/lit/ - Literature

Wagner's genius was to apply the aleatoric motifs of Bach to the mystical transfiguration of the music drama. In the image of the German masters he dilates his soul to encompass the world-historical mission of ultimate musical expression.

>>22168242
Karl Bauer also made a series of drawings of Wagner.

>>21800529
Two main and characteristic stages present themselves in European Art: its birth among the Greeks, its re-birth among the modern nations. The re-birth will never wholly round itself to an ideal, before it reaches once again the birth's departure-point, The Renaissance lived upon the re-discovered, studied, imitated works of Grecian art, and this could only be the plastic art; to the true creative strength of antique art it can only come by pressing forward to the fountain whence that art derived this strength. Exactly as the symbolical conventions of the temple ceremony compare with the performance of an Aeschyleian drama, compares the older plastic art of the Greeks with the products of its prime: this prime so closely followed the perfecting of the Theatre, that Phidias was merely the younger contemporary of Aeschylus. The plastic artist never overcame the tethers of symbolical convention, till Aeschylus had shaped the priestly choral-dance into the living Drama. If it be possible that for modern Life, re-shaped through Art's renascence, there shall arise a Theatre in equal answer to the inmost motive of its culture as the Grecian Theatre answered to the Greek Religion, then plastic art, and every other art, will at last have reached once more the quickening fountain whence it fed among the Greeks; if this be not possible, then reborn art itself has had its day.—The Italians, with whom this reborn art both took its rise and ripened to its highest modern bloom, found not the drama of the Christian Church; they did invent the Christian Music. This art, new as the Aeschyleian Drama to the Greeks, bore the same relation to Italian plastic art (thus pre-eminently painting) as the Theatre to Greek plastic art (pre-eminently sculpture). The attempt to arrive through Music at a reconstruction of the antique Drama, led to Opera: an abortive attempt, drawing after it the downfall of both Italian music and Italian plastic art.

Two main and characteristic stages present themselves in European Art: its birth among the Greeks, its re-birth among the modern nations. The re-birth will never wholly round itself to an ideal, before it reaches once again the birth's departure-point, The Renaissance lived upon the re-discovered, studied, imitated works of Grecian art, and this could only be the plastic art; to the true creative strength of antique art it can only come by pressing forward to the fountain whence that art derived this strength. Exactly as the symbolical conventions of the temple ceremony compare with the performance of an Aeschyleian drama, compares the older plastic art of the Greeks with the products of its prime: this prime so closely followed the perfecting of the Theatre, that Phidias was merely the younger contemporary of Aeschylus. The plastic artist never overcame the tethers of symbolical convention, till Aeschylus had shaped the priestly choral-dance into the living Drama. If it be possible that for modern Life, re-shaped through Art's renascence, there shall arise a Theatre in equal answer to the inmost motive of its culture as the Grecian Theatre answered to the Greek Religion, then plastic art, and every other art, will at last have reached once more the quickening fountain whence it fed among the Greeks; if this be not possible, then reborn art itself has had its day.—The Italians, with whom this reborn art both took its rise and ripened to its highest modern bloom, found not the drama of the Christian Church; they did invent the Christian Music. This art, new as the Aeschyleian Drama to the Greeks, bore the same relation to Italian plastic art (thus pre-eminently painting) as the Theatre to Greek plastic art (pre-eminently sculpture). The attempt to arrive through Music at a reconstruction of the antique Drama, led to Opera: an abortive attempt, drawing after it the downfall of both Italian music and Italian plastic art.

Two main and characteristic stages present themselves in European Art: its birth among the Greeks, its re-birth among the modern nations. The re-birth will never wholly round itself to an ideal, before it reaches once again the birth's departure-point, The Renaissance lived upon the re-discovered, studied, imitated works of Grecian art, and this could only be the plastic art; to the true creative strength of antique art it can only come by pressing forward to the fountain whence that art derived this strength. Exactly as the symbolical conventions of the temple ceremony compare with the performance of an Aeschyleian drama, compares the older plastic art of the Greeks with the products of its prime: this prime so closely followed the perfecting of the Theatre, that Phidias was merely the younger contemporary of Aeschylus. The plastic artist never overcame the tethers of symbolical convention, till Aeschylus had shaped the priestly choral-dance into the living Drama. If it be possible that for modern Life, re-shaped through Art's renascence, there shall arise a Theatre in equal answer to the inmost motive of its culture as the Grecian Theatre answered to the Greek Religion, then plastic art, and every other art, will at last have reached once more the quickening fountain whence it fed among the Greeks; if this be not possible, then reborn art itself has had its day.—The Italians, with whom this reborn art both took its rise and ripened to its highest modern bloom, found not the drama of the Christian Church; they did invent the Christian Music. This art, new as the Aeschyleian Drama to the Greeks, bore the same relation to Italian plastic art (thus pre-eminently painting) as the Theatre to Greek plastic art (pre-eminently sculpture). The attempt to arrive through Music at a reconstruction of the antique Drama, led to Opera: an abortive attempt, drawing after it the downfall of both Italian music and Italian plastic art.

CONT

>>21647480
>Before us Germans lies an equally uncomprehended artwork [as Antique Tragedy and Shakespeare], a riddle still unsolved, in Goethe's Faust. It is manifest, as I have already insisted, that we possess in this work the most consequent outcome of the original German Play: if we compare it with the greatest creations of any nation, those of Shakespeare not excepted, it reveals an idiosyncrasy exclusively its own, ranking it for the present as theatrically-speaking impracticable, for simple reason that the German Stage itself has shamefully made away the originality of its own development. Only when this shall have been recovered, when we possess a Theatre, a stage and actors who can set this Germanest of all dramas completely properly before us, will our aesthetic Criticism also be able to rightly judge this work: whereas to-day the coryphaei of that Criticism presume to crack bad jokes and parodies upon its second part. We then shall perceive that no stage-piece in the world has such a scenic force and directness (Anschaulichkeit) to shew, as precisely this maligned (no matter what the pose adopted!) and un-understood second half of the tragedy. And this work, which roots in the plastic spirit of the German Theatre as ne'er another, had to be written by the poet in the air: the only signs by which he could fix its type, or the "example" as I have called it, were rhyming metres taken chiefly from the rugged art of our old folk-poet, Hans Sachs. Yet if we want a witness to the supreme ideality whose germ lay lurking in the homeliest element of the German Folk, awaiting its development by a faithful chosen spirit, we have only to regard this wonder-building raised by Goethe on that so-called knittel-verse [doggerel]: he seems to never quit this basis of the most completely Popular, and yet he soars above it to the highest art of antique Metrics, filling link upon link with fresh inventions of a freedom unknown to the Greeks themselves, from smiles to grief, the wildest bluntness to the tenderest sublimity. And these verses, in a tongue the truest to our German nature, our actors cannot even speak!
- Wagner's Actors and Singers 1872

>>21425791
Beethoven is Bach's successor.

>How shallow and conventional does the sonata form—that product of Italy—seem in comparison [to the fugue]! It was only by breathing such tremendous life into the accessories of this form that Beethoven brought music back close to Bach.
>The really important aspect of Beethoven’s musical creativity for art history is that every technical accidence of art, by which for the purpose of communication the artist enters into a conventional relationship to the world outside himself, is itself raised to the highest significance as a direct outpouring. As I have already said elsewhere there is here no longer any embellishment or framing of the melody, but everything becomes melody, every voice in the accompaniment, every rhythmical note and even the rests.

Modern drama, from Ibsen's verse and prose dramas to Strindberg's psychodrama, Artaud's theatre of cruelty, Brecht's epic theatre, etc. can all be traced back to Wagner. His total work of art covers every sphere in drama imaginable.

Discuss the poet, novelist, essayist and philosopher Richard Wagner.

>Wagner's estimation of Faust did not deter him from from asserting - at a crucial moment in the genesis of Tristan und Isolde - that Goethe's ultimate concern with the totality of Faust's striving obviated the even more significant potential of the original love tragedy. The letter to Mathilde Wesendonck of 3 April 1858 attempts to clarify a heated argument the previous evening about the 'versäumte Gelegenheit' ('missed opportunity') of Faust. Instead of remaining 'bei der ersten, so schönen Gelegenheit, der Liebe Gretchens' ('at the first, so beautiful opportunity, the love of Gretchen'), Goethe extricated Faust from this love,

>damit er nun die eigentliche große Welt, die antike Kunstwelt, die praktisch-industrielle Welt, mit möglichst Behagen vor seiner recht objektiven Betrachtung abspielen lassen könne. So heißt dieser Faust für mich eigentlich nur die versaümte Gelegenheit; und diese Gelegenheit war keine geringere als die einzige des Heiles und der Erlösung. Das fühlt auch der graue Sünder schließlich, und sucht das Versaümte durch ein Schlußtableau nachzuholen, - so außerhalbliegend, nach dem Tode, wo's ihn nicht mehr geniert. (so that he can now let the actual great world, the antique art world, the practical industrial world, be played out with as much comfort as possible before his really objective observation. So for me this Faust is actually just the missed opportunity; and that opportunity was none other than the only one of salvation and redemption. Even the gray sinner finally feels this, and tries to make up for what he has missed with a final tableau - lying so outside, after death, where he is no longer embarrassed.)

>Inherent in this criticism is a fundamental antithesis between the objective 'große Welt' ('great world') and the subjective 'Seelentiefe der Liebe' ('soul depth of love'): by objectifying Faust's striving, Goethe neglected - according to Wagner - the true realm of salvation, the subjective consciousness, since in Faust's episodic progress through the world, 'das Subject nie dazu kommt, das Object, die Welt in sich aufzunehmen' ('the subject never gets to absorb the object, the world').

>>20300981
>Place the visual artist alongside the musician: the poet stands between these two in the sense that in his conscious shaping of forms he inclines to the visual artist while in the dark regions of his unconsciousness he is in contact with the musician. Goethe’s conscious inclination towards the visual arts was so strong that at an important moment in his life he considered himself destined to practise them and in a certain sense during his entire lifetime wished to regard his poetic work as a kind of quest for information, as a substitute for his failure as a painter. In his consciousness he was thoroughly devoted to the visual world. On the other hand, Schiller was much more strongly attracted to investigating in depth the inner consciousness completely removed from the visual: the ‘Thing in Itself ’ of Kantian philosophy, the study of which occupied him totally during the main period of his higher development. The continuous long-term meeting point of both great minds was to be found just where, starting from both extremes, the poet encounters self-consciousness. The two also came together in their notion of the nature of music; but this idea in Schiller’s case went deeper than with Goethe. As would be expected, Goethe concentrated on the agreeable and visually symmetrical in art music, the element by which music in turn is analogous to architecture. Schiller had a more profound understanding of the problem: his view, which Goethe also shared, was that the epic was closer to the visual arts while drama was closer to music. It is also consistent with our previous judgement of these poets: that Schiller was more successful in actual drama, while Goethe unmistakably preferred the epic form.

>>20202117
>Place the visual artist alongside the musician: the poet stands between these two in the sense that in his conscious shaping of forms he inclines to the visual artist while in the dark regions of his unconsciousness he is in contact with the musician. Goethe’s conscious inclination towards the visual arts was so strong that at an important moment in his life he considered himself destined to practise them and in a certain sense during his entire lifetime wished to regard his poetic work as a kind of quest for information, as a substitute for his failure as a painter. In his consciousness he was thoroughly devoted to the visual world. On the other hand, Schiller was much more strongly attracted to investigating in depth the inner consciousness completely removed from the visual: the ‘Thing in Itself ’ of Kantian philosophy, the study of which occupied him totally during the main period of his higher development. The continuous long-term meeting point of both great minds was to be found just where, starting from both extremes, the poet encounters self-consciousness. The two also came together in their notion of the nature of music; but this idea in Schiller’s case went deeper than with Goethe. As would be expected, Goethe concentrated on the agreeable and visually symmetrical in art music, the element by which music in turn is analogous to architecture. Schiller had a more profound understanding of the problem: his view, which Goethe also shared, was that the epic was closer to the visual arts while drama was closer to music. It is also consistent with our previous judgement of these poets: that Schiller was more successful in actual drama, while Goethe unmistakably preferred the epic form.

>>20198955
>Whoso would seize the wondrous individuality, the strength and meaning of the German spirit in one incomparably speaking image, let him cast a searching glance upon the else so puzzling, wellnigh unaccountable figure of Music's wonder-man Sebastian Bach. He is the history of the German spirit's inmost life throughout the gruesome century of the German Folk's complete extinction. See there that head, insanely muffled in the French full-bottomed wig; behold that master, a wretched organist and cantor, slinking from one Thuringian parish to another, puny places scarcely known to us by name; see him so unheeded, that it required a whole century to drag his works from oblivion; finding even Music pinioned in an art-form the very effigy of his age, dry, stiff, pedantic, like wig and pigtail set to notes: then see what a world the unfathomably great Sebastian built from out these elements! I merely point to that Creation; for it is impossible to denote its wealth, its sublimity, its all-embracing import, through any manner of comparison.

>>20198209
>Place the visual artist alongside the musician: the poet stands between these two in the sense that in his conscious shaping of forms he inclines to the visual artist while in the dark regions of his unconsciousness he is in contact with the musician. Goethe’s conscious inclination towards the visual arts was so strong that at an important moment in his life he considered himself destined to practise them and in a certain sense during his entire lifetime wished to regard his poetic work as a kind of quest for information, as a substitute for his failure as a painter. In his consciousness he was thoroughly devoted to the visual world. On the other hand, Schiller was much more strongly attracted to investigating in depth the inner consciousness completely removed from the visual: the ‘Thing in Itself ’ of Kantian philosophy, the study of which occupied him totally during the main period of his higher development. The continuous long-term meeting point of both great minds was to be found just where, starting from both extremes, the poet encounters self-consciousness. The two also came together in their notion of the nature of music; but this idea in Schiller’s case went deeper than with Goethe. As would be expected, Goethe concentrated on the agreeable and visually symmetrical in art music, the element by which music in turn is analogous to architecture. Schiller had a more profound understanding of the problem: his view, which Goethe also shared, was that the epic was closer to the visual arts while drama was closer to music. It is also consistent with our previous judgement of these poets: that Schiller was more successful in actual drama, while Goethe unmistakably preferred the epic form.

>>20186491
>Place the visual artist alongside the musician: the poet stands between these two in the sense that in his conscious shaping of forms he inclines to the visual artist while in the dark regions of his unconsciousness he is in contact with the musician. Goethe’s conscious inclination towards the visual arts was so strong that at an important moment in his life he considered himself destined to practise them and in a certain sense during his entire lifetime wished to regard his poetic work as a kind of quest for information, as a substitute for his failure as a painter. In his consciousness he was thoroughly devoted to the visual world. On the other hand, Schiller was much more strongly attracted to investigating in depth the inner consciousness completely removed from the visual: the ‘Thing in Itself ’ of Kantian philosophy, the study of which occupied him totally during the main period of his higher development. The continuous long-term meeting point of both great minds was to be found just where, starting from both extremes, the poet encounters self-consciousness. The two also came together in their notion of the nature of music; but this idea in Schiller’s case went deeper than with Goethe. As would be expected, Goethe concentrated on the agreeable and visually symmetrical in art music, the element by which music in turn is analogous to architecture. Schiller had a more profound understanding of the problem: his view, which Goethe also shared, was that the epic was closer to the visual arts while drama was closer to music. It is also consistent with our previous judgement of these poets: that Schiller was more successful in actual drama, while Goethe unmistakably preferred the epic form.

>Of the various distortions of the Gesamtkunstwerk that circulated in the early twentieth century, Brecht’s was the most influential. In the 1930 essay “Notes on the Opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” he announces a “radical separation of the elements” of the theater—words, music, production—in opposition to a total work in which the arts are muddled together, resulting in a degradation of each element. (Margaret Schlegel makes a similar complaint in Howards End.) The Gesamtkunstwerk charade, Brecht goes on, hypnotizes spectators and renders them passive. Such “sordid intoxication” must stop. Wagner makes clear, however, that the arts should not dissolve into one another. Nor does he traffic only in mesmerism: at crucial junctures, he breaks the spell that his music has cast, leading to defamiliarization avant la lettre. At the end of Rheingold, Loge spoils the gods’ entry into Valhalla by quipping that they are hurrying to their doom. His manner is like that of a caustic host at a cabaret, as modern productions have emphasized.
>Brecht’s real target is the popular image of Wagner, especially the Wagner of German nationalism. He means not so much to abolish the Gesamtkunstwerk as to annex it. Matthew Wilson Smith pinpoints the ideological overlap: “Brecht, like Wagner, imagines an artwork that overcomes the fragmentation caused by the division of labor, an artwork inseparable from larger political demands.” Brecht wants to present a different kind of unity, one that illustrates connections not by organically smoothing over differences but by accentuating jumps, breaks, discontinuities—an art of “total montage.”
>The epic theater is bound up with Brecht’s idea of Gestus, of “gestic” theater. John Willett defines Gestus as “both gist and gesture; an attitude or a single aspect of an attitude, expressible in words or actions.” The formula brings to mind Wagner’s interest in Gebärde—dramatic and musical gestures that encapsulate the action. Even more, it suggests the unavoidable leitmotif, or Grundmotiv, as Wagner sometimes named it. Kurt Weill, the co-creator of The Threepenny Opera, was surely thinking of Wagner when he spoke of the Grundgestus, the fundamental Gestus. Its function parallels that of the leitmotif: it comments on the action from a distance, manipulating memory. Calico thinks that this focus on gesture recuperates an element of the Wagner drama that Nietzsche had deemed archaic—the “primacy of the body in stylized positions and movements.”

>>20123330
>mastered every artform

>Comparison between Alberich and Klingsor; R. tells me that he once felt every sympathy for Alberich, who represents the ugly person’s longing for beauty. In Alberich the naivete of the non-Christian world, in Klingsor the peculiar quality which Christianity brought into the world; just like the Jesuits, he does not believe in goodness, and this is his strength but at the same time his downfall, for through the ages one good man does occasionally emerge!

>There is no work of philosophy that delves so deeply into the paradoxes of erotic love as Tristan and Isolde
>Cosima’s diaries indicate that he considered the Symposium and Tristan together, noting, “what in the one is philosophy is music in the other.”

>>19494360
>Whoso would seize the wondrous individuality, the strength and meaning of the German spirit in one incomparably speaking image, let him cast a searching glance upon the else so puzzling, wellnigh unaccountable figure of Music's wonder-man Sebastian Bach. He is the history of the German spirit's inmost life throughout the gruesome century of the German Folk's complete extinction. See there that head, insanely muffled in the French full-bottomed wig; behold that master, a wretched organist and cantor, slinking from one Thuringian parish to another, puny places scarcely known to us by name; see him so unheeded, that it required a whole century to drag his works from oblivion; finding even Music pinioned in an art-form the very effigy of his age, dry, stiff, pedantic, like wig and pigtail set to notes: then see what a world the unfathomably great Sebastian built from out these elements! I merely point to that Creation; for it is impossible to denote its wealth, its sublimity, its all-embracing import, through any manner of comparison.
>Bach’s masterpieces became the Bible of his belief; he read them and in them forgot the world of sound of which he ceased to be aware and no longer heard. There it was written down, the puzzle of his innermost dream that the poor Leipzig Cantor had once written down as an eternal symbol of a new and different world. They were the same mysteriously entwined lines and wonderfully intricate signs by which the great Albrecht Dürer had first understood the secret of his luminous world and its forms: the magic book of the necromancer who lets the light of the macrocosm illuminate the microcosm. What only the eye of the German spirit could perceive and what only his ear could hear; what, out of inner awareness, drove him to irresistible protest against anything externally imposed on him: Beethoven now read that clearly and unambiguously in his most sacred book, and – himself became a saint.
>Bach and Dürer, they are two of a kind, both possess in the same degree a quality of inner sadness and also the same taste for mysteriously imaginative ornamentation. Only in Bach there is unfortunately still too much of what was then fashionable, the marks of a bad period.