Klarinet Archive - Posting 000440.txt from 1998/03

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re Garrett Martin and the Ring
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 22:14:16 -0500

Garrett, the Ring is not "a piece" and you are setting yourself
up for a great disappointment if you simply approach it as you
would approach another work of music; i.e., buy the recording,
listen to it, end of story.

For one thing, it is 20 hours long. For another, it is very
difficult to make sense out of the work without seeing it and
becoming intimately familiar with the characters and the tunes
associated with those characters. For yet a third thing, there
are multiple passages in the opera where very little happens
for as much as 20 minutes at a time; for example, the opening
of Gotterdammerung where the three fates recount the entire
story of the first three operas.

You are almost better off getting a "best tunes from the Ring"
rather than attacking the entire thing. It would be like
trying to eat an 80 pound birthday cake all by yourself.

The plot is absurd. The characters border on the venal, the
stupid, the hateful, the naive, and the just plain dull. The
major character is Siefried, though he does not show up until
the second opera. He is young, brave, handsome, and very
stupid. The first words out of his mouth when he sees his
first woman are "This is not a man."

He gets killed. And his funeral music has to be one of the
monuments of western music. It is astounding and I never
played it without a feeling of awe.

Rossini said that "Wagner has great moments, but bad quarter
hours." True. True. The entire first five minutes of
Siegfried is one chord!!

The composer was a hateful, disgusting piece of human filth
who was also one of the greatest of all composers. He was
a bigot, an antisemite, a cowardly, selfish, lecher who
seduced everything who came his way. He even threw Mr.
Wesendonck out of his own house because he had interrupted
Wagner while he was seducing Wesendonck's wife.

So approach Wanger's "Ring" as you would approach Mount
Everest. You can get killed if you try and climb it from
the wrong side.

Perhaps you might start with Meistersinger first. Very
approachable. Or Tannhauser or Flying Dutchman or Lohengrin.
But not the Ring. Exercise care!!!

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================