Most Underrated, Forgotten, and Neglected Masterpieces

Consciously or not, Debussy got a lot from the "boring" Wagner and used it in his own style, including his only Opera Pelleas et Mdelisande. So did Faure, Ravel, Caplet, Lekeu, Franck, Chausson, etc., if we have to speak for the influence of Wagner on the francophone composers.

As for you, fw, after all the great superlatives of what you feel ("penetrating beauty, overwhelming power and titanic expression of genius", which, by the way, couldn't be more "pompous in writing about Wagner"), I wonder what exactly you "notice inherently wrong lurking beneath the surface" (which, incidentally, sounds so weak and vague, compared to the antecedent huge praise, that cannot easily justify the attraction-repulsion argument).

Parla

You and Wagner can apply all the fancy tags you want, it's opera. His concept of opera wasn't unique in his day and it certainly isn't now. As I've said countless times, and you've disputed equally, opera is a multi-facetted experience. It's nice to see Wagner agrees with me, even if you don't.

I completely agree with you frostwalrus (great name, by the way). There is something simultaneously attractive and repulsive about his works. Perhaps we don't have to look any further than the man himself, or the subject matter of the Ring with its incest, decadence and amorality, which the composer glorifies rather than discredits.

I can never understand what you're talking about Parla except that you have a habit of using $10 words to describe 10 cent thoughts.

This Gesamtkunstwerk which seems to have taken over from melomane as your (misused) word of the week, is nothing more or less than your, or Wagner's, pompous word for opera. Let me quote one of your more intelligible sentences:

In Wagner's mind, the Work of (his) Art should (and could) attain the comprehensive use of all the musical, dramatic and poetic aspects along with the visual ones (staging, lighting, costumes, the venue, etc.).

I think pretty well every opera composer since, and not a few before, had that in mind too, along with many opera fans. Not all though. Here's somebody who fancies himself the last word on opera and just about every other subject:

For clarification's reasons, I wish to reiterate that what I know is that Opera is neither a multi-faceted and definitely not an "incredibly complex art form". It's simply a popular form of theatre (and probably the most popular form of Classical Music), where the "actors" sing instead of speaking and they are judged only (or predominantly) for that. In other works, Opera is all about singing!

Yes, your good self in full spate in another thread.

And so it goes on, Parla arguing with the world, including himself. What he says here, he contradicts there.

It's certainly entertaining. This forum tends to fall into the doldrums when you're not making an ass of yourself in one way or another.

And by the way:

As for the "repulsive" elements of the "Ring", the question should be: does Wagner's music really glorifies incest, decadence and amorality?

Yes. Have you listened to Die Walkure?

And since when do we have to judge a composer's Opus with how he led his life?

Who is? I'm not. As usual you've grasped the wrong end of the stick. I can't stand the man but I love some of the stuff he wrote. And inevitably his own beliefs, morals, life, leaked into his works, which in no way diminishes them as works of art but, as frostwalrus pointed out, lends them a quality that repels and attracts simultaneously.

Exactly the problem I have with your posts. You simply regurgitate what you've read elsewhere or said before.

Drivel. It's opera under a pretentious name. He used the means at his disposal at that time, as every other opera composer did and does today.

Have you ever followed the story? If you don't like the word 'incest', what word do you prefer for sexual intercourse between the prohibited degrees of kindred?

I don't know what you're saying here. What point are you trying to make?

Er, that's the point I made in my last post. Thanks for supporting it.

This business of getting all your views from second hand sources is sending you into blind alleys. You've obviously never heard half the works on which you expound (Debussy's Martyre, Martinu's Greek Passion) but you insist on cutting and pasting quotes on them so that when it comes to defending the views expressed in those quotes you're all at sea. It's been happening ever since you joined this forum. Whatever claims Wagner made for reinventing opera are bogus, his own hype, and your support for those claims seems to stem from slavish admiration rather than any attempt to examine them. Use of stage, acting, lighting, scenery, dramatic effects, which opera composer didn't or doesn't use these? So he wrote his own libretti (from legend), so what? Berlioz did too (Damnation of Faust, Troyens), later Berg did (Wozzeck) and Tippett. Maybe RW should have got help because the works of da Ponte and Hoffmansthal are far superior to anything he wrote. In parts, Wagner's libretti remind me of those people who proudly show you the addition to their house and say, "I finished it myself" and you're looking at the off-square window frames thinking, 'no kidding!'

For the sake of other forum members and this thread, which is way off topic, I'm off to do other things. Rather than repeat and/or contradict yourself, please do the same and leave us in peace.

Starting from your last paragraph's suggestion, I will cease responding to your posts on Wagner, since it is obvious you repeat yourself by simply refusing obstinately to my argumentation, resorting almost entirely to call all kind of names for what, how and even why I write in my posts. Being so sure of everything about me, you even pronounce that "I've obviously never heard half of the works on which I expound"! Don't forget you don't know anything about me.

In "Walkure", you still stick to the "story", while I refer and develop my ideas on the role of music. Oedipus committed a far worse "sexual intercourse between the prohibited degrees of kindred" (a brilliant moral definition). Is it a work of amoral, decadent story that, somehow by virtue of fate, justifies (if not glorifies) the committed "incest" along with a series of repulsive crimes?

Anyway, it's more than obvious that you have a very solid, hostile and alien view to the greatness of the huge legacy Wagner left. The fact that you put in the same basket two works of Berlioz of considerable interest and one of Berg to prove that they produced the same kind of works as Wagner...Well, let's leave it to any other to judge it.

You consider the trivial everyday bourgois stories (well-written and entertaining though) of Da Ponte and Hoffmansthal as far superior than "anything Wagner wrote"! Yes, at the end of the day (it's getting late indeed), it's your prerogative to like what you perceive as "significant", "moral" (that's a quite interesting issue: morality in Classical Music), "decadent", "repulsive" and some more.

At least, don't commit the same mistake that most of you attribute to me. Let's say, it's your view that Wagner is mere Opera and the rest you claim as facts of Music and we may go in peace. If Wagner made it as clear as possible what his works are and why his works were not Opera but "Gesamtkunstwerke", let's say he was not aware of what he was talking about and let's blame his pompous, arrogant, amoral character. The scholars, music schools, a vast majority of musicians and plenty of those who have indulged in Wagner's music might have to learn something from our exchanges, dear Tagalie.

Parla

Googling the subject and trying to convince us that you understand it by repeating the article you have found on Google, or where ever, cuts no ice.

As I constantly endeavour, a wearisome task, I know, to point out to you is that you end up posting garbled tosh and after that has been dissected off you go and try and justify what you have posted or, more likely, back pedal to the extent, sometimes, that you end up in complete denial of ever having posted or find an excuse, like you do not want to get into the academics of the subject as you did the other day.

It is a puzzle to me why you persist, it really is.

Parla, old fruit;now that there'a a lull on Wagner (about whom I admit I'm a novice really) I just wanted to come back to something you said on page 1 of this topic, where you stated that of the 7 works FW mentioned, only Shostakovitch 15 was an undisputed masterwork.

Can I ask why Shostakovitch 15 is a masterpiece and Lutoslawski 3 is not?

As I said on another thread, I attended the European premiere of Lutoslawski 3 in the RFH in 1984 I think, and his pre-concert talk.

A while later I also heard Rattle with his then CBSO at the Barbican in the same work, which concert also included Brendel playing Beethoven PC4.

I have Lutoslawski 3 on vinyl: Salonen/Los Angeles Phil on CBS Masterworks (you note that CBS thought it was worth that title!)

I am very fond of Lutoslawski 3. And as I also said somewhere else I have also sat through Shostakovitch 15 in the RFH with the Philharmonia/Kurt Sanderling, another memorable concert.

So as I say Parla, can you tell me  why Lutoslawski 3 is not a masterwork where Shostakovitch 15 is?

Mark