Wagner was writing as much for a
| non-academic audience as a scholarly one, if not more so.
|
| The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
| dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and
| nothing else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are
| not worthless...

Though I did read some of the original sources (and I admit: in
translation into modern German), I couldn't agree more with you, Bert!

You don't *need* the 'originals', though hearing and enjoying Wagner's
works, those operas do make you curious about the 'originals'. There is
nothing wrong with that. But there is nothing wrong with just 'simply'
enjoying Wagner without this desire of wanting to know the sources. The
only first and *real* source for the Wagner operas is Wagner himself.

[Parzival]

True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare (or
Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses. An
educated man in Shakespeare's time would have been well versed in Latin
(Roman) teaching and knowledge of Seneca and Plautus etc would have been
expected. And the educated of Wagner's time certainly would be familiar
with the great German epic poems and historical characters like Hans Sachs.
just as Homer's listeners would know all about the pre history of the
characters in the Iliad. I don't think they would have needed footnotes to
know Aias' father sailed with Jason. It's just that these sources have
become somewhat removed from the main stream and have to be actively sought
out, where as for the audiences these were written for they certainly would
have been more common knowledge.

The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character development
is most easily understood by understanding the original story - even simple
additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the werewolf adventure in
the Volsunga saga.

Not to keep harping on Shakespeare ( but to me he and Wagner represent the
same level of artistic development) but I remember a teacher I had praising
Shakespeare's inclusion of a brief scene in Julius Caesar where the mob
kills Cinna the poet for having the same name as Cinna the conspirator. She
sited it as an example of his dramatic genius, showing the disordered
reasoning of the mob,etc. She was under the impression Shakespeare
merely drew the scene up out of his own head and put it in for dramatic
effect. I spoke to her after the class and found she didn't know the
entire scene is described in Plutarch's Lives of Greek and Roman leaders.
She never read this - yet was lecturing on Julius Caesar. Again,
Shakespeare viewer would have been well acquainted with Holinshed's
chronicles and Plutarch and conversely Wagner's would have known his sources
too.

Post by Bert Coules

How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus by
someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar with the legend
of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self contained" as Wagner,
but what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone and style without
understanding those references?

Obviously I don't know this for a fact, but it's certainly my belief that
Shakespeare didn't write to be analysed, or "understood" in the academic
sense. He wrote for an audience who paid their money in the expectation
that they would be entertained, gripped, moved and uplifted.
And obviously I don't know *this* for a fact either, but again I'd
certainly like to think that Wagner was writing as much for a non-academic
audience as a scholarly one, if not more so.
The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and
nothing else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not
worthless...
Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Bert Coules]

Post by Parzival
True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses.

Not *only* for them, maybe. But yes they were (or so I believe).

I don't deny that knowledge of the sources can aid understanding and
possible enjoyment. But it seems to me to be quote wrong to claim that a
work can't speak to an audience member who's ignorant of those things.

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Richard Loeb]

Post by Bert Coules

Post by Parzival
True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses.

Not *only* for them, maybe. But yes they were (or so I believe).
I don't deny that knowledge of the sources can aid understanding and
possible enjoyment. But it seems to me to be quote wrong to claim that a
work can't speak to an audience member who's ignorant of those things.
Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

Bert - did anyone here say that? - I, for one would never say such a
preposterous thing - I could certainly live a life full of listening to and
enjoying the works of this musico-dramatic genius (hmmm. I'm doing that
already) without knowing a thing about his sources. All I am saying is that
one's appreciation can be enriched by learning more about them. Could even
clear up sonme plot problems Best Richard

[Richard Partridge]

[snip]

Post by Richard Loeb

Post by Bert Coules
I don't deny that knowledge of the sources can aid understanding and
possible enjoyment. But it seems to me to be quote wrong to claim that a
work can't speak to an audience member who's ignorant of those things.
Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

Bert - did anyone here say that? - I, for one would never say such a
preposterous thing - I could certainly live a life full of listening to and
enjoying the works of this musico-dramatic genius (hmmm. I'm doing that
already) without knowing a thing about his sources. All I am saying is that
one's appreciation can be enriched by learning more about them. Could even
clear up sonme plot problems Best Richard

I think that's so self-evident that it is just about impossible to argue
with it.


Dick Partridge

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.

As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.

In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked, nothing
other than arrant rubbish.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses. An
educated man in Shakespeare's time would have been well versed in Latin
(Roman) teaching and knowledge of Seneca and Plautus etc would have been
expected. And the educated of Wagner's time certainly would be
familiar with the great German epic poems and historical characters like
Hans Sachs. just as Homer's listeners would know all about the pre
history of the characters in the Iliad. I don't think they would have
needed footnotes to know Aias' father sailed with Jason. It's just that
these sources have become somewhat removed from the main stream and have
to be actively sought out, where as for the audiences these were written
for they certainly would have been more common knowledge.
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.
Not to keep harping on Shakespeare ( but to me he and Wagner represent
the same level of artistic development) but I remember a teacher I had
praising Shakespeare's inclusion of a brief scene in Julius Caesar where
the mob kills Cinna the poet for having the same name as Cinna the
conspirator. She sited it as an example of his dramatic genius, showing
the disordered reasoning of the mob,etc. She was under the impression
Shakespeare merely drew the scene up out of his own head and put it in
for dramatic effect. I spoke to her after the class and found she
didn't know the entire scene is described in Plutarch's Lives of Greek
and Roman leaders. She never read this - yet was lecturing on Julius
Caesar. Again, Shakespeare viewer would have been well acquainted with
Holinshed's chronicles and Plutarch and conversely Wagner's would have
known his sources too.
[prior posts snipped]

[Parzival]

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses. An
educated man in Shakespeare's time would have been well versed in Latin
(Roman) teaching and knowledge of Seneca and Plautus etc would have been
expected. And the educated of Wagner's time certainly would be
familiar with the great German epic poems and historical characters like
Hans Sachs. just as Homer's listeners would know all about the pre
history of the characters in the Iliad. I don't think they would have
needed footnotes to know Aias' father sailed with Jason. It's just that
these sources have become somewhat removed from the main stream and have
to be actively sought out, where as for the audiences these were written
for they certainly would have been more common knowledge.
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.
Not to keep harping on Shakespeare ( but to me he and Wagner represent
the same level of artistic development) but I remember a teacher I had
praising Shakespeare's inclusion of a brief scene in Julius Caesar where
the mob kills Cinna the poet for having the same name as Cinna the
conspirator. She sited it as an example of his dramatic genius, showing
the disordered reasoning of the mob,etc. She was under the impression
Shakespeare merely drew the scene up out of his own head and put it in
for dramatic effect. I spoke to her after the class and found she
didn't know the entire scene is described in Plutarch's Lives of Greek
and Roman leaders. She never read this - yet was lecturing on Julius
Caesar. Again, Shakespeare viewer would have been well acquainted with
Holinshed's chronicles and Plutarch and conversely Wagner's would have
known his sources too.
[prior posts snipped]

[Richard Loeb]

Douglas always writes the same thing about the uselessness of going beyond
the work itself and he obviously believes it but then unfailingly shoots
himself in the foot every time but calling an opposing viewpoint "rubbish'
or the writer some name or other whereupon he cheapens (if not negates) his
argument. It's so predictable. Richard

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of
understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses. An
educated man in Shakespeare's time would have been well versed in Latin
(Roman) teaching and knowledge of Seneca and Plautus etc would have been
expected. And the educated of Wagner's time certainly would be
familiar with the great German epic poems and historical characters like
Hans Sachs. just as Homer's listeners would know all about the pre
history of the characters in the Iliad. I don't think they would have
needed footnotes to know Aias' father sailed with Jason. It's just that
these sources have become somewhat removed from the main stream and have
to be actively sought out, where as for the audiences these were written
for they certainly would have been more common knowledge.
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.
Not to keep harping on Shakespeare ( but to me he and Wagner represent
the same level of artistic development) but I remember a teacher I had
praising Shakespeare's inclusion of a brief scene in Julius Caesar where
the mob kills Cinna the poet for having the same name as Cinna the
conspirator. She sited it as an example of his dramatic genius, showing
the disordered reasoning of the mob,etc. She was under the impression
Shakespeare merely drew the scene up out of his own head and put it in
for dramatic effect. I spoke to her after the class and found she
didn't know the entire scene is described in Plutarch's Lives of Greek
and Roman leaders. She never read this - yet was lecturing on Julius
Caesar. Again, Shakespeare viewer would have been well acquainted with
Holinshed's chronicles and Plutarch and conversely Wagner's would have
known his sources too.
[prior posts snipped]

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]

Never disappoint, do you, Richard.

Idiot.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Douglas always writes the same thing about the uselessness of going
beyond the work itself and he obviously believes it but then unfailingly
shoots himself in the foot every time but calling an opposing viewpoint
"rubbish' or the writer some name or other whereupon he cheapens (if not
negates) his argument. It's so predictable. Richard

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of
understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com

[prior posts snipped]

[Richard Partridge]

Post by Richard Loeb
Douglas always writes the same thing about the uselessness of going beyond
the work itself and he obviously believes it but then unfailingly shoots
himself in the foot every time but calling an opposing viewpoint "rubbish'
or the writer some name or other whereupon he cheapens (if not negates) his
argument. It's so predictable. Richard

[snip]

He apparently believes that if you state your case emphatically enough, and
with enough insulting epithets, you can win arguments that way.

Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind as a writer whose works can't possibly be
fully understood or appreciated without an extensive familiarity with
literature. Even if one is well read, a commentary of annotations will
greatly enrich the experience of reading, e.g., "Pale Fire" or "Lolita."


Dick Partridge

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]

Here's another " insulting epithe[t]" for you.

Have you some sort of cognitive deficit, little man? The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count.

Your below remark is thoroughly worthless as a response to anything I wrote
because thoroughly non sequitur as a response to anything I wrote. And
_Pale Fire_ and _Lolita_ are perfectly understandable without recourse to
any sources or references outside the novels, and the fact that you stuck
in the gratuitous word "fully" alters nothing.

Idiot.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by Richard Loeb
Douglas always writes the same thing about the uselessness of going beyond
the work itself and he obviously believes it but then unfailingly shoots
himself in the foot every time but calling an opposing viewpoint "rubbish'
or the writer some name or other whereupon he cheapens (if not negates) his
argument. It's so predictable. Richard

[snip]
He apparently believes that if you state your case emphatically enough, and
with enough insulting epithets, you can win arguments that way.
Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind as a writer whose works can't possibly be
fully understood or appreciated without an extensive familiarity with
literature. Even if one is well read, a commentary of annotations will
greatly enrich the experience of reading, e.g., "Pale Fire" or "Lolita."
Dick Partridge

[s***@gmail.com]

Post by A.C. Douglas
Here's another " insulting epithe[t]" for you.
Have you some sort of cognitive deficit, little man? The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count.

I don't recall any correction, in the sense of a carefully reasoned out
explanation. I recall a lot of assertion that nothing outside of a
work of art is necessary to understand a work of art, as if that were
an a priori principle of obvious truth (as opposed to an idea with its
origins, at least with respect to music, in the 19th century and
eternally debated up to the present, in the fields of literature and
musicology alike). The idea of aesthetic autonomy has taken a real
beating; at the least it can no longer be asserted as unproblematic.
[If you want to see a skilled reconstruction, I recommend Carl
Dahlhaus' "Foundations of Music History". And then take on James
Hepokoski's "The Dahlhaus Project and its Extra-Musicological Sources",
in _19th Century Music_, 1991.]

The statement to which you respond ["works can't possibly be fully
understood or appreciated without an extensive familiarity with
literature"] is, it seems to me, asserting that outside references are
necessary for *both* understanding and appreciation. Would our
erstwhile New Critic care to take on that statement with logic as
opposed to dogma?

Post by A.C. Douglas
Idiot.

And if you're going to tack on an attempt at an insulting epithet, you
might as well make it a good one. Are you sitting at your computer,
imagining that your words sting to the quick?

-la monstre straussienne

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
I don't recall any correction, in the sense of a carefully reasoned out
explanation.

Maybe you can make sense of your above nonsense as a response to my saying,

Post by A.C. Douglas
The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count

but I sure can't. Why would a "carefully reasoned out explanation" be
required to correct someone's confusion of the two terms as opposed to
merely pointing out that confusion?

But, then, that's not really what you're after, is it?

Why, of course it's not. That was just a clumsy attempt by you to appear
to be responding to something I actually said.

I recall a lot of assertion that nothing outside of a
work of art is necessary to understand a work of art, as if that were
an a priori principle of obvious truth (as opposed to an idea with its
origins, at least with respect to music, in the 19th century and
eternally debated up to the present, in the fields of literature and
musicology alike). The idea of aesthetic autonomy has taken a real
beating; at the least it can no longer be asserted as unproblematic.

Of course it can be asserted as unproblematic. Further, as an
unproblematic, self-evident truth. Except, of course, for PoMo Lit-Crit
and New Musicology types; lunatic inmates of the inmate-run asylums that
are the humanities and musicology departments of today's universities.
There, lunacy -- mostly of the neo-Marxist, Historicist, Feminist, and
Queer Theory sort -- is the lingua franca and common currency of both
classroom and tenure-track discussion, debate, and dissertation, with
sanity and the sane everywhere first savaged, then purged lest they become
a threat to the hegemony of loonies.

Yes, I'd say with you that today it's an undeniable truth that "the idea of
aesthetic autonomy has taken a real beating." Just as have all other
eternal aesthetic truths, and in all domains of art.

As for the rest of what you had to say, play your idiot, PoMo academic
games with others here. I've better things to do with my time.

See how that's going to work?

Why, of course you do.

--
ACD - the "blowhard" (I trust I quoted you accurately from that other
venue)
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by A.C. Douglas
Here's another " insulting epithe[t]" for you.
Have you some sort of cognitive deficit, little man? The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count.

I don't recall any correction, in the sense of a carefully reasoned out
explanation. I recall a lot of assertion that nothing outside of a
work of art is necessary to understand a work of art, as if that were
an a priori principle of obvious truth (as opposed to an idea with its
origins, at least with respect to music, in the 19th century and
eternally debated up to the present, in the fields of literature and
musicology alike). The idea of aesthetic autonomy has taken a real
beating; at the least it can no longer be asserted as unproblematic.
[If you want to see a skilled reconstruction, I recommend Carl
Dahlhaus' "Foundations of Music History". And then take on James
Hepokoski's "The Dahlhaus Project and its Extra-Musicological Sources",
in _19th Century Music_, 1991.]
The statement to which you respond ["works can't possibly be fully
understood or appreciated without an extensive familiarity with
literature"] is, it seems to me, asserting that outside references are
necessary for *both* understanding and appreciation. Would our
erstwhile New Critic care to take on that statement with logic as
opposed to dogma?

Post by A.C. Douglas
Idiot.

And if you're going to tack on an attempt at an insulting epithet, you
might as well make it a good one. Are you sitting at your computer,
imagining that your words sting to the quick?
-la monstre straussienne

[s***@gmail.com]

Post by A.C. Douglas
Of course it can be asserted as unproblematic. Further, as an
unproblematic, self-evident truth. Except, of course, for PoMo Lit-Crit
and New Musicology types; lunatic inmates of the inmate-run asylums that
are the humanities and musicology departments of today's universities.
There, lunacy -- mostly of the neo-Marxist, Historicist, Feminist, and
Queer Theory sort -- is the lingua franca and common currency of both
classroom and tenure-track discussion, debate, and dissertation, with
sanity and the sane everywhere first savaged, then purged lest they become
a threat to the hegemony of loonies.

That's not an answer, that's just another assertion. I assumed you
would have the wherewithal to actually try to support and explain a
position instead of retreating into the bunker of received truth.

It's not only the New Musicologists (by whom I assume you mean the
likes of Tomlinson, McClary, and Kramer) who have done such shocking
things like argue for context as essential to understanding. In fact,
some of their most implacable and fiery opponents would also still
disagree with your stance. Read some Taruskin some time, a scholar who
can actually use invective effectively. That was the point of bringing
up some of the work done on Dahlhaus' foundations.

But, as Mr. A. C. Douglas has proved himself willing to explain his
points and is obviously the intellectual superior to any number of
scholars, many of whom do not agree with each other but can at least
articulate an argument...

Post by A.C. Douglas
As for the rest of what you had to say, play your idiot, PoMo academic
games with others here. I've better things to do with my time.

I find this amusing as I myself am strongly historical and source-based
in my own inclinations. But by the strict gospel of aesthetic
autonomy, who needs to bother with such feeble kinds of understanding?

-la monstre straussienne

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]

Why would you expect me to spend valuable time discoursing in some detail
on aesthetic theory here? To what purpose? To convince other members of
this forum that I know what I'm talking about? Display my erudition?
Simply for the pleasure of "hearing" myself discourse at length?

Such ideas are all equally absurd. I made my assertions to counter the
manifestly false contention that to understand the _Ring_ (or any of
Wagner's operas), one needs to be familiar with Wagner's original sources,
and expressed those assertions unequivocally as if they were Euclidian
matters of fact.

Now, and to use you as example, have my assertions persuaded you of the
manifest falsity of that contention? No? No problem, and no skin off my
back. Whether you accept what I say or not is your business exclusively.
Yea or nay, it's a matter of total indifference to me. It's neither my
task, nor am I being paid here to persuade anyone of anything. This is a
an online forum where members state their ideas and opinions, share
information, argue points back and forth, and generally hobnob with a
population where all share a common interest. Were I making a formal
argument for a book or thesis, or otherwise being well-paid for my trouble,
that would be a different matter altogether. But I'm not. So you're
perfectly free, even on mere whim, to accept at face value what I say, or
any part of it, as either valid and worth adopting for yourself, or without
any real merit and therefore worthless. Your choice and your concern
entirely, and none of mine.

See how that works?

I trust I make myself clear.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by A.C. Douglas
Of course it can be asserted as unproblematic. Further, as an
unproblematic, self-evident truth. Except, of course, for PoMo Lit-Crit
and New Musicology types; lunatic inmates of the inmate-run asylums that
are the humanities and musicology departments of today's universities.
There, lunacy -- mostly of the neo-Marxist, Historicist, Feminist, and
Queer Theory sort -- is the lingua franca and common currency of both
classroom and tenure-track discussion, debate, and dissertation, with
sanity and the sane everywhere first savaged, then purged lest they become
a threat to the hegemony of loonies.

That's not an answer, that's just another assertion. I assumed you
would have the wherewithal to actually try to support and explain a
position instead of retreating into the bunker of received truth.
It's not only the New Musicologists (by whom I assume you mean the
likes of Tomlinson, McClary, and Kramer) who have done such shocking
things like argue for context as essential to understanding. In fact,
some of their most implacable and fiery opponents would also still
disagree with your stance. Read some Taruskin some time, a scholar who
can actually use invective effectively. That was the point of bringing
up some of the work done on Dahlhaus' foundations.
But, as Mr. A. C. Douglas has proved himself willing to explain his
points and is obviously the intellectual superior to any number of
scholars, many of whom do not agree with each other but can at least
articulate an argument...

Post by A.C. Douglas
As for the rest of what you had to say, play your idiot, PoMo academic
games with others here. I've better things to do with my time.

I find this amusing as I myself am strongly historical and source-based
in my own inclinations. But by the strict gospel of aesthetic
autonomy, who needs to bother with such feeble kinds of understanding?
-la monstre straussienne

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
Now, and to use you as example, have my assertions persuaded you of the
manifest falsity of that contention?

Missing words in the above. That should have read:

"Now, and to use you as example, although I could address the following to
anyone on this forum, Have my assertions persuaded you of the manifest
falsity of that contention?"

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Why would you expect me to spend valuable time discoursing in some detail
on aesthetic theory here? To what purpose? To convince other members of
this forum that I know what I'm talking about? Display my erudition?
Simply for the pleasure of "hearing" myself discourse at length?
Such ideas are all equally absurd. I made my assertions to counter the
manifestly false contention that to understand the _Ring_ (or any of
Wagner's operas), one needs to be familiar with Wagner's original sources,
and expressed those assertions unequivocally as if they were Euclidian
matters of fact.
Now, and to use you as example, have my assertions persuaded you of the
manifest falsity of that contention? No? No problem, and no skin off my
back. Whether you accept what I say or not is your business exclusively.
Yea or nay, it's a matter of total indifference to me. It's neither my
task, nor am I being paid here to persuade anyone of anything. This is a
an online forum where members state their ideas and opinions, share
information, argue points back and forth, and generally hobnob with a
population where all share a common interest. Were I making a formal
argument for a book or thesis, or otherwise being well-paid for my trouble,
that would be a different matter altogether. But I'm not. So you're
perfectly free, even on mere whim, to accept at face value what I say, or
any part of it, as either valid and worth adopting for yourself, or without
any real merit and therefore worthless. Your choice and your concern
entirely, and none of mine.
See how that works?
I trust I make myself clear.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
[prior posts snipped]

[Mike Scott Rohan]

The message <ax0Ce.1616$***@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
from "A.C. Douglas" <***@att.net> contains these words:

{snip}

Post by A.C. Douglas
Such ideas are all equally absurd. I made my assertions to counter the
manifestly false contention that to understand the _Ring_ (or any of
Wagner's operas), one needs to be familiar with Wagner's original sources,
and expressed those assertions unequivocally as if they were Euclidian
matters of fact.

You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition. Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?
And therefore, that whatever level of understanding one achieves from a
first experience of the Ring or other Wagner operas is bound to be less
deep, and therefore inherently less complete, than an experience
informed by wider and more detailed knowledge? The one inevitably
follows on from the other. So, turning the statement around a little, to
achieve more than a shallow and slight understanding it is necessary to
acquire that knowledge. And would you therefore claim a shallow
understanding is in any way adequate?

I trust not, or you'd be the idiot.

Post by A.C. Douglas
Now, and to use you as example, have my assertions persuaded you of the
manifest falsity of that contention? No? No problem, and no skin off my
back. Whether you accept what I say or not is your business exclusively.
Yea or nay, it's a matter of total indifference to me. It's neither my
task, nor am I being paid here to persuade anyone of anything. This is a
an online forum where members state their ideas and opinions, share
information, argue points back and forth, and generally hobnob with a
population where all share a common interest. Were I making a formal
argument for a book or thesis, or otherwise being well-paid for my trouble,
that would be a different matter altogether. But I'm not. So you're
perfectly free, even on mere whim, to accept at face value what I say, or
any part of it, as either valid and worth adopting for yourself, or without
any real merit and therefore worthless. Your choice and your concern
entirely, and none of mine.
See how that works?
I trust I make myself clear.

If it made no difference to you at all, you would not bother to express
such a contentious opinion so forcibly or indeed offensively. In fact
you court the response you are getting, apparently in order to validate
a reply in this vein. That isn't discussion, unfortunately, and it soon
exhausts its effect, and devalues whatever of real interest you do have
to contribute. Right now it sounds as if the needle's stuck.

[Richard Partridge]

On 7/17/05 11:48 AM, Mike Scott Rohan, at

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
{snip}

Post by A.C. Douglas
I trust I make myself clear.

[snip]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
Right now it sounds as if the needle's stuck.

Well said!


Dick Partridge

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition.

Excuse me? I "wriggle on matters of definition"? Don't be ridiculous.
It's no "wriggle" to insist that "understanding" and "appreciation" of a
work of art are two distinct responses, an informed latter requiring the
former, but the former not contingent in any degree on the latter.

Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?

Of course there are, and I've *explicitly* said as much in past, so your,
"can even you deny" is totally gratuitous. As I've several times said, as
a general principle, the more knowledge one brings to a work of art, the
deeper one's understanding of that work of art. In the matter of Wagner's
original sources, however -- as you more than anyone else on this newsgroup
supply paradigmatic proof -- the danger is that one will misuse or misapply
that knowledge, imagining that by that knowledge one is given the insight
to "fill in the blanks" left by Wagner. The very idea is absurd as it
would be in the case of any genuine work of art. Wagner left no such
"blanks" to be filled in by knowledge gleaned elsewhere. Any apparent such
"blanks" in the operas are purposeful omissions by Wagner; "blanks" that
would not even be suspected of being "blanks" until wrongheaded
misapplication of "scholarly" research convinces one there are indeed
"blanks" that need to be filled in.

As for your risible closing armchair psychological "analysis," the less
said about that, the better, except to say that if "it sounds as if the
needle's stuck," that's only because others here insist on replaying at
every opportunity the same flawed grooves.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

{snip}

Post by A.C. Douglas
Such ideas are all equally absurd. I made my assertions to counter the
manifestly false contention that to understand the _Ring_ (or any of
Wagner's operas), one needs to be familiar with Wagner's original sources,
and expressed those assertions unequivocally as if they were Euclidian
matters of fact.

You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition. Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?
And therefore, that whatever level of understanding one achieves from a
first experience of the Ring or other Wagner operas is bound to be less
deep, and therefore inherently less complete, than an experience
informed by wider and more detailed knowledge? The one inevitably
follows on from the other. So, turning the statement around a little, to
achieve more than a shallow and slight understanding it is necessary to
acquire that knowledge. And would you therefore claim a shallow
understanding is in any way adequate?
I trust not, or you'd be the idiot.

Post by A.C. Douglas
Now, and to use you as example, have my assertions persuaded you of the
manifest falsity of that contention? No? No problem, and no skin off my
back. Whether you accept what I say or not is your business
exclusively.
Yea or nay, it's a matter of total indifference to me. It's neither my
task, nor am I being paid here to persuade anyone of anything. This is a
an online forum where members state their ideas and opinions, share
information, argue points back and forth, and generally hobnob with a
population where all share a common interest. Were I making a formal
argument for a book or thesis, or otherwise being well-paid for my trouble,
that would be a different matter altogether. But I'm not. So you're
perfectly free, even on mere whim, to accept at face value what I say, or
any part of it, as either valid and worth adopting for yourself, or without
any real merit and therefore worthless. Your choice and your concern
entirely, and none of mine.
See how that works?
I trust I make myself clear.

If it made no difference to you at all, you would not bother to express
such a contentious opinion so forcibly or indeed offensively. In fact
you court the response you are getting, apparently in order to validate
a reply in this vein. That isn't discussion, unfortunately, and it soon
exhausts its effect, and devalues whatever of real interest you do have
to contribute. Right now it sounds as if the needle's stuck.
--

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
...that's only because others here insist on replaying at
every opportunity the same flawed grooves.

Missing word in the above.

That should have read: "...that's only because some others here insist on
replaying at every opportunity the same flawed grooves."

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

[snipped - original post is below]
You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition.

Excuse me? I "wriggle on matters of definition"? Don't be ridiculous.
It's no "wriggle" to insist that "understanding" and "appreciation" of a
work of art are two distinct responses, an informed latter requiring the
former, but the former not contingent in any degree on the latter.

Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?

Of course there are, and I've *explicitly* said as much in past, so your,
"can even you deny" is totally gratuitous. As I've several times said, as
a general principle, the more knowledge one brings to a work of art, the
deeper one's understanding of that work of art. In the matter of Wagner's
original sources, however -- as you more than anyone else on this newsgroup
supply paradigmatic proof -- the danger is that one will misuse or misapply
that knowledge, imagining that by that knowledge one is given the insight
to "fill in the blanks" left by Wagner. The very idea is absurd as it
would be in the case of any genuine work of art. Wagner left no such
"blanks" to be filled in by knowledge gleaned elsewhere. Any apparent such
"blanks" in the operas are purposeful omissions by Wagner; "blanks" that
would not even be suspected of being "blanks" until wrongheaded
misapplication of "scholarly" research convinces one there are indeed
"blanks" that need to be filled in.
As for your risible closing armchair psychological "analysis," the less
said about that, the better, except to say that if "it sounds as if the
needle's stuck," that's only because others here insist on replaying at
every opportunity the same flawed grooves.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
[prior posts snipped]

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition.

Excuse me? I "wriggle on matters of definition"? Don't be ridiculous.
It's no "wriggle" to insist that "understanding" and "appreciation" of a
work of art are two distinct responses, an informed latter requiring the
former, but the former not contingent in any degree on the latter.

For these purposes it most certainly is a wriggle; can one of these
supposedly distinct responses exist without at least some degree of the
other? Of course not.

Post by A.C. Douglas

Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?

Of course there are, and I've *explicitly* said as much in past, so your,
"can even you deny" is totally gratuitous. As I've several times said, as
a general principle, the more knowledge one brings to a work of art, the
deeper one's understanding of that work of art. In the matter of Wagner's
original sources, however -- as you more than anyone else on this newsgroup
supply paradigmatic proof -- the danger is that one will misuse or misapply
that knowledge, imagining that by that knowledge one is given the insight
to "fill in the blanks" left by Wagner. The very idea is absurd as it
would be in the case of any genuine work of art. Wagner left no such
"blanks" to be filled in by knowledge gleaned elsewhere. Any apparent such
"blanks" in the operas are purposeful omissions by Wagner; "blanks" that
would not even be suspected of being "blanks" until wrongheaded
misapplication of "scholarly" research convinces one there are indeed
"blanks" that need to be filled in.

On the contrary, he expected his educated audience to have some idea of
many concepts he dealt with -- the semi-mortal nature of the Norse gods,
for example, which is if not unique in mythology, very unusual as an
overall rule. It was often cited by those with insufficient knowledge as
an example of the "absurdity" of the Ring. That specific lack of source
knowledge, therefore, limited both understanding and appreciation. There
are many other examples. The external knowledge necessary need not be as
grossly academic as you insist, merely a general understanding and
appreciation of the background; but if you don't have it, you will
neither appreciate the Ring nor understand it to any worthwhile extent.

Your suggestion that I "misapply" my knowledge in that area would be
more rude if it wasn't so ridiculous. Who are you to define the useful
limits of knowledge, or its application? Anything that was in Wagner's
experience is entirely valid in considering the Ring, and his sources at
least as much as anything else. I happen to have learned a fair amount
about Wagner in many areas, of which the sources he knew or may have
known are only a part. But having acquired that knowledge among the
rest, I find, as others do, that it informs and illuminates his thinking
both generally and, sometimes, specifically, in places where his other
concerns -- political or philosophical, for example -- do not. Wagner
was not inventing a mythology from scratch, as you have claimed in the
past, but reinventing existing myth. Norse/Teutonic myth was what
inspired Wagner to create the Ring; it is profoundly fundamental to it.
You need at least some appreciation of it to understand or appreciate
the Ring at all. Whatever appreciation of the Ring you personally may
have, you have only because you already know these things you would deny
other people.

But that basic knowledge, though essential, is only the beginning. A
knowledge of the sources at least as deep as Wagner's, and therefore how
he chose to reinterpret them, will give you many valuable insights into
how his mind worked, and therefore guidance as to what he intended by
some otherwise enigmatic elements. How can that possibly be
"misapplying" it?

What's more -- you would do well to remember that it's exactly the lack
of that source knowledge and appreciation, and the consequent bias
towards the baldly political, or assumptions that the Ring is inherently
meaningless, which have spawned the idiotic Eurotrash productions you so
rightly deplore.

Post by A.C. Douglas
As for your risible closing armchair psychological "analysis," the less
said about that, the better, except to say that if "it sounds as if the
needle's stuck," that's only because others here insist on replaying at
every opportunity the same flawed grooves.

I have no doubt a psychologist might analyse the problem differently,
probably more radically. It requires no such professional skill to
recognise contention for its own sake, or to remember that you have in
the past contributed more interestingly without it.

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
For these purposes it most certainly is a wriggle; can one of these
supposedly distinct responses exist without at least some degree of the
other? Of course not.

I repeat: Understanding and appreciation of a work of art are two distinct
responses, an informed latter requiring the former, but the former not
contingent in any degree on the latter.

On the contrary, he [Wagner] expected his educated audience to have some
idea of
many concepts he dealt with -- the semi-mortal nature of the Norse gods,
for example, which is if not unique in mythology, very unusual as an
overall rule. It was often cited by those with insufficient knowledge as
an example of the "absurdity" of the Ring. That specific lack of source
knowledge, therefore, limited both understanding and appreciation.

Rubbish. That Wagner expected his audiences to be educated is a given, and
any educated, opera-savvy person of the time would instantly have
understood the semi-mortal nature of the *_Ring_* gods *directly* from
Wagner's librettos. No knowledge of Norse mythology required. Zero, zip,
nada, bupkiss. Any educated person who didn't understand that from the
librettos, *willfully* didn't understand for whatever reason(s).

Your suggestion that I "misapply" my knowledge in that area would be
more rude if it wasn't so ridiculous. Who are you to define the useful
limits of knowledge, or its application?

I didn't suggest. I asserted. And your misapplication has to do with your
repeated wrongheaded and purblind attempts to revert to Wagner's original
sources in order to explain or "fill in" this or that point, or this or
that character, what you imagine Wagner left out. Such attempts lead to
the wrong answers -- always. If Wagner left something out of the _Ring_
(i.e., from the original sources), he left it out because he didn't want it
in there. By your wrongheaded attempt to put it back in, you nullify
Wagner's careful and painstaking work, and falsify and corrupt both his
intent and his accomplishment.

The rest of your screed has largely to do with appreciation of the operas,
or a deepening of one's understanding of them, and appreciation and
understanding of Wagner himself, all of which are outside the point in
discussion, and so require no response from me. In any case, we're
largely in agreement in those areas, and so in respect of those have
nothing about which to really argue.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
You've said this before and at length, yet when it's challenged, as it
begs to be, you wriggle on matters of definition.

Excuse me? I "wriggle on matters of definition"? Don't be ridiculous.
It's no "wriggle" to insist that "understanding" and "appreciation" of a
work of art are two distinct responses, an informed latter requiring the
former, but the former not contingent in any degree on the latter.

For these purposes it most certainly is a wriggle; can one of these
supposedly distinct responses exist without at least some degree of the
other? Of course not.

Post by A.C. Douglas

Yet can even you deny
that there are always *degrees* of understanding, and different depths?

Of course there are, and I've *explicitly* said as much in past, so your,
"can even you deny" is totally gratuitous. As I've several times said, as
a general principle, the more knowledge one brings to a work of art, the
deeper one's understanding of that work of art. In the matter of Wagner's
original sources, however -- as you more than anyone else on this newsgroup
supply paradigmatic proof -- the danger is that one will misuse or misapply
that knowledge, imagining that by that knowledge one is given the insight
to "fill in the blanks" left by Wagner. The very idea is absurd as it
would be in the case of any genuine work of art. Wagner left no such
"blanks" to be filled in by knowledge gleaned elsewhere. Any apparent such
"blanks" in the operas are purposeful omissions by Wagner; "blanks" that
would not even be suspected of being "blanks" until wrongheaded
misapplication of "scholarly" research convinces one there are indeed
"blanks" that need to be filled in.

On the contrary, he expected his educated audience to have some idea of
many concepts he dealt with -- the semi-mortal nature of the Norse gods,
for example, which is if not unique in mythology, very unusual as an
overall rule. It was often cited by those with insufficient knowledge as
an example of the "absurdity" of the Ring. That specific lack of source
knowledge, therefore, limited both understanding and appreciation. There
are many other examples. The external knowledge necessary need not be as
grossly academic as you insist, merely a general understanding and
appreciation of the background; but if you don't have it, you will
neither appreciate the Ring nor understand it to any worthwhile extent.
Your suggestion that I "misapply" my knowledge in that area would be
more rude if it wasn't so ridiculous. Who are you to define the useful
limits of knowledge, or its application? Anything that was in Wagner's
experience is entirely valid in considering the Ring, and his sources at
least as much as anything else. I happen to have learned a fair amount
about Wagner in many areas, of which the sources he knew or may have
known are only a part. But having acquired that knowledge among the
rest, I find, as others do, that it informs and illuminates his thinking
both generally and, sometimes, specifically, in places where his other
concerns -- political or philosophical, for example -- do not. Wagner
was not inventing a mythology from scratch, as you have claimed in the
past, but reinventing existing myth. Norse/Teutonic myth was what
inspired Wagner to create the Ring; it is profoundly fundamental to it.
You need at least some appreciation of it to understand or appreciate
the Ring at all. Whatever appreciation of the Ring you personally may
have, you have only because you already know these things you would deny
other people.
But that basic knowledge, though essential, is only the beginning. A
knowledge of the sources at least as deep as Wagner's, and therefore how
he chose to reinterpret them, will give you many valuable insights into
how his mind worked, and therefore guidance as to what he intended by
some otherwise enigmatic elements. How can that possibly be
"misapplying" it?
What's more -- you would do well to remember that it's exactly the lack
of that source knowledge and appreciation, and the consequent bias
towards the baldly political, or assumptions that the Ring is inherently
meaningless, which have spawned the idiotic Eurotrash productions you so
rightly deplore.

Post by A.C. Douglas
As for your risible closing armchair psychological "analysis," the less
said about that, the better, except to say that if "it sounds as if the
needle's stuck," that's only because others here insist on replaying at
every opportunity the same flawed grooves.

I have no doubt a psychologist might analyse the problem differently,
probably more radically. It requires no such professional skill to
recognise contention for its own sake, or to remember that you have in
the past contributed more interestingly without it.
--

[Richard Partridge]

On 7/17/05 5:47 PM, Mike Scott Rohan, at
***@asgard.zetnet.co.uk, wrote the following:

[snip]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
On the contrary, he expected his educated audience to have some idea of
many concepts he dealt with -- the semi-mortal nature of the Norse gods,
for example, which is if not unique in mythology, very unusual as an
overall rule. It was often cited by those with insufficient knowledge as
an example of the "absurdity" of the Ring. That specific lack of source
knowledge, therefore, limited both understanding and appreciation. There
are many other examples. The external knowledge necessary need not be as
grossly academic as you insist, merely a general understanding and
appreciation of the background; but if you don't have it, you will
neither appreciate the Ring nor understand it to any worthwhile extent.

[snip]

The more I think about it, the more I think the two words -- "knowledge" and
"appreciation" -- at least in relation to a work of art, are very similar in
their meaning. It would be a mistake, I think, to suppose that there is a
bright line separating the concepts.

Consider two sentences: "Reading Newman's book has greatly increased my
knowledge of Wagner's operas;" and, "Reading Newman's book has greatly
increased my appreciation of Wagner's operas." I submit there is not much
difference in the ideas conveyed by them. There is a difference in nuance,
of course. "Appreciation" implies that you like the work, and "knowledge"
does not. But the similarity in the two thoughts is much greater than the
difference, IMO.


Dick Partridge

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Richard Partridge
On 7/17/05 5:47 PM, Mike Scott Rohan, at
[snip]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
On the contrary, he expected his educated audience to have some idea of
many concepts he dealt with -- the semi-mortal nature of the Norse gods,
for example, which is if not unique in mythology, very unusual as an
overall rule. It was often cited by those with insufficient knowledge as
an example of the "absurdity" of the Ring. That specific lack of source
knowledge, therefore, limited both understanding and appreciation. There
are many other examples. The external knowledge necessary need not be as
grossly academic as you insist, merely a general understanding and
appreciation of the background; but if you don't have it, you will
neither appreciate the Ring nor understand it to any worthwhile extent.

[snip]
The more I think about it, the more I think the two words -- "knowledge" and
"appreciation" -- at least in relation to a work of art, are very similar in
their meaning. It would be a mistake, I think, to suppose that there is a
bright line separating the concepts.
Consider two sentences: "Reading Newman's book has greatly increased my
knowledge of Wagner's operas;" and, "Reading Newman's book has greatly
increased my appreciation of Wagner's operas." I submit there is not much
difference in the ideas conveyed by them. There is a difference in nuance,
of course. "Appreciation" implies that you like the work, and "knowledge"
does not. But the similarity in the two thoughts is much greater than the
difference, IMO.

Very true -- and the name of the third horseman was "understanding",
which is also very similar. Understanding is not possible without
knowledge, certainly; but despite what ACD claims, it is also a
prerequisite for appreciation. And vice versa; because in order fully to
understand something, there has to be some degree of appreciation
involved. It doesn't actually have to involve liking, per se; in order
to understand Nazism, Marxist-Leninism or any other totalitarian
ideology, it isn't necessary to like or approve of it, in fact it would
be a gross handicap because then you'd be blinding yourself to its
faults. But you would still have to have some empathic feeling for its
appeal to so many people -- and that would be "appreciation".

Hence any attempt to distinguish them so radically as to say you can
have one completely or adequately without any of the other, is
axiomatically nonsense.

Cheers,

Mike

[Richard Partridge]

Post by Herman van der Woude
[snip]
The more I think about it, the more I think the two words -- "knowledge" and
"appreciation" -- at least in relation to a work of art, are very similar in
their meaning. It would be a mistake, I think, to suppose that there is a
bright line separating the concepts.

[snip]

An interesting example of current usage of the words "understand" and
"appreciate" is in the following excerpt from an article in today's New York
Times:

"'We need to know, the American people need to know the status of readiness
of the Iraqi military, which is improving, so that we can not only
understand but appreciate better the roles and missions that they are
capable of carrying out,' Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said
at the hearing."

Senator McCain seems to sees a clear distinction between the two words.
I'll be damned if I can see it.


Dick Partridge

[Praetorius]

now I've never heard 'La Juive', but I read here once that elements of
it have paralells in Parsifal. I've heard Rienzi referred to as
'Meyerbeer's greatest opera' And 'Norma'...isn't that the opera where
at the end, the heroine dies in a funeral pyre?

No, I've never read those original source texts (maybe I remember
hearing about the Nibelungenlied in German class 35 years ago). And I
don't say I never will. Maybe I don't think its such a bad idea. But,
somehow I've gotten the impression that these 'original' sources are
the 'true' key to all that is Wagner.

Instead, I wonder if you couldn't argue that it was Wagner's MUSICAL
values--influenced by some of the above mentioned music--that told him
which of these texts to turn to and which to ignore. Thus, making
musical influences superior to (perhaps) or more important than textual
ones.

Besides the bickering, maybe I think the idea of this thread drifts too
far away from Wagner as musical composer. Similar to the stage
director, rather than the conductor, having the ultimate power in
operatic performance. I'm afraid that if we all have to go back and
study the 'original' poems, then we all also have to go back and listen
to and study some lousy music (No, I don't think 'Norma' is lousy, but
you know what I mean)

[Derrick Everett]

Post by Praetorius
now I've never heard 'La Juive', but I read here once that elements of
it have paralells in Parsifal. I've heard Rienzi referred to as
'Meyerbeer's greatest opera' And 'Norma'...isn't that the opera where
at the end, the heroine dies in a funeral pyre?

I think that the only parallels between 'La Juive' and 'Parsifal' are
that both operas involve participation in a ritual meal. Despite his
well-known anti-Semitic prejudices, and his bitterness about Meyerbeer,
Wagner always held Halevy (composer of 'La Juive') in the highest
respect and attended performances of the latter's operas at every
opportunity. The only negative criticism by Wagner that has survived,
to my knowledge, about Halevy, is a comment about Halevy being too much
concerned with his box-office takings. As if Wagner were not concerned
about his own ...

The influence of Meyerbeer can be detected in all of Wagner's mature
operas, if one looks hard enough. The end of 'Goetterdaemmerung', for
example, reminds me a little of the end of Meyerbeer's 'Prophet'. I
believe that the remark about 'Rienzi' being the best of Meyerbeer's
operas was first made by Hans von Buelow ...

--
Derrick Everett
(in Prague)

[Richard Partridge]

On 7/15/05 6:09 PM, A.C. Douglas, at ***@att.net, wrote the following:

[snip]

Post by A.C. Douglas
Here's another " insulting epithe[t]" for you.
Have you some sort of cognitive deficit, little man? The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count.
because thoroughly non sequitur as a response to anything I wrote. And
_Pale Fire_ and _Lolita_ are perfectly understandable without recourse to
any sources or references outside the novels, and the fact that you stuck
in the gratuitous word "fully" alters nothing.
Idiot.
--
ACD

[snip]

Just out of curiosity, do you maintain that no familiarity with Homer's
"Odyssey" is needed to understand James Joyce's "Ulysses?"


Dick Partridge

[A.C. Douglas]

Post by Richard Partridge
Just out of curiosity, do you maintain that no familiarity with Homer's
"Odyssey" is needed to understand James Joyce's "Ulysses?"

I most assuredly do maintain just that -- that most particularly.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by Richard Partridge
[snip]

Post by A.C. Douglas
Here's another " insulting epithe[t]" for you.
Have you some sort of cognitive deficit, little man? The distinction
between the words, "understand" and "appreciate" seems beyond your
capacities of comprehension even after I've corrected your and others'
confusion on the matter here more times than I can count.
because thoroughly non sequitur as a response to anything I wrote. And
_Pale Fire_ and _Lolita_ are perfectly understandable without recourse to
any sources or references outside the novels, and the fact that you stuck
in the gratuitous word "fully" alters nothing.
Idiot.
--
ACD

[snip]
Just out of curiosity, do you maintain that no familiarity with Homer's
"Odyssey" is needed to understand James Joyce's "Ulysses?"
Dick Partridge

[Parzival]

Tommyrot...

By understanding the sources you can appreciate the genius of the man. how
he drew on just certain elements, neglecting others, transforming some, in
order to present these greatest of all musical dramas.

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

True a work should stand on it's own however, consider that Shakespeare
(or Wagner) were not necessarily writing for the uneducated masses. An
educated man in Shakespeare's time would have been well versed in Latin
(Roman) teaching and knowledge of Seneca and Plautus etc would have been
expected. And the educated of Wagner's time certainly would be
familiar with the great German epic poems and historical characters like
Hans Sachs. just as Homer's listeners would know all about the pre
history of the characters in the Iliad. I don't think they would have
needed footnotes to know Aias' father sailed with Jason. It's just that
these sources have become somewhat removed from the main stream and have
to be actively sought out, where as for the audiences these were written
for they certainly would have been more common knowledge.
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.
Not to keep harping on Shakespeare ( but to me he and Wagner represent
the same level of artistic development) but I remember a teacher I had
praising Shakespeare's inclusion of a brief scene in Julius Caesar where
the mob kills Cinna the poet for having the same name as Cinna the
conspirator. She sited it as an example of his dramatic genius, showing
the disordered reasoning of the mob,etc. She was under the impression
Shakespeare merely drew the scene up out of his own head and put it in
for dramatic effect. I spoke to her after the class and found she
didn't know the entire scene is described in Plutarch's Lives of Greek
and Roman leaders. She never read this - yet was lecturing on Julius
Caesar. Again, Shakespeare viewer would have been well acquainted with
Holinshed's chronicles and Plutarch and conversely Wagner's would have
known his sources too.
[prior posts snipped]

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
By understanding the sources you can appreciate the genius of the man.
how he drew on just certain elements, neglecting others, transforming
some, in order to present these greatest of all musical dramas.

Non sequitur. Totally.

What has that do to with what we're talking about, and your original
assertion?

Answer: Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Tommyrot...
By understanding the sources you can appreciate the genius of the man.
how he drew on just certain elements, neglecting others, transforming
some, in order to present these greatest of all musical dramas.

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of
understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com

[prior posts snipped]

[Parzival]

Post by A.C. Douglas

Post by A.C. Douglas
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original

sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.

What is to be gained by knowledge of Wagner's use of the werewolf motif is
an appreciation of the mind of the Master. He had to show a connection
between Walse and Siegmund and evince their positions as law-breakers and
outcasts. He could have invented a scenario to do this but instead, being
faithful to the source, chooses this particular incident which did not even
involve the characters presented in his opera. Even the shedding of the
skin which Siegmund finds has it's original in the source. By noting
Wagner's revisions and omissions etc we appreciate the master dramatist.

Yes you can enjoy it with out that appreciation but when is ignorance ( in
this case of the source) a benefit?

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
What is to be gained by knowledge of Wagner's use of the werewolf motif
is an appreciation of the mind of the Master.

Once again, non sequitur to this discussion, and your original assertion.

Totally.

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

Post by A.C. Douglas

Post by A.C. Douglas
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original

sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the _Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.

What is to be gained by knowledge of Wagner's use of the werewolf motif
is an appreciation of the mind of the Master. He had to show a
connection between Walse and Siegmund and evince their positions as
law-breakers and outcasts. He could have invented a scenario to do
this but instead, being faithful to the source, chooses this particular
incident which did not even involve the characters presented in his
opera. Even the shedding of the skin which Siegmund finds has it's
original in the source. By noting Wagner's revisions and omissions
etc we appreciate the master dramatist.
Yes you can enjoy it with out that appreciation but when is ignorance (
in this case of the source) a benefit?

[Parzival]

Your comment reminds me of a riddle:

how many legs would a jackass have if you called it's tail a leg?

Answer: four - calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

nor does randomly attempting to negate arguments by calling them non
sequiturs.
.

Post by A.C. Douglas
Once again, non sequitur to this discussion, and your original assertion.
Totally.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]

Are you being willfully dense, Parzival?

Your two responses that I dismissed as non sequitur make an *entirely
different* argument from the one you first adduced, and to which I
responded negatively.

Please pay better attention!

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

how many legs would a jackass have if you called it's tail a leg?
Answer: four - calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
nor does randomly attempting to negate arguments by calling them non
sequiturs.
.

Post by A.C. Douglas
Once again, non sequitur to this discussion, and your original assertion.
Totally.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com

[Parzival]

Strangely enough, somehow you have it in your mind that your announcing that
something is so, makes it so and therefore anything expressed to the
contrary is wrong. 'fraid the world doesn't work like that outside of your
house (or is it padded cell?)

Even more strangely YOU accuse ME going off topic and admonish me to "pay
better attention" when YOU never answered the question posed in the first
place... "Did you read any of the original works?" Simple question. No
answer contained in your comments.

PAY BETTER ATTENTION.

Post by A.C. Douglas

[snipped - original post is below]

Are you being willfully dense, Parzival?
Your two responses that I dismissed as non sequitur make an *entirely
different* argument from the one you first adduced, and to which I
responded negatively.
Please pay better attention!
--
ACD

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Bert Coules

How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus by
someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar with the legend
of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self contained" as Wagner,
but what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone and style without
understanding those references?

Obviously I don't know this for a fact, but it's certainly my belief that
Shakespeare didn't write to be analysed, or "understood" in the academic
sense. He wrote for an audience who paid their money in the expectation
that they would be entertained, gripped, moved and uplifted.

True, Bert, but he wrote for a *contemporary* audience. Half of
Shakespeare scholarship is restoring the immediacy he once had, or at
least clarifying it. One can enjoy Shakespeare without it, but not to
the same extent -- not as he deserves. And his was an audience in which
the intellectual tastes of the elite were expected to dominate, while
still preserving a sufficiently vivid plot and action to grip the
groundlings, apprentices, tarts etc. So there's a lot that's quite
abstruse in his plays, because a minority was expected to understand it
and the majority wasn't. So there are intellectual in-jokes, learned
references (fairly -- Shakespeare was no great academic himself, and
careful not to overtax his market!), touches of gossip that's hard for
us to understand today -- "like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's
picture" (quoting from memory) from Twelfth Night is an example. And of
course there's contemporary satire; Don Armado in Loves' Labours Lost is
an amusing grotesque in himself, but suddenly becomes a lot more
comprehensible and funny if you realise he's a caricature of the
ostentatiously foreign-mannered and wench-chasing Sir Walter Raleigh and
his School of Night. And study of the language itself is essential to
read lines like "...the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green
one red." Is that "making the green one, red" or "making the green, one
red"? Simple enough, but ink's been spilled over it. Though I personally
don't believe it, apparently the Victorians favoured the former reading.

Of course Shakespeare is not meant to be analysed, but if we're to
bridge many gaps as best we can such analysis is necessary -- or the gap
will grow wider, and we'll lose him.

Post by Bert Coules
And obviously I don't know *this* for a fact either, but again I'd certainly
like to think that Wagner was writing as much for a non-academic audience as
a scholarly one, if not more so.

No. He was definitely addressing a well-educated audience, though
certainly not academic. He did claim that it was only academics who
found his music difficult, and that ordinary people had no trouble
understanding it, but he definitely did not take any kind of popular or
universal line with his dramas. He believed in high seriousness, and had
no time the frivolities of popular taste, which he thought led to empty
things like Meyerbeer and Offenbach; he was always addressing an
audience who could appreciate deeper concerns, and that meant educated.
When he set out to write something light and popular, in the Italian
vein, he ended up with Tristan.

Post by Bert Coules
The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and nothing
else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not worthless...

That view seems tempting at first sight, but no. Certainly the dramatic
work has to operate through performance first and foremost (although
many, including Seneca's tragedies, Faust, Peer Gynt and Hardy's The
Dynasts, were meant to be read or at most read out rather than
performed). But if there is any gulf of time and comprehension -- even a
slight one, as with, say, Dion Boucicault, Brecht or even Max Frisch --
then you need to know more than is immediately visible. If you know
nothing about the rise of Nazism you can still appreciate Biedermann und
die Brandstifter or Arturo Ui (crap though it actually is) -- but not at
all fully. Alfred Jarry's Ubu plays can seem like pure Pythonesque
nonsense, but they're actually full of satirical references to French
history as then taught in the more stifling schools. And just how much
are you going to get out of Orpheus in the Underworld or La Belle Helene
if you've no idea of Greek myth? You can watch them and pick up a sort
of an idea, but you'll miss more than half the joke. Enter the analyst,
who can prime you for it.

This is both right and necessary; if any dramatic work has no more
meaning than is immediately apparent, you're watching Eastenders or All
My Children -- because often the "only" differences between a soap opera
and a classic tragedy lie in the language, the historical resonances,
the philosophical and religious background, and all the things that are
*not* immediately apparent to the uninformed viewer, and need to be
studied, either by him or by others on his behalf. Wagner often left
huge areas of background unspecified, expecting his audience to have
some basic grasp of Norse myth and Germanic legend. He never bothered to
explain about gods, dragons etc.; if you didn't know, he expected you to
find out -- from your sources. He certainly seems to have expected the
figure of Siegfried to be already present in people's minds outside the
context of his drama, as indeed it was in Germany at that time, and is
even today. People may not know much about him, but they have the
general idea; you can refer to him in comparison and caricature, just as
we can describe someone as "Falstaffian" or drop a reference to "To be
or not to be" in general conversation. To do that we have to have at
least something of the sources with us.

I make no argument for arid scholarship per se; god knows I see enough
of it, especially US publish-or-perish verbiage. But nor will I settle
only for as much of a work of art as immediately meets the eye. There's
a painting by the Finn Gallen-Kallela I love, originally titled, in
Swedish, Stromkarl, or water-spirit. It shows a marvellously painted
waterfall, in which G-K originally depicted the mythical creature. But
instead he removed any explicit image at all, and simply put a series of
thin golden lines vertically across the middle of the painting, from top
to bottom. The effect is stunning -- but how meaningful would it be, if
you didn't know *from your sources* that stromkarls traditionally played
the violin?

That's just one example in a million. Wagner is no exception to the
general rule that art does not and indeed cannot exist in isolation, but
needs existing culture to feed on and grow. That's why to maintain it we
must always have an educated audience, and not one that's dumbed down in
the name of "spontaneity" -- not what you intend, but what your idea can
easily lead to.

[s***@gmail.com]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
True, Bert, but he wrote for a *contemporary* audience. Half of
Shakespeare scholarship is restoring the immediacy he once had, or at
least clarifying it. One can enjoy Shakespeare without it, but not to
the same extent -- not as he deserves. And his was an audience in which
the intellectual tastes of the elite were expected to dominate, while
still preserving a sufficiently vivid plot and action to grip the
groundlings, apprentices, tarts etc. So there's a lot that's quite
abstruse in his plays, because a minority was expected to understand it
and the majority wasn't. So there are intellectual in-jokes, learned
references (fairly -- Shakespeare was no great academic himself, and
careful not to overtax his market!), touches of gossip that's hard for
us to understand today -- "like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's
picture" (quoting from memory) from Twelfth Night is an example. And of
course there's contemporary satire; Don Armado in Loves' Labours Lost is
an amusing grotesque in himself, but suddenly becomes a lot more
comprehensible and funny if you realise he's a caricature of the
ostentatiously foreign-mannered and wench-chasing Sir Walter Raleigh and
his School of Night. And study of the language itself is essential to
read lines like "...the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green
one red." Is that "making the green one, red" or "making the green, one
red"? Simple enough, but ink's been spilled over it. Though I personally
don't believe it, apparently the Victorians favoured the former reading.
Of course Shakespeare is not meant to be analysed, but if we're to
bridge many gaps as best we can such analysis is necessary -- or the gap
will grow wider, and we'll lose him.

I remember, in college, one of the best professors I had (an eminent
classicist with a great sense of humor and a gift for writing as well
as he spoke) expressing his general opinion that Shakespeare's comedies
weren't terribly funny. "Grand heresy!", I thought at first, and then
thought about why: who among us can read a Shakespearean play without
footnotes for at least some of the vocabulary? And how many of the
jokes take explanation or cultural reference to be funny, or even to be
understood?

You certainly learn that lesson reading classical literature. It was a
real kick in the pants to go from the high school approach of "Let's
just give the kids the text and let them work through it and see what
they can do with it" (very New Critical, and somewhat like what ACD is
continually advocating) into the undergraduate approach of "This
material was written in a very different cultural context, and you
don't know what this word actually *means* without studying other
things as well". The text I most fully learned that lesson on was the
Antigone. It's rather instructive to read different interpretations of
the work through the ages and go check them against the original text.
You see what bits of the play each reader has ignored, often because
they didn't understand it. The best example there is the whole
controversy over about 20 lines, which people have always wanted to get
rid of because they completely screw up some readings.

<snip>

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
And just how much
are you going to get out of Orpheus in the Underworld or La Belle Helene
if you've no idea of Greek myth? You can watch them and pick up a sort
of an idea, but you'll miss more than half the joke. Enter the analyst,
who can prime you for it.

I'd say that operates at a lower level, too. We all know how to read,
right? Raise your hand if you've learned another language and it took
you a considerable amount of time to learn to understand idioms, slang,
and style in this other language. Learning to read music is like
learning another language. Tonality is not an inherently self-evident
system, especially not Wagner's highly chromatic idiom. Essential to
understanding Wagner's music is to be able to hear it as extension of a
codified (if loosely so) tonal system, and to hear it as contrast. [A
good example is how to listen to much of Klingsor and Kundry's music,
which verges on the atonal or at least a non-diatonic scale system; you
need to be able to hear that in contrast with the diatonic Knights and
to know what is what and why.]

The idea of ever genuinely being able to approach a work without other
works in mind is a weak theoretical abstraction.

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
I make no argument for arid scholarship per se; god knows I see enough
of it, especially US publish-or-perish verbiage. But nor will I settle
only for as much of a work of art as immediately meets the eye. There's
a painting by the Finn Gallen-Kallela I love, originally titled, in
Swedish, Stromkarl, or water-spirit. It shows a marvellously painted
waterfall, in which G-K originally depicted the mythical creature. But
instead he removed any explicit image at all, and simply put a series of
thin golden lines vertically across the middle of the painting, from top
to bottom. The effect is stunning -- but how meaningful would it be, if
you didn't know *from your sources* that stromkarls traditionally played
the violin?

[I'm a big fan of his picture of the Imatra falls, too.]

-la monstre straussienne (who is currently studying 18th century music,
where concepts of genre are essential)

[Mike Scott Rohan]

The message <***@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
from "***@gmail.com" <***@gmail.com> contains
these words:

{snip}

Post by s***@gmail.com
I remember, in college, one of the best professors I had (an eminent
classicist with a great sense of humor and a gift for writing as well
as he spoke) expressing his general opinion that Shakespeare's comedies
weren't terribly funny. "Grand heresy!", I thought at first, and then
thought about why: who among us can read a Shakespearean play without
footnotes for at least some of the vocabulary?

Well, while agreeing with your general point and without wishing to
boast, I could. They started us on Midsummer Night's Dream as soon as we
could read joined syllables, so we got used to Shakespearian language
very early. IMHO being British makes it somewhat easier, anyhow; we're
less removed from his speech patterns. I'm not saying I could read the
entire canon without footnotes, but several of the plays, yes. The
problem for me is often more the context and the usage than the actual
vocabulary. And this is where background and sources really come into
play. I think because I absorbed so many of the sources, so early, it
makes it easier for me to "live Shakespeare" now.

But reading the plays is indeed not very funny, because they were never
meant to be read. Shakespeare was very often writing for specific actors
in his company -- including himself -- who would supply known quantities
of characterization, "business", etc., so he didn't bother to specify
these. His words are only the bones of what he imagined, and actors and
directors must always try to put flesh on them. But also, the meaning
and style of comedy has changed; look at comic operas -- and yet people
once laughed themselves sick at the gentle humour of Donizetti or
Rossini. Shakespearean comedy is much funnier to us than they are, and
much more profound also -- so much so that when he does write a bad
comedy (I think he slipped somebody a few quid to ghost "Merry Wives",
or adapted an older play, as he often did) it sticks out. Often his
forte is more wit than knockabout, and of course wit dates; but I
remember creasing up with laughter at Kenneth Branagh in his stage
company, playing Benedick tying himself in knots over the prospect of
getting married - - much better than the film, and that wasn't bad. You

And how many of the

Post by s***@gmail.com
jokes take explanation or cultural reference to be funny, or even to be
understood?

That, indeed -- like the famous one that Michael Green quotes in "The
Art of Coarse Acting", from Twelfth Night -- "Sowter will cry out on't,
though it be rank as a fox!" --- saying he defies *anyone* to get a
laugh with that line. Having had to deliver it, I agree, but to an
audience as used to hunting and fieldcraft as the originals were, it's
much more comprehensible.

Post by s***@gmail.com
You certainly learn that lesson reading classical literature. It was a
real kick in the pants to go from the high school approach of "Let's
just give the kids the text and let them work through it and see what
they can do with it" (very New Critical, and somewhat like what ACD is
continually advocating) into the undergraduate approach of "This
material was written in a very different cultural context, and you
don't know what this word actually *means* without studying other
things as well". The text I most fully learned that lesson on was the
Antigone. It's rather instructive to read different interpretations of
the work through the ages and go check them against the original text.
You see what bits of the play each reader has ignored, often because
they didn't understand it. The best example there is the whole
controversy over about 20 lines, which people have always wanted to get
rid of because they completely screw up some readings.
<snip>
The idea of ever genuinely being able to approach a work without other
works in mind is a weak theoretical abstraction.

Agree, agree. You can certainly start that way, and may even pick up the
core of it; but to progress and grow you cannot do without sources.

Post by s***@gmail.com
[I'm a big fan of his picture of the Imatra falls, too.]

Me too; but in a rare misjudgment the Finns have built a huge dam across
them. So you have to turn up on a date when they're letting some of the
water out. That bit still looks okay though.

Cheers,

Mike

[j***@gmail.com]

The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and
nothing
else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not
worthless...

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

[Richard Loeb]

Post by Bert Coules
The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and nothing
else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not
worthless...
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

Wonderful analysis!!!!!!! Richard

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Bert Coules
The hell with the background and the sources. If the "meaning" of any
dramatic work isn't discernable from a performance of that work and nothing
else, then the piece is worthless: and Wagner's operas are not
worthless...
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

They are not worthless, indeed; and yet you yourself have been immensely
eager to know more about them. Surely no truly great work of art has a
"meaning" so limited that you can discern it all at one performance? Its
core, possibly; although not all of it.

A true measure of greatness, I'd suggest, is the richness of meaning a
work contains -- and, consequently, when it's a stage work, the wide
range of performance variations possible, a magical Tempest perhaps, or
a colonialist Tempest -- it admits of both readings without distortion.
So if you only see one, without source information you are going to miss
the truths of the other. Likewise there are several ways of viewing the
action of Rheingold -- as Wotan's tragedy, for example, or Alberich's,
or the world's caught between these feuding forces. Do you only ever
want to see one?

Even when remaining as true as possible to what remains of Wagner's
instructions, there's still a wealth of leeway in interpreting him. No
single meaning gleaned from a single performance can possibly encompass
them all; and it is the sources that shine light on many of them. I knew
Wagner before I knew so much of the sources; I know him far better now,
but I still haven't exhausted his possibilities. Is somebody trying to
tell me I needn't have bothered?

Cheers,

Mike

[Bert Coules]

I knew Wagner before I knew so much of the
sources; I know him far better now, but I still
haven't exhausted his possibilities. Is somebody trying to
tell me I needn't have bothered?

Certainly not I, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I certainly do
believe that a knowledge of the sources, the compositional techniques, the
literary selection and all the rest of it can add to an appreciation and
understanding of the works. But I also believe that much can be derived
from the works even without any of that knowledge.

The balance between the two is of course, unknowable. Who can say just what
any individual viewer gets from a performance of The Ring, or any other
work? I don't feel the need to "do the homework" to use an unfashionable
term; others do, or did, and derived great benefit from their labours.
These things aren't absolutes.

And "exhausting the possibilities"? Could anyone ever get within miles of
doing that?

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[j***@gmail.com]

The issue was whether one can discern the meaning from a performance.
I would submit that one can. That is not to say that repeat
performances would not add to depth of understanding and sensitivity.
I must tell you that I did study, as you know, a great deal of material
before I went to the performance of The Ring. There is no doubt that
this helped in the excitement of the anticipation of finally seeing the
entire work put together. On the other hand, seeing the performance,
although it was wonderful, put an entire new and wonderful depth to my
later listening to the work, particularly Gotter. And I guess what I
am leading to is that without any backround information, without any
knowledge of the "sources" from which Wagner obtained his ideas, simply
seeing the performance is enough for one to discern its meaning. At
the end of this, I must retract the absoluteness of the unequivical
"absolutely correct" statement but really just only a little. It seems
to me that Mr. Wagner was a genius and part of that genuis was his
knowledge that he needed to convey, through the performance, all that
was necessary for the lesser minds to discern when seeing the
performances. This he mastered. It is his genius conveyed through the
music, the voices, the emotion, all put together by him in the
performance that just bowls me over and led me to conclude that its all
there for each of us in the performance. Do you follow this?

[j***@gmail.com]

The issue was whether one can discern the meaning from a performance.
I would submit that one can. That is not to say that repeat
performances would not add to depth of understanding and sensitivity.
I must tell you that I did study, as you know, a great deal of material
before I went to the performance of The Ring. There is no doubt that
this helped in the excitement of the anticipation of finally seeing the
entire work put together. On the other hand, seeing the performance,
although it was wonderful, put an entire new and wonderful depth to my
later listening to the work, particularly Gotter. And I guess what I
am leading to is that without any backround information, without any
knowledge of the "sources" from which Wagner obtained his ideas, simply
seeing the performance is enough for one to discern its meaning. At
the end of this, I must retract the absoluteness of the unequivical
"absolutely correct" statement but really just only a little. It seems
to me that Mr. Wagner was a genius and part of that genuis was his
knowledge that he needed to convey, through the performance, all that
was necessary for the lesser minds to discern when seeing the
performances. This he mastered. It is his genius conveyed through the
music, the voices, the emotion, all put together by him in the
performance that just bowls me over and led me to conclude that its all
there for each of us in the performance. Do you follow this?

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by j***@gmail.com
The issue was whether one can discern the meaning from a performance.
I would submit that one can. That is not to say that repeat
performances would not add to depth of understanding and sensitivity.
I must tell you that I did study, as you know, a great deal of material
before I went to the performance of The Ring. There is no doubt that
this helped in the excitement of the anticipation of finally seeing the
entire work put together. On the other hand, seeing the performance,
although it was wonderful, put an entire new and wonderful depth to my
later listening to the work, particularly Gotter. And I guess what I
am leading to is that without any backround information, without any
knowledge of the "sources" from which Wagner obtained his ideas, simply
seeing the performance is enough for one to discern its meaning. At
the end of this, I must retract the absoluteness of the unequivical
"absolutely correct" statement but really just only a little. It seems
to me that Mr. Wagner was a genius and part of that genuis was his
knowledge that he needed to convey, through the performance, all that
was necessary for the lesser minds to discern when seeing the
performances. This he mastered. It is his genius conveyed through the
music, the voices, the emotion, all put together by him in the
performance that just bowls me over and led me to conclude that its all
there for each of us in the performance. Do you follow this?

Yup, and it's an entirely sensible reaction. Plenty of people get along
with Wagner with a minimum of knowledge, and never need to acquire the
degree of it which many enthusiasts possess. You are presently a bit
high on Wagner -- and please don't mind my putting it that way, because
I think we all have been, and still are. One does not, as a rule, come
to Wagner by a path of sober intellection, and I personally hit the
ceiling and bounced around a bit. But highs don't last forever, or we'd
never have had the 1970s after the 1960s, or the hangover after that
convention in Birmingham. It's like a long-running affair that's bound
to cool down a bit, because it was so intense to begin with; yet you
still don't want to lose it. Eventually, if you want your appreciation
to grow and be renewed, you are quite likely to find you want to
discover more, precisely because it opens up new depths in the music.
Wotan's narration is a case in point, or Waltraute's; they're among the
least immediately exciting segments of the Ring, and yet the deeper you
look into them, and the more closely you listen -- *after* you have the
music deep enough in your blood -- the more powerful and moving they
will seem.

But even the most impulsive, superficial audience, the kind that only
enjoys "bleeding chunk" highlights, still needs to understand a basic
minimum about Wagner's subjects -- who was the Flying Dutchman, what
that hymn-theme means in the Tannhauser overture and what was the
Venusberg, what that yearning theme is about in Parsifal and why there
are those bell effects in the transition music, who the Norse gods were,
what was Valhalla, what were the Valkyries.... It's far more important
with such a descriptive composer as Wagner. You can appreciate the
Eroica without knowing anything about the Napoleonic relation; but with
Wagner you need to know essentials. Which you do, of course; but you
still had to get it from somewhere, even at second-hand. So you are
already, to an important extent, dependent on the sources.

It's like art; you can like a painting without knowing it's the
Nightwatch or the artist's mother, but the painting is incomplete
without it. Given that much, you don't need to know which Nightwatch,
necessarily, or who old Mrs.Whistler actually was; but that can take
things so much further that once you know, you look at the painting in a
whole new way.

This is not to say it's necessary to read the Nibelungenlied to
appreciate the Ring. Quite the contrary; when I first read it, I was
amazed at how remote from Wagner it was. But when you combine it with
much other knowledge, you might be surprised how much it deepens your
understanding of Wagner's thinking -- and in turn how much that
community of thought illuminates his music. For now you don't need it,
you may never feel you do so; but if so you'll be missing something.
That's my case!

Cheers,

Mike

[Bert Coules]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
But even the most impulsive, superficial audience, the kind that only
enjoys "bleeding chunk" highlights, still needs to understand a basic
minimum about Wagner's subjects -- who was the Flying Dutchman, what
that hymn-theme means in the Tannhauser overture and what was the
Venusberg, what that yearning theme is about in Parsifal and why there
are those bell effects in the transition music, who the Norse gods were,
what was Valhalla, what were the Valkyries...

At the risk of prolonging this even further, I think I'd argue that in every
single instance from that list the works themselves tell us all we need to
know. Senta's song informs us all about the Flying Dutchman, it's
perfectly obvious from everyone's subsequent reactions what the Venusberg
is, the role of Valhalla is spelt out in such on-the-nose fashion that a
modern writer might well be embarrassed to pen the lines, what the Valkyries
get up to is similarly laid before us, the Parsifal bells take us (though
not, admittedly, in most modern productions) to a setting where such bells
would be expected, and so on. Only "that yearning theme in Parsifal" is
left unexplained, but then an awful lot of basic information is missing from
that particular piece.

I'd suggest that Wagner is punctilious in laying just as much background
information (and in some cases, more) as is necessary to follow his plots.

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Bert Coules

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
But even the most impulsive, superficial audience, the kind that only
enjoys "bleeding chunk" highlights, still needs to understand a basic
minimum about Wagner's subjects -- who was the Flying Dutchman, what
that hymn-theme means in the Tannhauser overture and what was the
Venusberg, what that yearning theme is about in Parsifal and why there
are those bell effects in the transition music, who the Norse gods were,
what was Valhalla, what were the Valkyries...

At the risk of prolonging this even further, I think I'd argue that in every
single instance from that list the works themselves tell us all we need to
know. Senta's song informs us all about the Flying Dutchman, it's
perfectly obvious from everyone's subsequent reactions what the Venusberg
is, the role of Valhalla is spelt out in such on-the-nose fashion that a
modern writer might well be embarrassed to pen the lines, what the Valkyries
get up to is similarly laid before us, the Parsifal bells take us (though
not, admittedly, in most modern productions) to a setting where such bells
would be expected, and so on. Only "that yearning theme in Parsifal" is
left unexplained, but then an awful lot of basic information is missing from
that particular piece.

But Bert, these are only examples I chose of what *even* mere
chunk-listeners need to know. I wasn't suggesting they're what the
full-opera listener needs; naturally that's different. He gets more
information, yes; but he also needs to understand more.

Dutchman is probably the least prone to this, but then it's a relatively
simple tale, with little action or shift in time. In Tannhauser you
still gain greatly by knowing who the Minnesingers were, and what was
their ethos, otherwise they are all too easily seen (or shown by idiot
producers) as a monstrous band of wets and prigs. You only understand
Tannhauser's offence -- and his inner demons -- fully by understanding
that he is trying to live up to their ideal. Venus is also a much deeper
and more explicable figure when you understand that she is not the
rather abstracted and no longer worshipped classical deity, but Freia,
who was worshipped in the area and still to some extent is at the time
of the story, lingering in parallel with Christianity among the peasants
-- hence the Shepherd Boy's song -- and therefore a direct pagan
antagonist of the knights and their society. In Lohengrin, while Wagner
sketches out the political situation around King Henry, you really need
more idea of how significant he is historically, and how crucial the
moment at which the opera is set -- something every German schoolchild
of Wagner's day would know, as we would William the Conqueror, and which
he consequently didn't bother to explain. And of course you don't grasp
what Ortrud is unless you know who her "entweihte Gotter" are, Wodan and
Freia; of course *we* know, but we learn it only from sources outside
the drama.

We do indeed learn what Valhalla is; but we are never told anything
about the nature of the gods, or of dwarves, giants etc and how they fit
into his cosmos. Of course we often know these things anyway, or
something of them, which is what Wagner expected, even if it's only from
"Mighty Thor Comics"; but that's still needing to know the sources. And
it's surprising how much crap has been written about Wagner by people
who didn't know those sources -- who didn't, for example, understand
that Norse gods were wholly mortal, or that the incest theme was brought
in from the Volsungasaga and accused Wagner of inventing it
gratuitously. Others asked how a dead Hunding could be expected to tell
Fricka anything, not realizing the way in which, for the Norse, the
spirits of dead devotees could go to serve their patron gods in their
individual halls in Asgard -- not just Wotan, but Thor and the goddesses
as well.

We tend to take this level of information for granted, but that's
because we have it; we've picked it up either as part of our general
culture or from years of reading programmes, newsgroups etc. If we
didn't, though, we'd have to go to the sources for it, or consult
someone who had. The Ring ignorami show what happens if we don't.

All kinds of questions about the operas, apparent implausibilities in
the plot etc. can be explained by looking at the sources -- and that in
itself indicates that Wagner assumed his audience would either have that
knowledge, or acquire it.

Cheers,

Mike

[Bert Coules]

Mike,

Clearly this is an area on which we'll amicably have to agree to disagree.
While I don't for a moment think that increased background knowledge can't
be fulfilling or absorbing or whatever, I simply don't think it's the least
bit necessary. The works are about themselves, and the works are all that
is needed. I don't know, perhaps I react to them on a more basic, more
visceral (less intellectual, if you like!) level than someone who needs to
know every last bit of background?

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Bert Coules
Mike,
Clearly this is an area on which we'll amicably have to agree to disagree.
While I don't for a moment think that increased background knowledge can't
be fulfilling or absorbing or whatever, I simply don't think it's the least
bit necessary. The works are about themselves, and the works are all that
is needed. I don't know, perhaps I react to them on a more basic, more
visceral (less intellectual, if you like!) level than someone who needs to
know every last bit of background?

I'm quite prepared to disagree amicably -- it's about how I get on with
the world, anyhow. And I agree that the discussion's becoming a bit
repetitive.

But I'd still try to put a dent in this assumption wherever I find it. I
suggest that a degree of background knowledge only seems inessential to
you because, cultured fellow that you are, you already have it and take
it for granted.

And I certainly do not accept that the works are "about themselves". In
every case Wagner uses pre-existing ideas and concepts precisely
*because* they already exist. Every one of them depends on an already
extant mythological corpus, presenting the composer's take on it. He
could very well have dreamed up new mythology for himself; there was a
grand tradition of manufactured myths in opera seria. But Wagner chose
to use ingredients that already existed, and a large part of his art is
in the life with which he infuses each mythos, and the philosophical
outlook through which he views these tales. If you treat their
ingredients as abstracts with no relevance to the outside -- ie it
doesn't matter what Valkyries or Norns or Nibelungs originally were --
then you reduce the scale of his achievement. Great art does not exist
in isolation and self-reference; it takes the things of the world and
transfigures them.

As to the intellectual reaction, nobody's reaction to discovering Wagner
could have been more visceral than mine -- when I was a teenager. But
the knowledge and understanding I've acquired since has only deepened
and enhanced that reaction, and made it last. But you seem to
misunderstand me; I am not claiming anyone should need to know "every
last bit" -- as if that were possible! I simply suggest that *some*
basic background is essential, and that the more you know, the better
you will understand and, yes, enjoy. That, after all, is a large part of
the reason this group exists.

Cheers,

Mike

[Bert Coules]

Mike,

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
But I'd still try to put a dent in this assumption wherever I find it. I
suggest that a degree of background knowledge only seems inessential to
you because, cultured fellow that you are, you already have it and take
it for granted.

That's kind of you, and while I really don't think it's the case, it is, I
suppose, impossible to be sure one way or the other. I'm pretty certain,
though, that if I had any background knowledge at all back when I was first
getting to know the Ring, it was extremely rudimentary.

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
And I certainly do not accept that the works are "about themselves".

Well, as I said, this is a fundamental point on which we're clearly never
going to have a meeting of minds. To me, it's not only clear that they are
indeed, "about themselves" it's actually extremely important that they - and
indeed every other work of art - should be so.

Time to talk about something else, maybe?

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[j***@gmail.com]

"and that in
itself indicates that Wagner assumed his audience would either have
that
knowledge, or acquire it. "

On what, pray tell, do you base this assertion? I would dobt that
Wagner would assume that his audience would either have that knowledge,
or acquire anything beyond the performance!!! Seriously, from the
little I know, Wagner knew he was above and beyond all the lesser minds
and would assume that the lesser mortals would not know much of
anything beyond what he was to feed them during the performance. "we
often 'know these things away' is so simple but so so true, as for this
wonderful blog!

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by j***@gmail.com
"and that in
itself indicates that Wagner assumed his audience would either have that
knowledge, or acquire it. "
On what, pray tell, do you base this assertion? I would dobt that
Wagner would assume that his audience would either have that knowledge,
or acquire anything beyond the performance!!! Seriously, from the
little I know, Wagner knew he was above and beyond all the lesser minds
and would assume that the lesser mortals would not know much of
anything beyond what he was to feed them during the performance. "we
often 'know these things away' is so simple but so so true, as for this
wonderful blog!

As Bert says, we've almost pumped this well dry, but your question is a
fair one and deserves an answer first. Unfortunately it has to be a
general one, because there is no single statement of Wagner's I can
remember that would demonstrate it, flatly and literally; but then I'm
reasonably sure you won't find one to contradict it, either! It's my
general conclusion based on what I know of Wagner's writings and
character, and I believe it's a fair one. It makes it rather hard,
though, to give you a full account in just one post, when it deserves a
book's worth; so I'll try and choose one reasonably representative
example.

If you read Wagner's sketches for the Ring, right back to his pamphlet
"The Wibelungen: World History as narrated in Saga" (written the same
summer as he started his first dramatic outline) he always launches
right into the matter of the myth as if it's common currency. In the
pamphlet, for example, he starts talking about Siegfried as if every
reader already knows exactly who the hero is and what his story was;
even though he is trying to account for the story, in arguments of
misplaced ingenuity, he never bothers to recount it. He assumes his
audience already knows. And, at the time he was writing, this was a
reasonable assumption, for an educated German audience. The same is true
throughout his writings; he very rarely details anything, but addresses
his readers as if they should already have some idea, at least, of what
he's talking about. When he does go into detail, it's usually because he
wants to emphasise his own individual "spin" on a particular myth -- his
false etymology of "Parsifal", for example, relating him to the Parsees!
In short, he always wrote for those whose knowledge was comparable to
his own, with no concessions at all.

And while he was somewhat arrogant about his art -- although not the
megalomaniac some accounts make him -- I believe it operated very
differently from the way you suggest, "thou shalt have no other
fountainhead than me!" On the contrary, he was deeply concerned with
using myths and legends that were already the property of his people --
by which he meant Germans and other North Europeans -- and bringing them
to life by new interpretation. That, basically, was what "Wibelungen"
was about, linking the Nibelungs to the Ghibellines and the Hoard to the
Holy Grail. Spuriously, of course, eccentrically, but by no means
stupidly; he believed -- reflecting the Grimms who were his constant
source -- that myths were central to cultural heritage, the birthright
of a people and the most common ground they could possess. They should
be as much a part of his audience's knowledge as the Greek myths were
for the Athenian dramatists he admired and imitated -- and who also make
little or no attempt to detail their backgroud. Naturally he made no
special effort to explain what audiences would already know at least
something of -- or damn well ought to.

I'd follow that up with the judgement of a vastly more eminent Wagnerian
than myself, Ernest Newman, in his foreword to Wagner Nights. "My own
study of him has convinced me that it is impossible to understand fully
the works of his maturity without having traversed on our own account
the extensive and often difficult country over which he himself had to
travel before he reached his distant goal. Often a point that is obscure
or even inconsistent in the opera poem is elucidated for us by his
sketches. Sometimes the psychological motivation of an episode becomes
clear to us only in the light of our knowledge of the medieval legend
that was his starting point....a clear picture of Wagner's
mind-processes during the conception and realization of a work is to be
obtained only by following him step by step through the literature,
ancient and modern, out of which it grew. *It may be objected that a
work of art should be its own sufficient explanation. But there are
cases, some of them the most notable in literary history, in which that
simple proposition obviously does not hold good.* The Aeneid is one of
them; the Divina Commedia is another..." He goes on to demolish that
objection at some length.

If that's the verdict of the greatest of Wagnerian commentators and
pioneering, if now somewhat superseded, biographers, still acknowledged
by just about every other authority I know of, I don't feel I need to
defend my own view any further, thanks!

Cheers,

Mike

[Richard Loeb]

Mike - funny that you mention Newman since it was the first book about
Wagner that I purchased after I was bitten with the fatal bug and did I
learn a lot from him.!!!! I recall the first time I ever heard Parsifal I
plopped myself in front of my parents speaker system for a Bayreuth
broadcast of Parsifal, read the back ground in Newman and then followed the
performance with Newmans comments - I doubt very much if I would have gotten
as much out of it just listening to it on its own
best Richard

Post by Mike Scott Rohan

Post by j***@gmail.com
"and that in
itself indicates that Wagner assumed his audience would either have that
knowledge, or acquire it. "
On what, pray tell, do you base this assertion? I would dobt that
Wagner would assume that his audience would either have that knowledge,
or acquire anything beyond the performance!!! Seriously, from the
little I know, Wagner knew he was above and beyond all the lesser minds
and would assume that the lesser mortals would not know much of
anything beyond what he was to feed them during the performance. "we
often 'know these things away' is so simple but so so true, as for this
wonderful blog!

As Bert says, we've almost pumped this well dry, but your question is a
fair one and deserves an answer first. Unfortunately it has to be a
general one, because there is no single statement of Wagner's I can
remember that would demonstrate it, flatly and literally; but then I'm
reasonably sure you won't find one to contradict it, either! It's my
general conclusion based on what I know of Wagner's writings and
character, and I believe it's a fair one. It makes it rather hard,
though, to give you a full account in just one post, when it deserves a
book's worth; so I'll try and choose one reasonably representative
example.
If you read Wagner's sketches for the Ring, right back to his pamphlet
"The Wibelungen: World History as narrated in Saga" (written the same
summer as he started his first dramatic outline) he always launches
right into the matter of the myth as if it's common currency. In the
pamphlet, for example, he starts talking about Siegfried as if every
reader already knows exactly who the hero is and what his story was;
even though he is trying to account for the story, in arguments of
misplaced ingenuity, he never bothers to recount it. He assumes his
audience already knows. And, at the time he was writing, this was a
reasonable assumption, for an educated German audience. The same is true
throughout his writings; he very rarely details anything, but addresses
his readers as if they should already have some idea, at least, of what
he's talking about. When he does go into detail, it's usually because he
wants to emphasise his own individual "spin" on a particular myth -- his
false etymology of "Parsifal", for example, relating him to the Parsees!
In short, he always wrote for those whose knowledge was comparable to
his own, with no concessions at all.
And while he was somewhat arrogant about his art -- although not the
megalomaniac some accounts make him -- I believe it operated very
differently from the way you suggest, "thou shalt have no other
fountainhead than me!" On the contrary, he was deeply concerned with
using myths and legends that were already the property of his people --
by which he meant Germans and other North Europeans -- and bringing them
to life by new interpretation. That, basically, was what "Wibelungen"
was about, linking the Nibelungs to the Ghibellines and the Hoard to the
Holy Grail. Spuriously, of course, eccentrically, but by no means
stupidly; he believed -- reflecting the Grimms who were his constant
source -- that myths were central to cultural heritage, the birthright
of a people and the most common ground they could possess. They should
be as much a part of his audience's knowledge as the Greek myths were
for the Athenian dramatists he admired and imitated -- and who also make
little or no attempt to detail their backgroud. Naturally he made no
special effort to explain what audiences would already know at least
something of -- or damn well ought to.
I'd follow that up with the judgement of a vastly more eminent Wagnerian
than myself, Ernest Newman, in his foreword to Wagner Nights. "My own
study of him has convinced me that it is impossible to understand fully
the works of his maturity without having traversed on our own account
the extensive and often difficult country over which he himself had to
travel before he reached his distant goal. Often a point that is obscure
or even inconsistent in the opera poem is elucidated for us by his
sketches. Sometimes the psychological motivation of an episode becomes
clear to us only in the light of our knowledge of the medieval legend
that was his starting point....a clear picture of Wagner's
mind-processes during the conception and realization of a work is to be
obtained only by following him step by step through the literature,
ancient and modern, out of which it grew. *It may be objected that a
work of art should be its own sufficient explanation. But there are
cases, some of them the most notable in literary history, in which that
simple proposition obviously does not hold good.* The Aeneid is one of
them; the Divina Commedia is another..." He goes on to demolish that
objection at some length.
If that's the verdict of the greatest of Wagnerian commentators and
pioneering, if now somewhat superseded, biographers, still acknowledged
by just about every other authority I know of, I don't feel I need to
defend my own view any further, thanks!
Cheers,
Mike
--

[Derrick Everett]

Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
<snip>

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
If you read Wagner's sketches for the Ring, right back to his pamphlet
"The Wibelungen: World History as narrated in Saga" (written the same
summer as he started his first dramatic outline) he always launches
right into the matter of the myth as if it's common currency. In the
pamphlet, for example, he starts talking about Siegfried as if every
reader already knows exactly who the hero is and what his story was;
even though he is trying to account for the story, in arguments of
misplaced ingenuity, he never bothers to recount it. He assumes his
audience already knows.

At around the same time as he wrote 'The Wibelungen', Wagner was
developing an interest in Greek literature. He already knew Homer, of
course, and in his autobiography claimed that, as a schoolboy, he had
translated several books of the 'Iliad' from the original Greek. In
his Dresden years his wide reading (how did he find the time?) included
not only Plato (The Symposium) but also the great tragedians. He seems
to have been quite taken with the idea that the stories presented to
the Athenian public at the Great Dyonisia, including those by
Aeschylus, resonated with that public because they already knew (in
some form) those stories, or at least knew some of the gods and heroes
who appeared in them. Wagner was looking for myths in the tradition of
his own people, the Germans, that would be familiar to many in his
audience and thus make the audience receptive to his dramas, as the
Athenians had been receptive to Aeschylus. The most obvious candidate
was Siegfried, who was already known to all educated German readers.

The 'Wibelungen' essay is, I think, the strangest of Wagner's writings.
On first reading, it is simply a muddle of myth and history. If it
tells us anything at all, then perhaps the most important message it
bears is that Wagner saw history in terms of patterns. He was not so
much interested in history itself, as in finding these recurring
patterns, which he held to be the stuff of myth.

This is why, I suggest, for the subjects of his dramas, Wagner moved
away from historical subjects to an abstract world of myth. The most
abstract of them all, probably, is 'Parsifal', in which the title
character stands for the saints and sages of all times. Wagner was
trying to get away from specific time and place: the location of this
last drama is vaguely specified, "reminiscent of northern Spain", and
if we look beyond the vaguely medieval setting, its action could occur
in the distant past, today, or in the distant future. Parsifal is not
Christ, nor is he the Buddha, but his story follows patterns that
Wagner had found in the traditional life stories of these spiritual
heroes.

--
Derrick Everett
(in Prague)

[Ralph]

Post by Parzival
And I disagree with the previous statement about Wagner's works being self
contained. Very few artist draw more strongly on myths and legends and
national symbols; I don't see how one can have a deep understanding of the
works without understanding the sources and influences. True they are
varied and drawn from more than the poem with corresponding names but the
more you study what Wagner studied the better you can understand his works
to me. How much criticism have you heard of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
by someone who never read Seneca or is only vaguely familiar with the legend
of Tantalus or Thyestes? Shakespeare is as "self contained" as Wagner, but
what could you make of it or Shakespeare's tone and style without
understanding those references?

Do I need to be familiar with the history of the French Revolution to better
understand Beethoven's middle period, which as some scholars say was
inspired by those events?

Ralph

[REP]

Post by Parzival
And I disagree with the previous statement about Wagner's works being self
contained. Very few artist draw more strongly on myths and legends and
national symbols; I don't see how one can have a deep understanding of the
works without understanding the sources and influences.

In that case, I don't think you can claim to understand Wagner's sources
without studying their own sources; for example, the legends behind the
novels. Even then you would be hard pressed to claim true understanding
unless you studied the culture surrounding those legends, such as medieval
Germany. And it's hard to understand medieval Germany without tracing its
history as far back as the dark ages and Caesar's interference in Gaul and
his first encounters with Germanic people in his attempts to cross the
Rhine. And you can't really understand why Caesar did what he did without
reading his commentaries. And even then, you must study the history of the
time, and the culture of ancient Rome; otherwise, you won't really
understand Caesar. And you can't really completely understand Rome without
understanding Troy, Greece, Aeneas, and the creation of Rome. Then, maybe
after a hundred years of back-tracking and studying you will understand
Greece in relation to Rome in relation to Caesar in relation to Germany in
relation to Germany's history in relation to Germany's legends in relation
to Germany's novels in relation to Wagner, which you will then, finally,
understand. And then you will be very proud of yourself.

REP

[Albert Reiner]

Post by Parzival
the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde? By

Incidentally, I read all of Wolfram's Parzival, the Nibelungenlied,
and Gottfried's Tristan in middle high German (though I had to resort
to a modern German translation of Parzival at times).

Albert.

[Parzival]

It's very difficult to find a good English verse translation of any of
these.

By the way I don't mean to imply you can't enjoy and love Wagner without
reading these. I did for years, but my love of them led me to seek out
anything a could about the origins. But has anyone who read these NOT
felt he/she gained some greater insight into the Master's kunst? Of course
the same is said for visiting Derrick's excellent web site - you don't NEED
to know all the background information, but once you have it your enjoyment
is enriched; the same is true for perusing the original sources.

My point in starting this thread was just to query how many of you
have/haven't read them. It's hard to judge whether some benefit is to be
gain by reading them if you simply haven't because the works can be
understood on their own.

Post by Albert Reiner

Post by Parzival
the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde?
By

Incidentally, I read all of Wolfram's Parzival, the Nibelungenlied,
and Gottfried's Tristan in middle high German (though I had to resort
to a modern German translation of Parzival at times).
Albert.

[Bert Coules]

"Parzival",

I'm sorry I got caught up in the pros and cons and neglected to answer your
question. No, I haven't read the originals. My interest in doing so would
be only to appreciate Wagner's skill in taking what he needed from various
sources and moulding it into a workable whole: as far as appreciating and
reacting to the works is concerned, I believe I would actually rather not
know anything about the source material.

Bert
http://www.bertcoules.co.uk

[Pete Barrett]

Post by Parzival
the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde? By
"original" I also mean english (or any other language ) translations. I am
rather shocked by the amount of Wagner enthusiast who never bother to read
the poems that inspired the operas. Simple relationships like Brangane
being a Isolde's "Maid" are view in a far different light after you read
the poem ( A lady's "maid" being another noble women as only slightly lesser
rank - not a 'maid" servant.)

Oddly enough, I've recently read Parzival for the first time, having
read Tristan and the Nibelungenlied about 30 (it's horrible to think
of that!) years ago. All in translation, I'm afraid.

As far as I can see, while the scenes in the first 2 acts of Tristan
und Isolde are in Gottfried's Tristan (Gottfired never finished the
poem, so I don't know what the source for the 3rd act is - not
Thomas's Tristran quite, I think), with only minor alterations in the
action, there's little of Parzival in Parsifal, and nothing of the
Nibelungenlied in the Ring save the names of the protagonists. I don't
know the sources for the other operas, unfortunately.

I don't know (and I've never seen anyone give even a convincing guess)
how much Wagner would have expected his audience to 'fill in the
blanks' of the action which he didn't show. You get something similar
with the Greek dramatists, but in their case it's clear that the
audience would have known the myths they were seeing so well that
there was no need to do more than sketch the action which isn't
happening on stage.


Pete Barrett

[Max]

I've read the Niebelungenlied and Parzival. Both have very little to do
with the plots or themes of Wagner's namesake operas (Wagner's Ring
borrows more from the Edda and Volsung Saga than from the
Niebelungenlied, while his Parsifal shares almost nothing with
Eschenbach's epic other than the names of some of the characters).

[A.C. Douglas]

[snipped - original post is below]
The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more
apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours....

Oops.

That parenthetical in the second graf is in the *wrong* place. It belongs

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more
apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research (that
claim confirmed by unwitting example here on this newsgroup more than
once).
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup, Wagner's original sources
are *exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours....

--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com
------------[original post]------------

[snipped - original post is below]
The meaning may be discerned from the opera without this knowledge as
you
say, but much of what is puzzling or inexplicable will be illuminated by
studying what Wagner studied. Certain plot twists or character
development is most easily understood by understanding the original
story - even simple additions like the Wolf cub reference drawn from the
werewolf adventure in the Volsunga saga.

The above is, not to put too fine a point on it, arrant rubbish. One not
only gains *nothing* in terms of a better understanding of Wagner's
finished artwork from consulting Wagner's original sources, one is more
apt
to than not secure a decided MISunderstanding from such research.
As I've noted several times on this newsgroup (and had it confirmed by
unwitting example here just as many times), Wagner's original sources are
*exclusively* Wagner's concern, and none of ours in terms of
understanding
Wagner's finished artworks, all of which, as are all genuine artworks,
totally self-contained in terms of embodying everything necessary for
their
understanding. The "werewolf adventure" in one of Wagner's original
sources you above mention has not only no pertinence whatsoever -- zero,
zip, nada, bupkiss -- to anything in _Walkure_ in particular, or the
_Ring_
in general, but anything learned from that adventure and applied to
either
_Walkure_ or the _Ring_ is certain to distort or corrupt totally the
drama's meaning, and Wagner's intent.
In short, and once again, your notion is, as I've already remarked,
nothing other than arrant rubbish.
--
ACD
http://www.soundsandfury.com

[g***@gmail.com]

Post by Parzival
the original poems of Parzival, the Nibelungenlied, Tristan und Isolde? By
"original" I also mean english (or any other language ) translations. I am
rather shocked by the amount of Wagner enthusiast who never bother to read
the poems that inspired the operas. Simple relationships like Brangane
being a Isolde's "Maid" are view in a far different light after you read
the poem ( A lady's "maid" being another noble women as only slightly lesser
rank - not a 'maid" servant.)
Or more puzzling to me are the oddly inspired productions looking to make
the opera's more interesting (NOT) to the modern viewer by making placing
them in the board room or on the subway, etc - instead of drawing on the
poems for inspriration for sets and motives. Why not have a hideous Kundry
in act I and a fair maid in act II? or red armor on Parsifal? How about
Amfortas in a peacock plumed hat?(!).. a gral progression with Repanse de
Schonye? or have Feirifiz in the finally among the grail knights? how
about, as mentioned before, present Brangane as a near equal? How many of
you are aware of how deep the relationship between Tristan and Marke really
is? or that Brangane slept with Marke to save Isolde from having to do so?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/soc.history.medieval/slay%7Csort:relevance/soc.history.medieval/WltM8nDuVfI/-eLeriY6bKkJ