Wagner

Il paradigma di Wagner deve essere rovesciato come una clessidra perché il linguista tedesco aveva visto la lingua sarda e la Sardegna con gli occhi del suo tempo e non era riuscito a contestualizzare come era stata invece storicamente la Sardegna antica.

Several scholars have drawn attention both to the many Scottish references in Richard Wagner's initial sketches of "The Flying Dutchman" and to the close links between the opera and the composer's own disastrous Nordic Sea journey, but discussions tend to centre on the opera's libretto. What appear to be musical reminiscences of Hebridean songs in the opera's core thematic material have not been alluded to since Marjory Kennedy-Fraser pointed them out at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having a long-standing interest in Wagner's œuvre, she associated various themes and tunes she had collected in the Outer Hebrides with the German composer, and among her extant field recordings – now at Edinburgh University Library – there are indeed snippets of music that closely resemble Wagnerian leitmotifs and airs, in particular Senta's ballad in "Der fliegende Holländer". Drawing on a paper Kennedy-Fraser read to the Musical Association in London in 1918, various scattered references and letters from Sir Granville Bantock and John Lorne Campbell, my article discusses the potential links between Hebridean songs and, in particular, Senta's ballad.

An article (in Turkish) about a trip to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles in search of Ludwig II of Bavaria, Richard Wagner and "Lohengrin".

Emre Aracı bir kartpostalda gördüğü Ren nehri ve buharlı “Lohengrin”gemisinin hayaliyle çıktığı yolculuğunda Alp dağlarından geçerek Bavyera Kralı II. Ludwig'in, bulutlara değen Alpsee gölünün yamacında inşa ettirdiği Neuschwanstein Şatosu’nda, bu tapınağı andıran mekânda, Wagner’in ruhuna ve o tarihin büyüsüne dokundu.
​

A ópera Lohengrin, de Richard Wagner, expõe a trágica história de Elsa von Brabant, acusada injustamente de um crime, mas defendida por um cavaleiro desconhecido com quem ela se dispõe a casar, mas que impõe à protagonista, como condição, a proibição de perguntar pelo seu nome ou origem. É possível, observando esta personagem, identificar nela a angústia diante da pergunta proibida. Propõe-se aqui então a possibilidade de se fazer uma comparação livre e alegórica entre Elsa von Brabant e Adão, tal como analisado por Kierkegaard em seu livro O conceito de angústia.

Neste texto vamos investigar alguns indícios que nos permitam localizar os meios estéticos, de propaganda e demagogia através dos quais uma parcela de certa sociedade subjuga as representações mentais das demais e, também pela coerção das armas, instaura um regime de governo totalitário. Observemos a Alemanha nazista. Nesse caso, o grupo no poder privilegiou alguns estilos artísticos em particular. Na música, a valorização de Wagner é um exemplo capital. Wagner, o compositor da mitologia nórdica, do misticismo do Graal, das extensas óperas que tentavam funcionar como "obra de arte total", ou seja, uma obra em que várias manifestações de arte estariam unidas num todo orgânico. Não quero satanizar Wagner, ou, as modernas (ou antigas?) religiões que cultuam entidades da mitologia nórdica.

Indeed, there have been many comparisons of Hebrew mythology and Wagner's-and generally Nordic mythology-evoking Biblical imagery.  Scholar H.C. Washington has described the comparison and even gone as far to suggest that Biblical imagery has inspired Nordic myths, "a wide-ranging ethnographic argument for the universality of sacral warfare among "Naturvölker," and draws parallels between Hebrew sacral war motifs and those of Old Germanic mythology. The Hebrew celestial hosts, צבאות‎, who accompany Yhwh in battle are compared to the wild heavenly army of Wotan, to the ghostly troops of the war-god Skanda, and to the Valkyries. Schwally likens the Hebrew military banners, דִּגְל֤וֹ (Num. 2:2; Ps. 74:4,9), or הוָ֥ה (Num. 10:14), to those of the Old Germans who, because they also "knew no divine images," used an attribute like Wotan's spear or Thor's hammer to depict the divinity on the battle flag. He compares the rampages of Samson to those of the Berzekers in Nordic lore."
In the Bible, first (after Adam & Eve's original disobedience, at least), the Abrahamic covenant was one of ecclesiological identity,  a promise that one old man's Adamic descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sands by the seashore,  in exchange for a simple promise of obedience and devotion (the very covenant which Adam and Eve had broken).  Next, the Mosaic Covenant shaped his descendants into a nation with a strong foundation in fundamental law (the ten commandments + Leviticus 19) and an elaborated law of social and economic relations stated throughout Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers.  Following the Christian theological story, Christ came to relieve the people of Israel and the world of both covenants  (the Abrahamic Covenant and the "Absolutism of Law" inherent in the Mosaic Covenant),  by and through the power of love and forgiveness.  Covenants such as these can inform international covenants and even set up the basis for modern contract law.

The consistent presence of extra-musical relationships in Karłowicz’s work conveys many symbolic meanings through which their aesthetic function is increased via the proliferation of new auto-referential symphonic poems. These novelties generate new perspectives on Polish orchestral production and the genre known as fin-de-siècle, part of nineteenth-century European tradition. Therefore, the typical Karłowiczian idea of the ‘tragic’ in opera is actually reconfigured within the scenario of a complex dramaturgical constitution of the symphonic sketches of the text transformed into music, the exact foundation upon which the Wagnerian (re) generation had built the concept of the re-birth of the mythical in music. But what does Kazimierz Przerwa- Tetmajer represent? What impact did this Polish poet have on the musical-textual construction of Karłowicz’s work? Far from construing the ‘text’ as an attempt to achieve for the people a ‘political’ rehabilitation, Tetmajer instead provided a paradigm of a cult used to build a model of a way of thinking. Therefore, Tetmajer represents the transcendence of national frontiers to achieve new connections with a tradition and an identity that must be explained in relation to new European influences. Consequently, Karłowicz is considered a pioneer able to understand and obtain impulses from beyond the national boundaries of a form of art existing in a state of progressive transformation between ‘instrumental opera’ and ‘textual symphony’. Karłowicz resumes the Wagnerian approach in a conceptual work able to historicize them.

Così, in settenari, un poeta breve. L’inconveniente capitò alla poesia, alla filosofia, e alla scienza poi non ne parliamo. E alla musica? Anche alla musica. Prendiamo il Parsifal, prendiamo Wagner e certe cose che gli nacquero intorno, che riguardarono ciò che era stato e ciò che sarebbe avvenuto. Il 18 maggio 1939, quattro mesi prima dello scoppio della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, il generale delle SS Karl Wolff fece pubblicare sul “Berliner Ausgabe” un afflitto inconsueto necrologio, riguardante l’Obertsturmführer Otto Rahn, il quale aveva perso la vita durante una solitaria escursione sulle Alpi austriache, in una tormenta di neve. Non si trattava del dolore per la perdita di un qualsiasi tenente delle Schutz-Staffeln, e per un preciso motivo: Otto Rahn era un valente storico, che si era dedicato al Parsifal, l’eroe consacrato alla ricerca del Graal. A quel che se ne sapeva, Himmler, comandante in capo di tutte le organizzazioni poliziesche del Reich e patologicamente ossessionato ...

The music and culture of the sixteenth century Meistersinger is the central topic of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg , his only operatic comedy. Wagner turned to Johann Christoph Wagenseil’s Von der Meister-Singer Holdseligen Kunst for information on the customs of the Meistersinger , and many scenarios within the opera are based on information from this treatise. The inclusion of the famous historical Meistersinger Hans Sachs as a central character further strengthened the drama’s connection with the historical guild. The use of distinct set pieces, a seeming departure from the endliche Melodie of earlier operas, also helped Wagner create an air of authenticity within the music of Die Meistersinger . As much as Die Meistersinger invokes the sixteenth century, Wagner does not present an accurate musical depiction of Meistergesang in this work. Though Hans Sachs and his role as a Meistersinger is an important element in his drama, Wagner only superficially observed th...

Het totaalkunstwerk als ideaal was een streven naar de oneindigheid, een oplossing van alle dichotomieën van het moderne tijdsgewricht in een herstel van verloren gegane eenheden: tussen verleden en heden, tussen heden en toekomst, tussen lichaam en geest, tussen de verschillende kunsten, tussen de verschillende zintuigen, tussen het aardse en het hemelse, het menselijke en het goddelijke, tussen subject en object en tussen de kunstenaar en het publiek, de mensheid. Het totaalkunstwerk is dus een product van de wil van de kunstenaar, de wil tot verlossing van het individu en verlichting van de wereld. Schilderkunst, muziek, poëzie en alle andere kunsten moeten vereenzelvigd worden om een oerervaring te bewerkstelligen: het gevoel van eenheid met het Al, in een poging al de als vervreemdend ervaren dualiteiten van de moderne wereld te overbruggen.

Indeed, there have been many comparisons of Hebrew mythology and Wagner's-and generally Nordic mythology-evoking Biblical imagery. Scholar H.C. Washington has described the comparison and even gone as far to suggest that Biblical imagery has inspired Nordic myths, "a wide-ranging ethnographic argument for the universality of sacral warfare among "Naturvölker," and draws parallels between Hebrew sacral war motifs and those of Old Germanic mythology. The Hebrew celestial hosts, צבאות‎, who accompany Yhwh in battle are compared to the wild heavenly army of Wotan, to the ghostly troops of the war-god Skanda, and to the Valkyries. Schwally likens the Hebrew military banners, דִּגְל֤וֹ (Num. 2:2; Ps. 74:4,9), or הוָ֥ה (Num. 10:14), to those of the Old Germans who, because they also "knew no divine images," used an attribute like Wotan's spear or Thor's hammer to depict the divinity on the battle flag. He compares the rampages of Samson to those of the Berzekers in Nordic lore." In the Bible, first (after Adam & Eve's original disobedience, at least), the Abrahamic covenant was one of ecclesiological identity, a promise that one old man's Adamic descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sands by the seashore, in exchange for a simple promise of obedience and devotion (the very covenant which Adam and Eve had broken). Next, the Mosaic Covenant shaped his descendants into a nation with a strong foundation in fundamental law (the ten commandments + Leviticus 19) and an elaborated law of social and economic relations stated throughout Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers. Following the Christian theological story, Christ came to relieve the people of Israel and the world of both covenants (the Abrahamic Covenant and the "Absolutism of Law" inherent in the Mosaic Covenant), by and through the power of love and forgiveness. Covenants such as these can inform international covenants and even set up the basis for modern contract law.

Scholars have long framed similarities between Bedřich Smetana's “Vyšehrad” (the first movement of Má vlast) and Zdeněk Fibich's symphonic poem Záboj, Slavoj, and Luděk as a threat to Smetana's originality. In his biography of the composer, for example, Brian Large moved to “exonerate” Smetana from charges of “plagiarism” by arguing that Smetana began “Vyšehrad” at least two years before Záboj's premiere in 1874; not six months later as Smetana's diary attests. Rather than regarding these works' similarities as a problem, this discussion embraces their close relationships as a starting point. Situating both symphonic poems and their reception within the discourses generated by a powerful organization called the “Umělecká beseda” (“Artistic Society,” or UB, in which both Smetana and Fibich participated) illuminates the larger intellectual and aesthetic space from which they emerged. Such a process of contextualization reveals how both composers' works constructed each other and uncovers Smetana not as a “lone genius”—a composer untainted by influence—but as a participant in a shared conversation. Ultimately, this examination opens up new understandings of Smetana and his “Vyšehrad” and invites scholars to reengage with the deliberate subjectivity of Czechness and historiography more broadly.

An article (in Turkish) about Emre Aracı's trip to Neuschwanstein Castle in search of Wagner's operas.

Müzikolog Emre Aracı büyük bestecilerin izinde, onların ruhlarıyla can kattığı mekânlara yaptığı gezilerini sürdürüyor. Geçen sayımızda, Jean Sibelius'un Ainola'daki evini tanıtan yazarımız bu kez, Almanya'nın kalbindeki bir masal diyarına yaptığı büyülü yolculuk sırasında ziyaret ettiği, Bavyera Kralı II. Ludwig'in Hohenschwangau şatosuyla "kutsal dost"u Richard Wagner için yaptırdığı akıl almaz güzellikteki Neuschwanstein şatosunu anlatıyor.

An article (in Turkish) about a visit to Wagner's Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth.

Soğuk bir Kasım günü Bayreuth’a doğru yola koyulan Emre Aracı, bahçesinde Richard Wagner’in mezarına ev sahipliği yapan, bestecinin 'Götterdämmerung' operasını tamamladığı ve 'Parsifal’i bestelediği, bugün müze olarak hizmet veren Haus Wahnfried’de yaptığı gezintiden enstantaneler paylaşıyor.

An article (in Turkish) about the musical history of the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul.

Büyük besteci Richard Wagner’in, eşi Cosima Wagner’e 1870 yılı Noel’inde bir doğum günü hediyesi olarak bestelediği eseri Siegfried Idyll ve kapılarını 1895 yılında açan İstanbul’un en görkemli tarihi oteli Pera Palas’ın arasında ne türden bir bağlantı olabilir? Ya peki, Hacı Arif Bey’in oğlu çellist Cemil Arif Bey’i Pera Palas’ta dinleyen dönemin meşhur kemancısı Émile Sauret’nin 1744 tarihli Guarneri kemanını, yıllar sonra çağımızın en büyük kemancılarından Itzhak Perlman’ın satın almasına ve Perlman’ın bu kemanla 1992’de ilk kez geldiği İstanbul’da verdiği resitalde yazarımızın sahnede sayfa çevirici olarak görev yapmasına ne dersiniz? Bunlar ve bunlar gibi daha pek çok hayret verici bağlantının merkezinde duran Pera Palas Oteli’nde geçtiğimiz 20 Şubat sabahı verilen bir konserden izlenimler…

Scottish musician Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (née Kennedy, 1857–1930) is known mostly for her "Songs of the Hebrides". From the publication of the first volume in 1909, her popularity and fame grew – in Scotland and England as well as abroad; her work received official recognition in the 1920s, when she was awarded both the CBE and an honorary Mus.D. (Edinburgh). After her death in 1930, her songs were still widely performed, but her work was increasingly exposed to criticism. While appreciated as a respected, albeit somewhat unfashionable, arranger of songs among musicians generally, both in Britain and beyond, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser was virulently attacked by trendsetting Scottish intellectuals, who accused her of having misrepresented Gaelic songs, publishing what was by then considered romanticized drawing-room arrangements, lacking in authenticity. Though still frequently maligned, her songs have been subject of a renewed interest in recent years, and have slowly begun to find their place among European art songs of the period, a repertoire which is largely based on, or at least influenced by, vernacular folk-songs from the different nations.

Apart from her memoirs from 1929, "A Life of Song", no biography has so far been published of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser. The aim of this thesis is to provide a detailed survey of Dr Kennedy-Fraser's professional life, and, furthermore, by relating her life and œuvre to her own time, to place her in context. It draws extensively on her own, hitherto unpublished working material, held by Edinburgh University Library, a multitude of newspaper articles and biographical publications, as well as letters from a wide range of sources. It thus offers as complete and nuanced a picture as possible of a long, comprehensive, and indeed impressive, career. Following an introductory overview of the Arts & Crafts movement, the mainly chronological biography explores her family background, international concert tours, and music studies in Milan and Paris. Her rôles as performer, teacher, lecturer, and author are assessed, as is her work as a suffrage activist and a parish councillor. The second phase of her career, when a collector and arranger of Gaelic songs, her publication of the "Songs of the Hebrides", as well as her numerous Hebridean recitals, given both throughout Britain and abroad, are all covered in detail. Her interaction with several important individuals of her time, including Sir Patrick Geddes, Dr Frederick Niecks, Dr Kenneth Macleod, Sir Granville Bantock, and Dame Ellen Terry, is also discussed.

Though his image is tarnished today by unrepentant anti-Semitism, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was better known in the nineteenth century for his provocative musical eroticism. In this illuminating study of the composer and his works, Laurence Dreyfus shows how Wagner’s obsession with sexuality prefigured the composition of operas such as Tannhäuser, Die Walküre,Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal. Daring to represent erotic stimulation, passionate ecstasy, and the torment of sexual desire, Wagner sparked intense reactions from figures like Baudelaire, Clara Schumann, Nietzsche, and Nordau, whose verbal tributes and censures disclose what was transmitted when music represented sex.

Wagner himself saw the cultivation of an erotic high style as central to his art, especially after devising an anti-philosophical response to Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of sexual love.” A reluctant eroticist, Wagner masked his personal compulsion to cross-dress in pink satin and drench himself in rose perfumes while simultaneously incorporating his silk fetish and love of floral scents into his librettos. His affection for dominant females and surprising regard for homosexual love likewise enable some striking portraits in his operas. In the end, Wagner’s achievement was to have fashioned an oeuvre which explored his sexual yearnings as much as it conveyed—as never before—how music could act on erotic impulse.

Il saggio intende proporre in una prospettiva comparativa le implicazioni teoriche, epistemologiche e ermeneutiche di due progetti musicali dal profondo significato metafisico: le composizioni di Richard Wagner e Gustav Mahler. Proprio perche compositori dialetticamente antitetici, Wagner e Mahler ben si prestano ad essere oggetto di riflessioni sull’essenza della musica, sul suo legame con la trascendenza e sulle sue declinazioni drammaturgiche e sinfoniche. Pur procedendo lungo percorsi diversi, coinvolgono entrambi, infatti, nelle loro composizioni una riflessione costante sull’essenza dell’umano e sulla sua connessione con l’universale. Scopo ultimo di questo saggio e quello di stabilire un dialogo tra la rivelazione simbolica e gli aspetti redentivi dell’idea wagneriana del  Gesamt  e la tragica ironia contenuta nel sentimento panico di Mahler, o meglio tra la presenza dell’idea nel  Buhnenfestspiel  di Wagner e la  nostalgia  per il presente in Mahler.

Emre Aracı recalls his trip to Neuschwanstein Castle to the strains of "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin".

Emre Aracı daha önce de ziyaret edip adeta büyülendiği Alpsee tepelerindeki masalsı Neuschwanstein Şatosu’nu geçtiğimiz aylarda bir kez daha ziyaret etti. Wagner’in yaşamı ve Lohengrin operasından zengin imgeler eşliğinde gerçekleşen bu gezi, Aracı’nın tıpkı diğer yazılarındaki gibi farklı karşılaşmalar ve çağrışımlarla bambaşka boyutlar kazanıyor.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the widespread German practice of reciting in public often used musical accompaniment to reinforce the words’ poetic effect. Richard Wagner typically read his essays and poems aloud, and occasionally sang through his own operas to piano accompaniment in this manner. Contemporary reports indicate that his recitations had the character of contemporary melodrama, a genre typically denounced by German critics as frivolous, and by Wagner himself as “disagreeable miscellaneousness.” This study reads Wagner against the grain to argue that melodrama was important for his vocal aesthetics. It examines Wagner’s writing about the voice in the broad context of German “speech melody” as both a philosophical concept (material speech), and one with a practical meaning for theater actors. By drawing on a wide range of nineteenth-century sources, from minor German theatre critics and elocutionists to more prominent vocal theorists and physiologists, this study rereads certain passages in Wagner’s mature music drama as distinctly “melodramatic” in terms of their expressive technique. This raises questions as to whether all of Wagner’s vocal lines were fully sung as such, and the extent to which aspects of his composition—including the semiotic function of _Leitmotive_—were heir to an inheritance from melodrama.

David Conway analyses why and how Jews, virtually absent from Western art music until the end of the eighteenth century, came to be represented in all branches of the profession within fifty years as leading figures – not only as composers and performers, but as publishers, impresarios and critics. His study places this process in the context of dynamic economic, political, sociological and technological changes and also of developments in Jewish communities and the Jewish religion itself, in the major cultural centres of Western Europe. Beginning with a review of attitudes to Jews in the arts and an assessment of Jewish music and musical skills, in the age of the Enlightenment, Conway traces the story of growing Jewish involvement with music through the biographies of the famous, the neglected and the forgotten, leading to a radical contextualisation of Wagner's infamous 'Judaism in Music'.