Thank you so much! Small world-I'm now a grad student at Brandeis (although I'm back home in North Carolina for the duration of the pandemic) and my girlfriend is a UMass med student. I'm assuming that you're at Amherst?
Wow that’s crazy! I have cousins that went to Brandeis (but for pre-med! Kinda a funny turn around there. Yes! Music Education and Vocal Performance studying in Professor Hite’s studio at UMass Amherst.
I can imagine how music ed would translate pretty well to an online-only environment ... voice lessons, not so much. Good luck in your studies, and stay safe!
I love the direction this video takes with respect to Wagner. I feel that it’s important to understand his anti-Semitic tendencies because history is very important in understanding a composer, but I also think people often get so wrapped up in his bigotry that they forget to separate the music from the person a bit. I love how he touches on Wagner’s controversial ideology while also acknowledging that his works *are* great despite the convroversy surrounding his very name!
Your videos are amazing. I believe Wagner has a very rich history, and would love if you could ever make a sequel more about his actual pieces, and an analysis of them.
I also want to add that as you state in your above 'notes' that this stuff is for educational purposes... you do such a nice job that I would also use the word 'entertainment'. Thanks for your stuff, your time, your effort, your light approach - and for slowing down! :-)
“Wagner was the last of the Romantics, bringing Romanticism to its final flowering. To remain a Romantic after Wagner was to imitate him, and many composers did that helplessly of hopefully. Those who wanted to retain their individuality, had to rebel against him.” --Milton Cross and David Ewen Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music. Vol. Ii
Thomas, I love your whimsy and your ability to turn a pithy and apt phrase. And if teaching a subject to others is the best way to learn it yourself then you're going to be a Titan of music history and musicology. Wonderful videos! -Don C., D.M.A.
ok this channel is amazing and if I hadnt had a test in school about Wagner, I wouldve never found it. Really some top level music content that just for some reason isnt more popular on youtube
Dear Nerd - - I really like your stuff! I just recently found them and I've seen only about 6 so far, but they are well done and interesting. For example, I've known about the Tristan Chord for decades, but I never knew what differentiated it from any other dissonant chord, until you explained it well! OK, gotta go and watch some more Classical Nerd videos.
I have so many requests in the queue between now and Siegfried that I've not really begun the research process. I'll definitely check out his pieces when the time comes!
Great video. I appreciate the note near the end that not every influential person from history was necessarily a good person. It seems to be a common theme that men that made progress in the arts, politics, and business weren't particularly kind or thoughtful to their families and could hold views that are appalling by modern standards. Some were philanderers. If they weren't completely absent from the lives of their kids, they could be plain old assholes to them. They could be raging anti-semites but ignore your jewishness if they thought they could use your connections, money, and influence to get ahead. Being artistically sensitive doesn't always translate into being sensitive to other people's feelings or feeling any sort of empathy. Wagner is a good example of that.
Ernest Newman put it very well when he said we don't have anything to complain: we only live with the good in Wagner (his works) and not with the bad (his person). Regardless of whether Alberich and Mime are caricatures of Jews (of course they are), and Siegfried is a horrible insufferable brat from the way he treats Mime, whom he has no reason to hate, the Ring music is a marvelous achievent and Alberich's curse on love is still one of the most amazing pieces of evil music ever written. And Klingsor just took the chastity thing a bit TOO literally...
Oh boy , if those two edgelords existed in the same time and place they would create a black hole lol .. On a serious note thanks for mentioning the topic !
A good point, would love to find out more about his thoughts and their relationship! I learned partly that Nietzsche in his early years for a while had looked up to Wagner, but lost a bit of interest in him as Wagner increasingly expressed his antisemitism and his egotistical atrocity... On a different note, Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra is excellently brilliantly set to music by the paramount german composer Richard Strauss (who was etwa 19 yrs old on Wagner’s death)! ;)
Please discuss about Meyerbeer, please. The most staged composer during the 19th century and the mysterious disappearance from the standard repertoire 😊
The bass clarinet in A did exist. Mahler scored it numerous times, if that wasn't evidence enough in itself, he even scored for it when the part would have been easier on the Bb, clearly doing so for its distinct tone colour, the Bb and A basses purportedly being more distinct from each other in sound than the Bb and A sopranos. For some unfortunate reason this instrument has simply been lost to history.
Interesting! I'd heard from various clarinetist friends that it didn't exist, but I suppose they meant that it didn't in the present day as opposed to historically.
Yes, it's mentioned by Foster and Norman del Mar. The latter even points out that a bass clarinet in C must once have existed because Liszt scores it in Mazeppa.
Although you've been already doing a great job in pronouncing the German names, I'd just like to point out that the German CH behind "frontal vowels" or "flat vowels" like "i" and "e" are pronounced as IPA /ç/, which is just a frontal variant of /x/, produced when the middle (instead of the middle-back) of the tongue is touching the hard instead of the soft palate, and this point of contact is just a little bit behind that of the Spanish eñe. Linguistics aside, I'm interested in getting to know some polyphonic symphonies or more generally, composers after Baroque who have systematically applied polyphony to their work (not just in fugato or in the form of polyrythms like in Chopin's work). Could you suggest some names?
This was made before I actually took any German in college so my pronunciations are far better in episodes produced from winter 2017 onwards! There are plenty of composers who used polyphony in structural ways up through the twentieth century. What exactly do you mean by "systematically?"
My god, I didn't know how many composers got around! Also, I have to be honest, as much as a despicable person Wagner was, Ride of the Valkyries has always been one of my favorite classical pieces.
This is a really good video, but I feel like it lacks quite a bit of Liszt in there. Liszt was one of the most important figures in Wagner's life. He helped him so much financially, conducted his works when he was in exile, and even musically speaking Wagner recongnized he "borrowed" a lot from Liszt. I have to say their friendship still strikes me as odd. Liszt was everything Wagner wasn't: extremely pious, generous, respectul and helpful of all artists (even his so called enemies like Clara Schuman), he liked to live modestly (at least towards the last third of his life)... by contrast Wagner was egocentric, atheist (not that it's a bad thing at all, simply different from Liszt), petty, lived well over his means, and basically hated everyone who didn't enjoy or worship his music. What a weird pair. Anyway, I hope you'll make a video on Liszt someday, he's too often disregarded as a mere virtuso for whom women went crazy, but he was soooooo much more.
Hey, great video. I would just disagree with the whole "We need to seperate art from artist" arguement. The real unconfortable thing about Wagner is, that the man who - out of an inferiorty complex - wanted to seperate the influence of jewish musicians on his music and became a fanatical antisemite is the same guy who made music, that really moves and is above borders and nations. Wagner acknowledged this even himself that his music has no boundaries. And there is question whether his operas (especially his later ones) are antisemitic themselves (I would say yes) and are - at least - partially used as vessels for transporting Wagners ideology.
Can you really point to something in Wagner's biography that indicates an inferiority complex? Not that these psychological idiocies exist, of course, there's nothing in the brain structure to indicate they're real, but just for argument's sake of having him considering himself inferior to Jews in any way and trying to compensate for it in some manner.
It's important to realise that same words can mean different thing. In Wagner's times being what we call "antisemitic" today was not something as sinister as it is today. It was a popular sport, not unlike today's black Americans complaining about "Asians owning all the corner liquor stores" over a domino game or whatever other group complaining about yet another one. To us it all appears incredibly abhorrent because of Auschwitz but one cannot judge anyone in the 19th century by this lens. It's anachronistic. Having said all that, Wagner was quite a pain in the neck in real life but most highly driven men are like this.
I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean; this channel really isn't aimed at kids, although I keep the content family-friendly. In terms of length, I initially started this channel with the idea of doing bite-sized videos, but that changed as the channel grew.
I don't do separate videos. I can't even keep up with the hundreds of requests as it is-and frankly, I don't think that I use huge words that aren't integral to the understanding of a composer or concept (at least, I try not to).
You didn't mention his book on music-drama which sets out his thesis and why his music dramas ( not operas) are not like other operas. He wrote the text first, the text was the basis of the work, not the music. He then wrote the music. The drama works like a play and unlike opera it has no redundancy at all. His anti Semitisim was odious but quite typical of the era, and less dogmatic than Cosima's. The first performance of Parsifal was conducted Hermann Levi, a Jewish conductor because he was the best.
@Jerf Hankell He would write the text for up to two years before and read it out to his family and acolytes, he only had acolytes. Other composers took a text and worked it to the music, but as in the case of Verdi, they cut and fixed it to suit music where Wagner held that the text is absolutely primary to the work, an argument he makes in his book on music drama.
No redundancy at all? Except that after Das Rheingold, every other opera in the Ring Cycle takes up a good portion of one of its acts to recount everything that has happened so far in the preceding opera(s). By the time we get to Götterdämmerung, we have a whole trio of Norns retelling everything from the first three operas, in an introductory scene that's long enough to be an opera in and of itself. I get what you're saying about "no redundancy" in the sense that the scores are through-composed, but I would argue that the very system of leitmotif and development is based on redundancy - cleverly and ingeniously disguised - but redundancy nevertheless. At least in the Ring, the final scenes of each opera are summaries of the ideas that came before. Magic Fire Music, anyone? That whole scene is built on motifs we've been hearing all along. (BTW, I adore Wagner's music, but I can't agree that it's not redundant. It is built on redundancy. That is how it derives its power.)
@@charlesdarnay5455 Plausible but misses the mark. Redundancy refers to vocal and textual redundancy, hence: no la la la etc which were in opera from its earliest form ( Handel arias) to bel canto and grand opera. Recounting is not the same either as Wotan does in Act 2 of Walkure. The Norns only presage the tragedy, they do not retell the whole thing and it's a not an entire opera. Anyway the Ring is special due to its size and the decades of the story. The other Wagner works don't do this: Isolde to a degree in Act 1 when she explains why she wants Tristan dead ; and Tristan does in a long section in Act 3 of the same work but that is backstory, not a recap of what has been witnessed. Even in Act 3 Parsifal it is sparse on the intervening time. Musical repetition/echo/leitmotif is not the same thing at all - and certainly not what Wagner intended. Redundancy means that is of no further use yet the musical themes and leitmotifs alert the audience to plot developments: Act 2 of Siegfried. Film composers adopted this but its not redundant as it serves a new dramatic scene and sequence. Without musical repetition theme and emphasis is lost unless you are referring to a Stockhausen-Darmstadt school of writing which forbade such forms.
Sure is nice that I don't figure into my musical pie the composer's personal beliefs. I would have to actually throw out most of them because we all have personal beliefs that would probably disqualify us from daily life. But then, the information about the private lives that you are including is 'more than interesting - although I don' t really know what that phrase actually means... I mean, 'more than interesting' could mean anything. At any rate, with school being out for the 'summer' - yay - that is 'more than exciting' - I will be putting together / compiling / 'more than just considering' your videos into a 'package deal' for my students for next school year. So, while I am now on 'vacation' from the little urchins, I will be 'more than just listening' to your stuff over the summer... I will be prepping your videos to fit into the junior high brain design, which, I am sure you understand is 'more than just a human brain' at that age. However, I am also not sure what their brains are at this time in their lives- but no matter, I will be turning to your materials much more often next year because they are short enough for them to 'discover', employ and hopefully maintain their listening comprehension skills... which, if that actually happens, will be 'more than a miracle!'
Wagner would hardly have much in common with the Nazi party in the way you suggest when you say he would have been a Nazi if he lived in the 30s. Wagner was Anti-Semitic and a German Nationalist, but to suggest he would condone a totalitarian government that censored " degenerate art", drove out the existing musicians (save Strauss), completely annihilated German culture as a result of their defeat in the war, and killed millions of it's own people is frankly baseless. Furthermore, Wagner was (at least in his earlier years) a left-wing socialist that believed in the greater Germany as a democratic and socialist utopia. Frankly, he was much more akin to Marx or Feurbach in his political beliefs.
My research on Wagner has revealed a character who would put up with _any_ government so long as they liked him and gave him money, and I would also argue that a predominant tenant of a fascist ideology has more to do with libertarian-authoritarian lines than a traditional right-left construct. Wagner doesn't strike me as a preeminently moral character who would have done the right thing and left Nazi Germany, if nothing else but because of the adoration they'd have given him if he had still been alive.
I agree that Wagner's greatest concern was himself, but at the same time there is a reason he was so involved in the Dresden Uprising. While he held many proto-nazi views, he did not take kindly to being forced to work for royal masters in Saxony, and I seriously doubt Goebbels would leave Wagner to himself for long given his role as a propogandist. We have to keep in mind that the reason he did so well with King Ludwig is because Ludwig didn't involve himself with what Wagner wrote the same way the Saxon court did. He hated the idea of being a musical means to anyone else's end, and I seriously doubt the Nazis wouldn't try to use him in such a way.
Read Cosima Wagner’s fascinating and voluminous diaries. She sadistically abused their son Siegfried; was more anti-Semitic than Wagner, and expressed her bigotry, racism, and Nazism openly until her death in 1930; and was the original despicable Wagnerian fanatic. She even abandoned her father Frantz Liszt in his prolonged death agony to fuss over Bayreuth.
I'm glad Wagner was miserable. His anti semitism is one thing but his rampant adultery leading to outside forces aligned against him which he probably blamed on Jews, is what really irks me.
Remember, when it comes to Wagner’s adultery, his first wife was the first to start the chain of infidelity, plus he had Daddy issues. And as far as people who seem only too eager to passively lay the blame for the Holocaust at Wagner’s feet, know these are small men with unconscious gag reflexes and a constitution of jello and there isn’t one among the lot of them that could’ve written Die Mastersinger. Not saying this guy is one of those guys, but he is repeating the same tired talking points. You don’t have to like Wagner, but no one has the right to slander him. Blame Hitler, Blame Canada
A little too harsh on Wagner. I would not be so confident that he would have been a Nazi if he lived on , in spite oh his anti-semitism . He continued to collaborate with Jews throughout his life & his politics were by no means reactionary. Even Karl Marx was anti-semitic, even though he had Jewish roots.The association of Bayreuth with Hitler is primarily due to Winifred Wagner , a Welsh woman who married the homosexual son of Richard Wagner.Wagner was too great & complex a figure to be reduced to being a potential Nazi. It is difficult to believe a crude nobody as Hitler to be able to impress the cultured Wagner (who held Shakespeare above any German author).
I've found that fans of certain artists tend to be a bit more defensive about said artists than perhaps is warranted, but facts remain. That's not to say that we can't enjoy Wagner's music, nor does it say that other composers (or artists) may not fall in the same category. Art is separate from the artist, after all.
Well to be honest the reason I defend him is because I see myself in him. I know what you are thinking but hear me out LMAO. From the things I’ve read Wagner been speculated to have an abnormality like ADHD or bipolar disorder or other related conditions concerning the prefrontal cortex. I have ADHD and have been through times where from hour to hour I was going through the intense swings of euphoria and then to utter nihilism and at all times my mind was generally chaotic. I know the Wagner me and you know Is really only a caricature of who he was to some extent or another but even aside from him I’m defending what I think he represents. I like Wagner so much because he’s an example of the beauty and genius that can accidentally come out of a person filled with chaos turmoil and frankly degeneracy. All three seemingly being afflicted onto him as it has been afflicted on me. In retrospect to the mental state I have been in I see an odd beauty in it even if I’m the time it was absolute hell. I know all of this explanation and personal story time in unwanted but I honestly don’t know what inclines me to tell you other then passion.
That's exactly why I advocate for the separation of art from artist. I think that there's room to accept Wagner as an absolute musical genius while still recognizing the character flaws that were only exacerbated by the period of time in which he lived. There are a surprising number of composers who suffered from mental illnesses more severe than did Wagner. For instance, Robert Schumann's output increased and decreased with the ebbs and flows of his brain chemicals. It's not super-uncommon in artists; many composers have suffered from ADHD, bipolar disorder, or depression.
I do absolve Wagner from his anti-antisemitism, but not from his naive idiocy. As Stephen Fry very well put it, it's not that he wanted Jews excluded from Germany and Art, it's actually that he wanted all the world to be German and make German Art. Jewishness in Music is such a drivel that it's hard to take seriously. The assumptions of the relationship between "art", the "folk" and "music" and how Jews could not create art because they didn't have a (literally) land they belonged to - hence the notion they didn't speak a "true language" because Wagner believed the language comes from the land you live in is... well... (though the Palestine conflict will show Jews did not actually disagree with Wagner there, at least not when it comes to the importance of a piece of land) is ludicrous to say the least, and of course is liable to raise questions to Wagner's sanity...
After a lifetime of studying, reading, thinking about it, I'm sure of a few things. Here's a trivial one-Mime is Meyerbeer. There is some reason to believe Beckmesser (Hans Lick, at first), and Beckmesser's music is Jewish. But it's hardly as simple as that. Nope, the Tristan "chord" resolves to a French sixth in a minor, a perfectly functional chord. Could a "horrible person" write the Good Friday Music? Is it really that simple? Don't think so. Wagner scared of Cosima? Hahaha, don't think so either. You cannot honestly remove the anti-semitism from the Ring, Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Or the Merchant of Venice, hahaha. I think you got way too hot under the collar this around, CN. There's a lot of great music to talk about, and you ended up basically talking about character.
This is exactly why I made a point at the end of the video to discuss how important it is to separate art from the artist. A lot of people conflate the two and I find that to be a very dangerous reflection of our society. In short-and several other Wagner fans have approached me about this-I don't believe that you need to believe that someone is wholeheartedly a good person in order for them to write great music. The _Great Composers_ series is intended to discuss the composers in question as unique individuals, and to discuss their musical styles and the advances they may have brought to the table. So ... yeah, character's on the table. It has to be; in the case of Wagner, I cannot do a video without at least acknowledging his personal life and his notorious beliefs. It would be like talking about the Civil War and never discussing Gettysburg; you _can_ do it, but it's disingenuous. If I hadn't at least _broached_ the subject, there'd be a whole different crowd piling on me for ignoring anti-Semitism, so in the end, I'm forced with trying to compile all sorts of different sources and discuss the matter with people who have doctorate degrees in musicology just to make sure that I'm conveying the most accurate and fair-handed academic consensus.
You're missing what is the most important point about this. You can't take the hate out of the WORKS THEMSELVES. Mime, Alberich, Beckmesser, Klingsor, Kundry (how kind, he LETS her die), et al., are Jews. That's the only interesting issue. The Siegfried love music is racist Gobineau music, Wagner says as much in the diaries. No one hears Gesualdo murdering his wife in his madrigals. Perhaps his regret, but not his ugly, murderous rage. YOU ARE IGNORING THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE.
I sense an inconsistency in your criticism, and to that end I'm not sure I understand your position. How am I "hot under the collar" about Wagner's character while ignoring "the most important issue" in regards to his beliefs? My goal was to present Wagner's beliefs and significance to the history of music as evenly and fairly as possible, as I do with every composer in this series. There clearly and plainly exists art which is intimately tied to hotly charged sociopolitical issues. To argue against that is to argue against fact. My concern over the conflation of art and artist has to do with pieces that _don't_ overtly touch upon these issues; there's no reason to disparage the _Siegfried Idyll_ or the _Tristan_ prelude because of something their composer believed. The operas, insofar as they concern such beliefs of his, go beyond music and into the realm of sociopolitical statements, and can be regarded as such-but, _even there,_ the musical techniques he used and pioneered (such as the intricate system of _leitmotiven,_ his use of the act as a basic unit of structure, and his belief in the _Gestamtkunstwerk_ as a future of art) are still present, and should not be brushed aside. (Also, what does Gesualdo have to do with this matter?)
My point is pretty straightforward? It matters not what sort of person Wagner was, or what nonsense he wrote in his essays or blabbed endlessly about to his disciples, just as it doesn't matter that Beethoven drove his nephew to attempt suicide, or that (I believe it was) Debussy that drove his wife to actually do so, yada yada yada. There are plenty of nasty, racist composers in the history of music. It wouldn't matter if Shakespeare was a raving hate monger in his personal life, or was a pedophile or stabbed his aunt. Shylock is a problem, the problem is right there, IN THE WORK ITSELF. That's the point-it's pretty straightforward, no? That said, I am a lifelong (ambivalent but diehard nonetheless) fan, admirer and student of the work, particularly from Act 1 Walkure on.. In the Brahms/Wagner wars, Brahms comes off as a constipated gnat, in my view. I imagine Wagner would approve that opinion. :-)
Ah-then I think we've reached the point from which disagreement has stemmed. I believe that composers' personal lives can be of value in helping us understand their music and the times in which they lived in a more holistic way. In the case of Wagner, the waters are muddied because his essays _do_ shed some light on how he viewed the Jewish people, and thus how he treated Jewish characters in his operas (i.e. not well). The same could be said if one is studying Scriabin; there's a link between his mystical writings and beliefs and the music that he wrote. There's not always a correlation between the personal and the musical (such as the Beethoven and Debussy examples), but all the same, it's important to know both, because there are some instances out there where the intersection of the two can yield important and multifaceted insights.
A clever B honor role boy. Wagner, kid, is a mountain, you are a door stop. Alas, Wagner is doomed, Or is it that there are enough nasty people around to keep him going? And who the hell sponsors this worn out post war anti Wagner crap? Woody Allen?
I wouldn't call Wagner a "B honor roll boy." (I believe it's "roll," not "role.") He's one of the truly great figures of music history, and one of the seminal operatic composers of all time. The world would be a poorer place without his art, and I think that's agreed-upon enough to be an objective statement. For what it's worth, I don't think there's a particular musicological bias against Wagner; the general consensus is that his views were backwards. They weren't a great deal worse than what a lot of other people believed at the time, but it's still not cool-especially because he used his influence to promote them, which somewhat heightens their relative importance in regard to his worldview. I _do,_ however, have a problem with people who use his personal beliefs as a reason to be biased _against_ his music, which is what I spent the last part of the video explaining. If someone doesn't like his music, they should be able to justify it on purely musical terms, not by dragging his personal life into it. Also, Woody Allen isn't the nicest of folks either-but he's yet another example of a generation-defining artist whose art has been denigrated in recent years due to his personal life. I lament the rise in the equation of art with artist.
Throw away your Wagner library, folks, the whole National Scandal true version of the Donald Trump of composers is before you. The only thing missing is the toilet paper.. Alas, I'll change my life. And no, you have not done justice in this video. Have a beer and go back to your frat house, brat.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
Note: I made this video before I knew much German, so my pronunciation is ... a bit off.
It's better than how most English speakers speak it! :)
It is fine to pronounce is first name as the American way Rich-Ahrd
I'm a music student over at the University of Massachusetts, and I always SUPER appreciate your videos. Incredibly informative and fun!
Thank you so much! Small world-I'm now a grad student at Brandeis (although I'm back home in North Carolina for the duration of the pandemic) and my girlfriend is a UMass med student. I'm assuming that you're at Amherst?
Wow that’s crazy! I have cousins that went to Brandeis (but for pre-med! Kinda a funny turn around there. Yes! Music Education and Vocal Performance studying in Professor Hite’s studio at UMass Amherst.
I can imagine how music ed would translate pretty well to an online-only environment ... voice lessons, not so much. Good luck in your studies, and stay safe!
Wholesome :3
At this very moment i attend umass but not for music. Your videos are gems especially the recent long form ones
I love the direction this video takes with respect to Wagner. I feel that it’s important to understand his anti-Semitic tendencies because history is very important in understanding a composer, but I also think people often get so wrapped up in his bigotry that they forget to separate the music from the person a bit. I love how he touches on Wagner’s controversial ideology while also acknowledging that his works *are* great despite the convroversy surrounding his very name!
The greatest composer ever.
Thank you for informing me about Wagner's Beethoven fanfic. It was an amusing read!
I laughed so many times! Strangely, learning about a ‘horrible person,’ that being Wagner, proved highly enjoyable.
Wagner is my favorite composer and this video is great, thanks for that!
that was a great sneeze!
This helped me write my essay thanks
Really appreciate your work. Lot of content in a short time.
Very good. Also see "Wagner and Me" with Stephen Fry.
Your videos are amazing. I believe Wagner has a very rich history, and would love if you could ever make a sequel more about his actual pieces, and an analysis of them.
I also want to add that as you state in your above 'notes' that this stuff is for educational purposes... you do such a nice job that I would also use the word 'entertainment'. Thanks for your stuff, your time, your effort, your light approach - and for slowing down! :-)
So fascinating!! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you!
“Wagner was the last of the Romantics, bringing Romanticism to its final flowering. To remain a Romantic after Wagner was to imitate him, and many composers did that helplessly of hopefully. Those who wanted to retain their individuality, had to rebel against him.”
--Milton Cross and David Ewen
Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music. Vol. Ii
this quote is very opinionated
@@garrysmodsketches Milton Cross was a radio announcer and died of eating eggs.
@@DrMarianus oh no, did he choke on an egg? That's terrible.
@@garrysmodsketchesit’s largely accurate
Thomas, I love your whimsy and your ability to turn a pithy and apt phrase. And if teaching a subject to others is the best way to learn it yourself then you're going to be a Titan of music history and musicology. Wonderful videos! -Don C., D.M.A.
ok this channel is amazing
and if I hadnt had a test in school about Wagner, I wouldve never found it. Really some top level music content that just for some reason isnt more popular on youtube
Lol I’ve heard a couple things about him but never knew how ridiculous and outlandish his story is.. wow
Great video! interesting, informative and hilarious
Dear Nerd - - I really like your stuff! I just recently found them and I've seen only about 6 so far, but they are well done and interesting. For example, I've known about the Tristan Chord for decades, but I never knew what differentiated it from any other dissonant chord, until you explained it well! OK, gotta go and watch some more Classical Nerd videos.
Outstanding! Prof. Dr. Dr. H. James Birx, New York
The greatest composer who ever lived. Lohengrin and Parsifal are inspired by Ethereal forces.
Awesome vidd!
I was wondering if you could perhaps do a video on Heinrich Marschner in the future. His operas were very important for Wagner's music.
He's in the request pool now.
Finally! Thank you!
My pleasure!
I have so many requests in the queue between now and Siegfried that I've not really begun the research process. I'll definitely check out his pieces when the time comes!
Excellent explanation.
Great video. I appreciate the note near the end that not every influential person from history was necessarily a good person. It seems to be a common theme that men that made progress in the arts, politics, and business weren't particularly kind or thoughtful to their families and could hold views that are appalling by modern standards. Some were philanderers. If they weren't completely absent from the lives of their kids, they could be plain old assholes to them. They could be raging anti-semites but ignore your jewishness if they thought they could use your connections, money, and influence to get ahead. Being artistically sensitive doesn't always translate into being sensitive to other people's feelings or feeling any sort of empathy. Wagner is a good example of that.
Ernest Newman put it very well when he said we don't have anything to complain: we only live with the good in Wagner (his works) and not with the bad (his person). Regardless of whether Alberich and Mime are caricatures of Jews (of course they are), and Siegfried is a horrible insufferable brat from the way he treats Mime, whom he has no reason to hate, the Ring music is a marvelous achievent and Alberich's curse on love is still one of the most amazing pieces of evil music ever written. And Klingsor just took the chastity thing a bit TOO literally...
Touchy subject. Well done.
The German philosopher F. Nietzsche - who also had some obscure piano compositions - had some thoughts on Wagner as well; did you look into that?
Oh boy , if those two edgelords existed in the same time and place they would create a black hole lol ..
On a serious note thanks for mentioning the topic !
A good point, would love to find out more about his thoughts and their relationship! I learned partly that Nietzsche in his early years for a while had looked up to Wagner, but lost a bit of interest in him as Wagner increasingly expressed his antisemitism and his egotistical atrocity...
On a different note, Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra is excellently brilliantly set to music by the paramount german composer Richard Strauss (who was etwa 19 yrs old on Wagner’s death)! ;)
Where is the video about Verdi, haven't seen it yet. Hope it is at least 20 mins.
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
I didn't know about the "fan fiction."
Good one!
5:26 You said it
Please discuss about Meyerbeer, please. The most staged composer during the 19th century and the mysterious disappearance from the standard repertoire 😊
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
@@ClassicalNerd Thank you very much :)
That guy was such a “player “!!! (Wagner not our beloved “classical nerd”). That’s ok I still love his music. Who’s perfect, right? 😉
The bass clarinet in A did exist. Mahler scored it numerous times, if that wasn't evidence enough in itself, he even scored for it when the part would have been easier on the Bb, clearly doing so for its distinct tone colour, the Bb and A basses purportedly being more distinct from each other in sound than the Bb and A sopranos. For some unfortunate reason this instrument has simply been lost to history.
Interesting! I'd heard from various clarinetist friends that it didn't exist, but I suppose they meant that it didn't in the present day as opposed to historically.
Yes, it's mentioned by Foster and Norman del Mar. The latter even points out that a bass clarinet in C must once have existed because Liszt scores it in Mazeppa.
Surely a 'leitmotif' is better known as a 'signature tune', to us mere mortals?
Although you've been already doing a great job in pronouncing the German names, I'd just like to point out that the German CH behind "frontal vowels" or "flat vowels" like "i" and "e" are pronounced as IPA /ç/, which is just a frontal variant of /x/, produced when the middle (instead of the middle-back) of the tongue is touching the hard instead of the soft palate, and this point of contact is just a little bit behind that of the Spanish eñe.
Linguistics aside, I'm interested in getting to know some polyphonic symphonies or more generally, composers after Baroque who have systematically applied polyphony to their work (not just in fugato or in the form of polyrythms like in Chopin's work). Could you suggest some names?
This was made before I actually took any German in college so my pronunciations are far better in episodes produced from winter 2017 onwards!
There are plenty of composers who used polyphony in structural ways up through the twentieth century. What exactly do you mean by "systematically?"
My god, I didn't know how many composers got around! Also, I have to be honest, as much as a despicable person Wagner was, Ride of the Valkyries has always been one of my favorite classical pieces.
Thought this was about his harmonic language more in depth. Instead, I got a lecture about "nationalistic music".
Alright.
This is a really good video, but I feel like it lacks quite a bit of Liszt in there. Liszt was one of the most important figures in Wagner's life. He helped him so much financially, conducted his works when he was in exile, and even musically speaking Wagner recongnized he "borrowed" a lot from Liszt. I have to say their friendship still strikes me as odd. Liszt was everything Wagner wasn't: extremely pious, generous, respectul and helpful of all artists (even his so called enemies like Clara Schuman), he liked to live modestly (at least towards the last third of his life)... by contrast Wagner was egocentric, atheist (not that it's a bad thing at all, simply different from Liszt), petty, lived well over his means, and basically hated everyone who didn't enjoy or worship his music.
What a weird pair. Anyway, I hope you'll make a video on Liszt someday, he's too often disregarded as a mere virtuso for whom women went crazy, but he was soooooo much more.
based
Hey, great video. I would just disagree with the whole "We need to seperate art from artist" arguement. The real unconfortable thing about Wagner is, that the man who - out of an inferiorty complex - wanted to seperate the influence of jewish musicians on his music and became a fanatical antisemite is the same guy who made music, that really moves and is above borders and nations. Wagner acknowledged this even himself that his music has no boundaries. And there is question whether his operas (especially his later ones) are antisemitic themselves (I would say yes) and are - at least - partially used as vessels for transporting Wagners ideology.
Can you really point to something in Wagner's biography that indicates an inferiority complex? Not that these psychological idiocies exist, of course, there's nothing in the brain structure to indicate they're real, but just for argument's sake of having him considering himself inferior to Jews in any way and trying to compensate for it in some manner.
@Jerf Hankell thank you for your insightful comment
I always hear "anti-semantic composer". XD
Wagner is still alive.
It's important to realise that same words can mean different thing. In Wagner's times being what we call "antisemitic" today was not something as sinister as it is today. It was a popular sport, not unlike today's black Americans complaining about "Asians owning all the corner liquor stores" over a domino game or whatever other group complaining about yet another one. To us it all appears incredibly abhorrent because of Auschwitz but one cannot judge anyone in the 19th century by this lens. It's anachronistic. Having said all that, Wagner was quite a pain in the neck in real life but most highly driven men are like this.
Do you do separate video's for kids?
I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean; this channel really isn't aimed at kids, although I keep the content family-friendly. In terms of length, I initially started this channel with the idea of doing bite-sized videos, but that changed as the channel grew.
I ment if you do separate videos that doesn't have huge words?
I don't do separate videos. I can't even keep up with the hundreds of requests as it is-and frankly, I don't think that I use huge words that aren't integral to the understanding of a composer or concept (at least, I try not to).
Know this already years
2:00
You didn't mention his book on music-drama which sets out his thesis and why his music dramas ( not operas) are not like other operas. He wrote the text first, the text was the basis of the work, not the music. He then wrote the music. The drama works like a play and unlike opera it has no redundancy at all. His anti Semitisim was odious but quite typical of the era, and less dogmatic than Cosima's. The first performance of Parsifal was conducted Hermann Levi, a Jewish conductor because he was the best.
@Jerf Hankell He would write the text for up to two years before and read it out to his family and acolytes, he only had acolytes. Other composers took a text and worked it to the music, but as in the case of Verdi, they cut and fixed it to suit music where Wagner held that the text is absolutely primary to the work, an argument he makes in his book on music drama.
No redundancy at all? Except that after Das Rheingold, every other opera in the Ring Cycle takes up a good portion of one of its acts to recount everything that has happened so far in the preceding opera(s). By the time we get to Götterdämmerung, we have a whole trio of Norns retelling everything from the first three operas, in an introductory scene that's long enough to be an opera in and of itself. I get what you're saying about "no redundancy" in the sense that the scores are through-composed, but I would argue that the very system of leitmotif and development is based on redundancy - cleverly and ingeniously disguised - but redundancy nevertheless. At least in the Ring, the final scenes of each opera are summaries of the ideas that came before. Magic Fire Music, anyone? That whole scene is built on motifs we've been hearing all along. (BTW, I adore Wagner's music, but I can't agree that it's not redundant. It is built on redundancy. That is how it derives its power.)
@@charlesdarnay5455 Plausible but misses the mark. Redundancy refers to vocal and textual redundancy, hence: no la la la etc which were in opera from its earliest form ( Handel arias) to bel canto and grand opera.
Recounting is not the same either as Wotan does in Act 2 of Walkure. The Norns only presage the tragedy, they do not retell the whole thing and it's a not an entire opera. Anyway the Ring is special due to its size and the decades of the story. The other Wagner works don't do this: Isolde to a degree in Act 1 when she explains why she wants Tristan dead ; and Tristan does in a long section in Act 3 of the same work but that is backstory, not a recap of what has been witnessed. Even in Act 3 Parsifal it is sparse on the intervening time.
Musical repetition/echo/leitmotif is not the same thing at all - and certainly not what Wagner intended. Redundancy means that is of no further use yet the musical themes and leitmotifs alert the audience to plot developments: Act 2 of Siegfried. Film composers adopted this but its not redundant as it serves a new dramatic scene and sequence.
Without musical repetition theme and emphasis is lost unless you are referring to a Stockhausen-Darmstadt school of writing which forbade such forms.
Sure is nice that I don't figure into my musical pie the composer's personal beliefs. I would have to actually throw out most of them because we all have personal beliefs that would probably disqualify us from daily life.
But then, the information about the private lives that you are including is 'more than interesting - although I don' t really know what that phrase actually means... I mean, 'more than interesting' could mean anything. At any rate, with school being out for the 'summer' - yay - that is 'more than exciting' - I will be putting together / compiling / 'more than just considering' your videos into a 'package deal' for my students for next school year. So, while I am now on 'vacation' from the little urchins, I will be 'more than just listening' to your stuff over the summer... I will be prepping your videos to fit into the junior high brain design, which, I am sure you understand is 'more than just a human brain' at that age. However, I am also not sure what their brains are at this time in their lives- but no matter, I will be turning to your materials much more often next year because they are short enough for them to 'discover', employ and hopefully maintain their listening comprehension skills... which, if that actually happens, will be 'more than a miracle!'
Wagner would hardly have much in common with the Nazi party in the way you suggest when you say he would have been a Nazi if he lived in the 30s. Wagner was Anti-Semitic and a German Nationalist, but to suggest he would condone a totalitarian government that censored " degenerate art", drove out the existing musicians (save Strauss), completely annihilated German culture as a result of their defeat in the war, and killed millions of it's own people is frankly baseless. Furthermore, Wagner was (at least in his earlier years) a left-wing socialist that believed in the greater Germany as a democratic and socialist utopia. Frankly, he was much more akin to Marx or Feurbach in his political beliefs.
My research on Wagner has revealed a character who would put up with _any_ government so long as they liked him and gave him money, and I would also argue that a predominant tenant of a fascist ideology has more to do with libertarian-authoritarian lines than a traditional right-left construct. Wagner doesn't strike me as a preeminently moral character who would have done the right thing and left Nazi Germany, if nothing else but because of the adoration they'd have given him if he had still been alive.
I agree that Wagner's greatest concern was himself, but at the same time there is a reason he was so involved in the Dresden Uprising. While he held many proto-nazi views, he did not take kindly to being forced to work for royal masters in Saxony, and I seriously doubt Goebbels would leave Wagner to himself for long given his role as a propogandist. We have to keep in mind that the reason he did so well with King Ludwig is because Ludwig didn't involve himself with what Wagner wrote the same way the Saxon court did. He hated the idea of being a musical means to anyone else's end, and I seriously doubt the Nazis wouldn't try to use him in such a way.
Let's agree that he wasn't the nicest person to meet even for Jewish people.
@@ClassicalNerdWagner declined to sign a petition to revoke civil rights for Jews. He also used Jewish musicians to the end of his career.
The cause of Wagner's heart attack was the result of an abscessed tooth.
that's like saying "even though hitler was a terrible man, he was a vegetarian."
Read Cosima Wagner’s fascinating and voluminous diaries. She sadistically abused their son Siegfried; was more anti-Semitic than Wagner, and expressed her bigotry, racism, and Nazism openly until her death in 1930; and was the original despicable Wagnerian fanatic. She even abandoned her father Frantz Liszt in his prolonged death agony to fuss over Bayreuth.
I'm glad Wagner was miserable. His anti semitism is one thing but his rampant adultery leading to outside forces aligned against him which he probably blamed on Jews, is what really irks me.
"I'm glad a great artist was miserable" is another way of saying "I am an enemy of art"
Remember, when it comes to Wagner’s adultery, his first wife was the first to start the chain of infidelity, plus he had Daddy issues. And as far as people who seem only too eager to passively lay the blame for the Holocaust at Wagner’s feet, know these are small men with unconscious gag reflexes and a constitution of jello and there isn’t one among the lot of them that could’ve written Die Mastersinger. Not saying this guy is one of those guys, but he is repeating the same tired talking points. You don’t have to like Wagner, but no one has the right to slander him. Blame Hitler, Blame Canada
I don't know about Canada, but certainly Wagner is not to blame.
A little too harsh on Wagner. I would not be so confident that he would have been a Nazi if he lived on , in spite oh his anti-semitism . He continued to collaborate with Jews throughout his life & his politics were by no means reactionary. Even Karl Marx was anti-semitic, even though he had Jewish roots.The association of Bayreuth with Hitler is primarily due to Winifred Wagner , a Welsh woman who married the homosexual son of Richard Wagner.Wagner was too great & complex a figure to be reduced to being a potential Nazi. It is difficult to believe a crude nobody as Hitler to be able to impress the cultured Wagner (who held Shakespeare above any German author).
Shakespeare better than Grrrrrtuh? 😆
Even Marx😂😂😂 Cause he was a great guy
No Wagner was not a horrible person. I find this statement to be without understanding and close minded
I've found that fans of certain artists tend to be a bit more defensive about said artists than perhaps is warranted, but facts remain. That's not to say that we can't enjoy Wagner's music, nor does it say that other composers (or artists) may not fall in the same category. Art is separate from the artist, after all.
Well to be honest the reason I defend him is because I see myself in him. I know what you are thinking but hear me out LMAO. From the things I’ve read Wagner been speculated to have an abnormality like ADHD or bipolar disorder or other related conditions concerning the prefrontal cortex. I have ADHD and have been through times where from hour to hour I was going through the intense swings of euphoria and then to utter nihilism and at all times my mind was generally chaotic. I know the Wagner me and you know Is really only a caricature of who he was to some extent or another but even aside from him I’m defending what I think he represents. I like Wagner so much because he’s an example of the beauty and genius that can accidentally come out of a person filled with chaos turmoil and frankly degeneracy. All three seemingly being afflicted onto him as it has been afflicted on me. In retrospect to the mental state I have been in I see an odd beauty in it even if I’m the time it was absolute hell. I know all of this explanation and personal story time in unwanted but I honestly don’t know what inclines me to tell you other then passion.
That's exactly why I advocate for the separation of art from artist. I think that there's room to accept Wagner as an absolute musical genius while still recognizing the character flaws that were only exacerbated by the period of time in which he lived.
There are a surprising number of composers who suffered from mental illnesses more severe than did Wagner. For instance, Robert Schumann's output increased and decreased with the ebbs and flows of his brain chemicals. It's not super-uncommon in artists; many composers have suffered from ADHD, bipolar disorder, or depression.
I do absolve Wagner from his anti-antisemitism, but not from his naive idiocy. As Stephen Fry very well put it, it's not that he wanted Jews excluded from Germany and Art, it's actually that he wanted all the world to be German and make German Art.
Jewishness in Music is such a drivel that it's hard to take seriously. The assumptions of the relationship between "art", the "folk" and "music" and how Jews could not create art because they didn't have a (literally) land they belonged to - hence the notion they didn't speak a "true language" because Wagner believed the language comes from the land you live in is... well... (though the Palestine conflict will show Jews did not actually disagree with Wagner there, at least not when it comes to the importance of a piece of land) is ludicrous to say the least, and of course is liable to raise questions to Wagner's sanity...
Kanye also hates Jews but his music is not as good as Wagner. So if people listen to Kanye I will listen to Wagner.
After a lifetime of studying, reading, thinking about it, I'm sure of a few things. Here's a trivial one-Mime is Meyerbeer. There is some reason to believe Beckmesser (Hans Lick, at first), and Beckmesser's music is Jewish. But it's hardly as simple as that. Nope, the Tristan "chord" resolves to a French sixth in a minor, a perfectly functional chord. Could a "horrible person" write the Good Friday Music? Is it really that simple? Don't think so. Wagner scared of Cosima? Hahaha, don't think so either. You cannot honestly remove the anti-semitism from the Ring, Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Or the Merchant of Venice, hahaha. I think you got way too hot under the collar this around, CN. There's a lot of great music to talk about, and you ended up basically talking about character.
This is exactly why I made a point at the end of the video to discuss how important it is to separate art from the artist. A lot of people conflate the two and I find that to be a very dangerous reflection of our society. In short-and several other Wagner fans have approached me about this-I don't believe that you need to believe that someone is wholeheartedly a good person in order for them to write great music.
The _Great Composers_ series is intended to discuss the composers in question as unique individuals, and to discuss their musical styles and the advances they may have brought to the table. So ... yeah, character's on the table. It has to be; in the case of Wagner, I cannot do a video without at least acknowledging his personal life and his notorious beliefs. It would be like talking about the Civil War and never discussing Gettysburg; you _can_ do it, but it's disingenuous. If I hadn't at least _broached_ the subject, there'd be a whole different crowd piling on me for ignoring anti-Semitism, so in the end, I'm forced with trying to compile all sorts of different sources and discuss the matter with people who have doctorate degrees in musicology just to make sure that I'm conveying the most accurate and fair-handed academic consensus.
You're missing what is the most important point about this. You can't take the hate out of the WORKS THEMSELVES. Mime, Alberich, Beckmesser, Klingsor, Kundry (how kind, he LETS her die), et al., are Jews. That's the only interesting issue. The Siegfried love music is racist Gobineau music, Wagner says as much in the diaries. No one hears Gesualdo murdering his wife in his madrigals. Perhaps his regret, but not his ugly, murderous rage. YOU ARE IGNORING THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE.
I sense an inconsistency in your criticism, and to that end I'm not sure I understand your position. How am I "hot under the collar" about Wagner's character while ignoring "the most important issue" in regards to his beliefs? My goal was to present Wagner's beliefs and significance to the history of music as evenly and fairly as possible, as I do with every composer in this series.
There clearly and plainly exists art which is intimately tied to hotly charged sociopolitical issues. To argue against that is to argue against fact. My concern over the conflation of art and artist has to do with pieces that _don't_ overtly touch upon these issues; there's no reason to disparage the _Siegfried Idyll_ or the _Tristan_ prelude because of something their composer believed. The operas, insofar as they concern such beliefs of his, go beyond music and into the realm of sociopolitical statements, and can be regarded as such-but, _even there,_ the musical techniques he used and pioneered (such as the intricate system of _leitmotiven,_ his use of the act as a basic unit of structure, and his belief in the _Gestamtkunstwerk_ as a future of art) are still present, and should not be brushed aside.
(Also, what does Gesualdo have to do with this matter?)
My point is pretty straightforward? It matters not what sort of person Wagner was, or what nonsense he wrote in his essays or blabbed endlessly about to his disciples, just as it doesn't matter that Beethoven drove his nephew to attempt suicide, or that (I believe it was) Debussy that drove his wife to actually do so, yada yada yada. There are plenty of nasty, racist composers in the history of music. It wouldn't matter if Shakespeare was a raving hate monger in his personal life, or was a pedophile or stabbed his aunt. Shylock is a problem, the problem is right there, IN THE WORK ITSELF. That's the point-it's pretty straightforward, no?
That said, I am a lifelong (ambivalent but diehard nonetheless) fan, admirer and student of the work, particularly from Act 1 Walkure on.. In the Brahms/Wagner wars, Brahms comes off as a constipated gnat, in my view. I imagine Wagner would approve that opinion. :-)
Ah-then I think we've reached the point from which disagreement has stemmed. I believe that composers' personal lives can be of value in helping us understand their music and the times in which they lived in a more holistic way. In the case of Wagner, the waters are muddied because his essays _do_ shed some light on how he viewed the Jewish people, and thus how he treated Jewish characters in his operas (i.e. not well). The same could be said if one is studying Scriabin; there's a link between his mystical writings and beliefs and the music that he wrote. There's not always a correlation between the personal and the musical (such as the Beethoven and Debussy examples), but all the same, it's important to know both, because there are some instances out there where the intersection of the two can yield important and multifaceted insights.
Oh no not a hrcking anti semitism
A clever B honor role boy. Wagner, kid, is a mountain, you are a door stop. Alas, Wagner is doomed, Or is it that there are enough nasty people around to keep him going? And who the hell sponsors this worn out post war anti Wagner crap? Woody Allen?
I wouldn't call Wagner a "B honor roll boy." (I believe it's "roll," not "role.") He's one of the truly great figures of music history, and one of the seminal operatic composers of all time. The world would be a poorer place without his art, and I think that's agreed-upon enough to be an objective statement.
For what it's worth, I don't think there's a particular musicological bias against Wagner; the general consensus is that his views were backwards. They weren't a great deal worse than what a lot of other people believed at the time, but it's still not cool-especially because he used his influence to promote them, which somewhat heightens their relative importance in regard to his worldview. I _do,_ however, have a problem with people who use his personal beliefs as a reason to be biased _against_ his music, which is what I spent the last part of the video explaining. If someone doesn't like his music, they should be able to justify it on purely musical terms, not by dragging his personal life into it.
Also, Woody Allen isn't the nicest of folks either-but he's yet another example of a generation-defining artist whose art has been denigrated in recent years due to his personal life. I lament the rise in the equation of art with artist.
Throw away your Wagner library, folks, the whole National Scandal true version of the Donald Trump of composers is before you. The only thing missing is the toilet paper.. Alas, I'll change my life. And no, you have not done justice in this video. Have a beer and go back to your frat house, brat.
If you expected this to be taken as an insult, I'm afraid you'll have to manage something with a higher level of coherence.