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Notes -
God I love Wagner. Why do people hate Wagner? Because of the Nazi thing? I mean okay fine, but I mean have these people listened to Wagner? It's like when in that Motte podcast and @KulakRevolt kept hating on The Great Gatsby. I mean I feel like at some point people aren't paying attention to the things they should be paying attention to.
Exhibit A: This is Siegfried's Funeral March. Yeah, from a film, but hey, I have never had the good fortune to watch the 17 hours which is Der Ring des Nibelungs though I would do it in a heartbeat.
Many years ago I watched a pretty uneven film called Aria and was introduced to Wagner apart from the usual Apocalypse Now sequence. The film had only one Wagner piece, a haunting section from the longer opera Tristan Und Isolde called Liebestod. You can find this in both instrumental and vocal versions. My favorite is the one done by Leontyne Price, and was the one used in in the film. You can watch that here.
So why the Wagner hate? Too rhapsodic? Too emotional? Neither of these critiques holds water with me. I mean listening to Wagner 24/7 is probably not advisable, but sometimes a little Wagner is just what the musical doctor ordered.
Fight me!
Completely agree. He revolutionized his and all other - by way of gesamtkunstwerk - art forms. He was as much a renaissance man as there’s ever been, and the power of his vision (and his ability to execute that vision) is rivaled by a sparing handful of aspirational entrepreneurs: Ford, Disney, Jobs/Gates, Musk. His pamphlet on Jewish Music is an overblown non-scandal due to its later admirers; his views were absolutely standard for his day - more charitable even, in parts.
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