the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread

Subject: with apologies to Rick Fielding
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 12:03 PM

While rummaging through some elderly threads here,
I stumbled upon a post by the late lamented Mudcatter, Rick Fielding.

He remarked that certain noisy Mudcatters -- didn't name names --
might feel more at home on a forum titled 'Wagner Vas a Vimp'
than at the Mudcat Cafe.

Not only got a hearty laugh out of me,
but I thought a thread with that title
might be ... a good place to dump stuff. Who has stuff to dump?
Ought to be music-related.
Chuckle in peace, wherever you are, Rick Fielding.

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 12:42 PM

Here, translated into English, is a teaser/soundbite from
Hector Berlioz on Richard Wagner.

Quote, on the Wedding Processional from Lohengrin:
The march introduces the chorus in duple time ("Freulich geführt ziehet dahin"), which (coming at this point) causes dismay, because it is so feeble, not to say childish, in style. The effect it produced on the audience at the Salle Ventadour was rendered all the worse by the fact that the opening measures brought to mind a wretched number in Boïeldieu's Deux Nuits, "La belle nuit, la belle fête," which has been making the rounds in the vaudeville theatres and is familiar to everyone in Paris.
endquote

-- from The Art of Music and Other Essays by Hector Berlioz, translated by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994, page 206

.

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 01:09 PM

Journalist and critic Anne Midgette, writing for the Washington Post about Wagner's Ring Cycle in particular and about Wagner in general,
offered this soundbite in her article:
"Sitzfleisch" -- a German word denoting the ability of your derrière to tolerate remaining seated through protracted displays of entertainment. Of course, Germans would have a word for this, since Germany is the king of long entertainment .... This penchant for length should come as no surprise in a country that is also the source of a lot of our culture's longest words,
like

fünfstündigenopernaufführungsangst,
or "fear of five-hour operas."   

-- dated April 14, 2016

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 05:09 PM

Another example of my ignorance:

I was unaware that WIMP is an acronym.

W stands for Weakly,
I for Interactive I think,
I forgot M already,
and P is Particles.

But this contribution is neither music nor folklore ...

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 08:19 PM

I was driving home from the municipal tip this afternoon with Classic FM on the car radio. The prelude to the Mastersingers of Nuremberg came on. By the time the big tune came on near the end (pum p-p-pum pum pum pum pum pum pum), I was having a pure Hitler moment. I get the same feeling when the Tannhauser Overture/Venusberg music is played. Horrible. I once read a chap who said the same thing about the huge instrumental double fugue in the Choral Symphony. I vehemently disagreed with his take. If ever there was an anti-Nazi piece that didn't know that it was an anti-Nazi piece, it's that one.

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:03 PM

I know the very tune you mean.

Even more egregious, in that opera,
is the riot in the streets.
Staging that scene, what an assignment.

In the score, you see Wagner
imitating polyphonic counterpoint like the Well Tempered Clavier
and watching all the machinery with the turning gears --

but to actually have people beating each other up!

I agree about Beethoven. Give him a break --
but I feel sorry for the chorus.
As one music professor of mine said,
after the chorus gets through the Ninth Symphony,
they get to go home and eat ice cream for a week,
like having your tonsils out!

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Dec 18 - 04:04 AM

I have only heard "sitzfleisch" in a different context. The mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project) got meningitis, after which he could still come up with new mathematical ideas but didn't have the persistence ("sitzfleisch", he called it) to calculate or prove anything much. So his later work had to be collaborative.

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 18 - 06:42 AM

I understand that Beethoven has the sopranos singing twelve whole bars in a row of top Cs in that finale. There one thing about Beethoven that often doesn't get mentioned: he deliberately built "strain" into some of his compositions. He certainly did that in the Grosse Fuge. I can't imagine how those early orchestras managed the finale of the Seventh at the tempo he demanded without turning the whole thing into a sea of mud. The valiant attempts of performers to play those strenuous sections is all part of the aesthetic, as the late, great Joseph Kerman said.

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 18 - 07:04 AM

As for Wagner, you can't say fairer than Rossini, "Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour." Excellent chap, Rossini. We saw his tomb last year in the magnificent Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, his jovial bust topping the burial place. It's a great place to go, as it also contains the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli and some very fine works of art. The piazza in front is wonderful but I hear that the authorities tried this year to stop tourists from sitting on the basilica steps to eat their pizzas by keeping the steps constantly wet. Killjoys!

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 10 Dec 18 - 10:08 AM

Rossini is near and dear to my heart. Even Verdi was in awe of him.
And Wagner, who separated Rossini's person from his career after meeting Rossini in France, spoke of the man with an admiration and respect most atypical of Wagner.

What Wagner said about Rossini's work and career says more about Wagner, I suspect, than it does about Rossini. By the time they met, the older Italian had left off opera composing, and would compose little else; his was a rather layered, complex situation, combining troubled health with genuine depression. France was more beneficial financially for him than Italy, but he missed his widowed father who still lived there. Even a second marriage to a younger Frenchwoman, though cosy and comfortable, did not inspire him.

And the way Wagner phrased Rossini's apparent giving-up, or giving-in, was to say that Rossini lacked conviction and faith in "the religion of his art" -- certainly Wagner had art and religion deeply confused!

Subject: RE: the 'Wagner Vas a Vimp' thread
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Dec 18 - 03:09 PM

Then there was the banquet in Wagner's hono[u]r at the Altenburg in Weimar.
The location of Weimar is a tip, of course, to the banquet's hosts:
Franz Liszt, and the married woman who kept him company,
the Princess zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. The title, she got from her military officer.husband.
She herself was Polish, intensely emotional and also well-educated, and of domineering personality.
Which meant, that when Wagner showed up at this banquet,
it was Herself who presided over the affair,
monopolizing the conversation and
generally sucking all the oxygen out of the air.
Which Wagner tended to do when HE was in command.
But his host[ess] couldn't help herself
and reduced Wagner to the position of bystander.

I won't say how Wagner finally responded. I would, if I could find the literature to back me up, online.
For some reason I can't locate the passage that describes
how Wagner, after holding his tongue for a while,
finally exploded and lost his temper.
So, no description ...
suffice to say, Wagner disgraced himself as the guest of honor.

He and Liszt were thrilled with each other,
but that Princess didn't like sharing her man with anyone.