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Wagner and the post-modern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

John Deathridge
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Extract

On 16 September 1989 a national British newspaper, The Independent, carried a full page advertisement placed by Technics for their latest ‘Hi-Fi Midi System for Music Lovers’, the CDX3. At the top of the page, Wagner's furrowed brow and glaring eyes, slightly askance, stared out as if insisting on, though not quite peremptorily demanding, a close reading of the text beneath. The text began as follows (comments in square brackets are mine):

To hear what he [Wagner] intended a hi-fi system has to be perfectly composed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 143 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘The Musical Influence’, Wagner Handbook, ed. Müller, Ulrich and Wapnewski, Peter, English trans. ed. with an introduction by John Deathridge (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 550.Google Scholar A shover version of this paper was read at a colloquium entitled Die Oper nach Wagner held in Dahlhaus's memory at the Technische Universität Berlin in October 1989.

2 The advertisement subsequently appeared in a number of other ‘serious’ daily national newspapers (e.g., The Times) and one or two ‘glossy’ weeklies.

3 Vattimo, Gianni, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-Modern Culture, trans. Snyder, Jon R. (Oxford, 1988), 10.Google Scholar

4 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Kaufman, Walter (New York, 1967), 156.Google Scholar

5 Gehlen, Arnold, ‘Die Säkularisierung des Fortschritts’, in Einblicke (Frankfurt a. M., 1975), 56–68.Google Scholar

6 Brendel, Franz, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich: 22 Vorlesungen gehalten zu Leipzig im Jahre 1850 (Leipzig, 1852), 532.Google Scholar See also Deathridge, John, ‘Germany: The “Special Path”’, in The Late Romantic Era, ed. Samson, Jim (London, 1991), 61–2.Google Scholar

7 Marx, Adolf Bernhard, The Music of the Nineteenth Century and Its Culture, trans. Wehrhan, Augustus (London, 1855), 58.Google Scholar

8 Gehlen, , Einblicke (see n. 5), 126.Google Scholar Gehlen says he found the term in a book published in 1951 by the Belgian politician and philosopher Hendrik de Man, who in turn took the idea from the French mathematician and economist Antoine Augustin Cournot (who died in 1877).

9 The adjectives ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are not evaluations; nor is the difference between them synonymous with that between the ‘progress’ and ‘reaction’ that Adorno claimed to see entwined in Wagner. Rather they mark the gap between two philosophical positions – roughly speaking, the antithesis between metaphysics and nihilism. On the concept of ‘weak thought’, see Il pensiero debole, ed. Vattimo, Gianni and Rovatti, Pier Aldo (Milan, 1983).Google Scholar Jürgen Habermas, a vibrant, polemically ‘strong’ thinker, is discussed briefly below.

10 Readers interested in the debate about postmodernity can do worse than begin by consulting the bibliography in Calinescu, Matei, Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, 1987)Google Scholar, and the articles in Postmoderne: Alltag, Allegorie und Avantgarde, ed. Christa, and Bürger, Peter (Frankfurt a. M., 1988)Google Scholar (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 648). For the comparatively meagre amount of literature on music and postmodernity, see Gligo, Niksa, ‘Die musikalische Avantgarde als ahistorische Utopie’, Acta Musicologica, 61 (1989), 218 n. 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar To this list should be added Helga de la Motte's refreshingly critical article ‘Die Gegenaufklärung der Postmoderne’, in Musik und Theorie, ed. Stephan, Rudolf, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung, 28 (Darmstadt, 1987), 31–44Google Scholar, and Holloway, Robin, ‘Modernism and After in Music’, in The Cambridge Review, 110 (06 1989), 50–66.Google Scholar

11 Even Vattimo and Habermas, two philosophers diametrically opposed in their attitudes to the post-modern, are agreed on this point. See Vattimo, , The End of Modernity (n. 3), 164Google Scholar, and the fourth of Habermas's twelve lectures, ‘The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point’, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Lawrence, Frederick (Oxford, 1987), 83–105.Google Scholar For some dissenting voices, see Nietzsche as Postmodernist, Essays Pro and Contra, ed. and intro. Koelb, Clayton (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

12 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’, in Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, Ralph John, intro. Joseph Peter Stern (Cambridge, 1983), 104–5.Google Scholar

13 Nietzsche, , 120.Google Scholar

14 See, for instance, Wagner, Cosima, Die Gagebücher, 2 vols., ed. with commentary by Gregor-Dellin, Martin and Mack, Dietrich (Munich and Zürich, 1976/1977)Google Scholar (hereafter CT): ‘…great courage, great fervour, very acute judgement. R's example has opened his [Nietzsche's] eyes to the triviality of the whole modern world’ (23 February 1874)

15 CT, 9 April 1874.

16 Letter of 27 February 1874 in the Nietzsche Briefwechsel, ed. Colli, Giorgio and Montinari, Mazzino, 11/4 (Berlin, 1878), 396.Google Scholar

17 Habermas, , The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (see n. 11), 7.Google Scholar

18 Wagner, Richard, ‘Modern’, Sämtliche Schriften and Dichtungen, Volks-Ausgabe, 16 vols. (Leipzig, n.d. [1911–1916]) (hereafter SSD), X, 55.Google Scholar

19 ‘Modern’, 57.Google Scholar

20 Cited in Habermas, (n. 11), 387.Google Scholar

21 ‘Modern’, 56.Google Scholar

22 Baudelaire, Charles, ‘Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris’Google Scholar, in Curiosités esthétiques, ed. Lemaitre, H. (Paris, 1962), 699.Google Scholar The only English translation of Oper und Drama in existence in Baudelaire's day was published in serial form between 19 May 1855 and 26 April 1856 in The Musical World.

23 Rorty, Richard, ‘Posties’, London Review of Books (3 09 1987), 11–12.Google Scholar Cf. Habermas, (n. 11), 51.Google Scholar

24 Habermas, , 4–5.Google Scholar

25 Wagner, Richard, My Life, trans. Gray, Andrew, ed. Whittall, Mary (Cambridge, 1983), 431.Google Scholar

26 See the third part of Oper und Drama: ‘Dichtkunst und Tonkunst im Drama der Zukunft’, SSD, IV, esp. 152–4.Google Scholar

27 SSD, III, 97.Google Scholar

28 SSD, III, 60–1.Google Scholar

29 SSD, III, 304.Google Scholar

30 SSD, III, 301.Google Scholar

31 SSD, III, 304.Google Scholar

32 SSD, III, 231.Google Scholar

33 For details, see Deathridge, John, Geck, Martin and Voss, Egon, Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners and ihrer Quellen (WWV)(Mainz, 1986), 380, 405–6.Google Scholar

34 Postmoderne (see n. 10), 10.Google Scholar

35 See Adorno, T. W., ’Wagners Aktualität’, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Tiedemann, Rolf et al. , XVI (Frankfurt a. M., 1978), 555.Google Scholar

36 Nietzsche, , ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’, in Untimely Meditations (see n. 12), 201Google Scholar; translation modified. Hollingdale has ‘marvellously accurate archetypal youth’, which is quite wrong. The original German text is ’Das wunderbar strenge Urbild des Jünglings’.

37 Briefe Richard Wagners an Otto Wesendonck, 1852–1870. Neue vollständige Ausgabe, 8th edn (Leipzig, 1911), 44.Google Scholar

38 Franke, Rainer, Richard Wagners Zürcher Kunstschriften (Hamburg, 1983), 167.Google Scholar

39 See, for example, SSD, III, 98Google Scholar: ‘In dem großen allgemeinsamen Kunstwerke der Zukunft wird ewig neu zu erfinden sein[…]’.

40 Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonck. Tagebuchblätter und Briefe, 1853–1871, 10th edn [ed. Golther, W.] (Berlin, 1904), 231.Google Scholar Werner Breig calls these words ‘astonishing’ ( Wagner Handbook [see n. 1], 467Google Scholar); but they are quite logical in terms of Wagner’s reaction against, and insight into, what Arnold Gehlen was to call well over a hundred years later the ‘secularisation’ of the new (see n. 5).

41 The oboe and English horn solos in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique at the start of the third movement (‘Scène aux champs’) could have served as a model. They are also unaccompanied, obviously similar in tone colour, and consciously structured to give, paradoxically, the impression of natural, ‘naive’ musical expression that is freely improvised without rigid bar lines. The idea has a pedigree in early nineteenth-century writing on music, in particular the theories of Gustav von Schlabrendorf and Ernst Wagner (no relation) about the origin of music as bar-less, recitative-like song (see Danuser, Hermann, Musikalische Prosa [Regensburg, 1975], 51–4Google Scholar). Ernst Wagner is mentioned by Schumann in his well-known critique of the Symphonie fantastique in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which Richard Wagner, himself a contributor to the periodical in the mid-1830s, almost certainly read. (For the full version of the passage on Ernst Wagner, which Schumann later shortened, see Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 4 08 1835.)Google Scholar

42 Kerman, Joseph, Opera as Drama, new and rev. edn (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 165.Google Scholar

43 Nietzsche, (see n. 12), 76.Google Scholar

44 Kerman, , 168.Google Scholar

45 Adorno, T. W., In Search of Wagner, trans. Livingstone, Rodney (New York, 1981), 156.Google Scholar

46 Man, Paul de, Blindness and Insight, 2nd edn (Minneapolis, 1983), 150.Google Scholar

47 Wagner himself emphasised that Tristan, in terms of its deeper mythic significance, was in effect another version of Siegfried, though he was more reticent about the precise affinities between the two works ( SSD, VI, 267–8Google Scholar). In a letter of 9 July 1859 to Mathilde Wesendonck, he remarked on the link between the Shepherd's ‘new’ melody in C major in the third act of Tristan and the much bolder, jubilant C major melody dominating the end of Siegfried (’Sie ist mir ewig’), both of which seem to have occurred to him at the same time ( Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonck [see n. 40], 161Google Scholar). Another idea common to both works relevant to the present context is the use of a quasi-improvisational melody with flexible metre to represent the respective hero’s relationship to Nature (see n. 41). The difference in emphasis is significant: while the cheerful, metrically ‘free’ song of the Woodbird in Siegfried reflects, in a bright E major, the hero's oneness with Nature and provides him with a clear pointer to the future, the melancholy F minor strains of the alte Weise in Tristan convey the sense that the hero's relation to his origins, and hence also his vision of the future, have been damaged almost beyond repair.

48 Vattimo, , The End of Modernity (see n. 3), 39–41, 58–8.Google Scholar Vattimo uses Heidegger's term Verwindung, which suggests a variety of meanings, including a recovery from an illness, a resignation to something, and an acceptance of another’s opinion.

49 Vattimo, , 41.Google Scholar

50 In a letter of 29/30 May 1859 to Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner was already predicting that Amfortas in Parsifal would be like Tristan in the third act of Tristan und Isolde, but ‘with an unimaginable increase in intensity’ (mit einer undenklichen Steigerung). See ‘Dokumente zur Enstehung und ersten Aufführung des Bühnenweihfestspiels Parsifal’, ed. Geck, Manin and Egon, Voss, Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Werke, 30 (Mainz, 1970), 14.Google Scholar

51 See, for instance, Gooding-Williams, Robert, ’Nietzsche's Pursuit of Modernism’, New German Critique, 41 (Spring/Summer 1987), 99.Google Scholar

52 Adorno, , In Search of Wagner (see n. 45), 47.Google Scholar

53 Adorno, , ‘Wagners Aktualität’ (see n. 35), 560.Google Scholar

54 See, for instance, Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, Wagner androgyne: Essai sur l'interpretation (Paris, 1990), 90–.Google Scholar Nattiez, who sees the Ring as a metaphorical re-enactment of the history of music as it is presented in Oper und Drama, points to several allusions to the lilting gait of French opéra comique in the opening scene; these, he says, are meant to underscore the fact that Alberich is intended as a metaphor for the negative historical influence of French opera and an anti-Semitic allusion to Meyerbeer.

55 See, for instance, Adorno, T. W., ‘Music and the New Music: In Memory of Peter Suhrkamp’, Telos, 43 (Spring 1980), 132, 143Google Scholar: ‘The new musical language … takes the form of a positive negation of traditional language’; ‘Tradition is not imitation, a reaching into the past or a direct continuation of the past, but rather the ability to grow away from the demands in the past which this past did not fulfil and which left behind their mark in the form of mistakes. New Music assumes responsibility in the face of these demands.’ See also Stockhausen's, Karlheinz preface to Kontra-Punkte (revised edn, 1977)Google Scholar: ‘No Neo …! What, then? Counter-Points: a series of the most clandestine yet palpable transformations and renewals – no foreseeable end.’

56 Schoenberg, Arnold, ‘Criteria for the Evaluation of Music’, in Style and Idea, ed. Stein, Leonard (New York, 1975), 129.Google Scholar

57 Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘“New Music“ as Historical Category’, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Puffett, Derrick and Clayton, Alfred (Cambridge, 1987), 13.Google Scholar

58 see Cooke, Deryck, ’Wagner's Musical Language’, The Wagner Companion, ed. Burbidge, Peter and Sutton, Richard (London, 1979), 236–8.Google Scholar

59 Cited in Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera, ed. Hinton, Stephen (Cambridge, 1990), 27.Google Scholar

60 Cited in Grover, Ralph Scott, Ernest Chausson: The Man and His Music (London, 1980), 171.Google Scholar

61 See, for instance, Ayrey, Craig, ’Salome’s Final Monologue’, Richard Strauss: Salome, ed. Puffett, Derrick (Cambridge, 1989), 130.Google Scholar