Wagner's Themes

The compulsion to explain Wagner’s works in words is as old as the works themselves. Yet there are those who remain convinced that this compulsion represents nothing more than a misguided pedagogical belief that creations of such size and intensity cannot possibly be adequately comprehended directly, immediately, and comprehensively during performance; and those who think like this might even conclude that all attempts at verbal explanation are likely to do more harm than good. A less extreme approach regards critical commentary on Wagner as of genuine value, not least in providing a counterweight to the Master’s own sinister desire to seduce passive audiences as they experience the Gesamtkunstwerk in the theatre, and become vulnerable to dangerous, deluded beliefs and actions. It could well be concluded, therefore, that such commentaries are most useful when they openly aspire to confront the significance of the works through questioning and interpreting all aspects of their materials as fully as possible. To the extent that a single attitude can be abstracted from them, present-day Wagner studies seem to subscribe to this view, the principal exception being theoretical accounts of harmonic identities and procedures. Yet, as the work of David Lewin, David Kopp, and others has shown, even theory-based investigations can, without too much stress and strain, be linked to those pluralities and ambiguities of signification on which interpretations of the works as dramas most commonly depend.

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Expression (computer science) · Harm · Literature · Musical · Nothing · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology