Bush and Blair singing "Gay Bar"

[Monk]

That's a magnificent threadjack!

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Agathon
I never said that Sibelius was Wagneresque (he's pretty much on his own), and I never said that Brahms put Hanslick up to anything.

Fair enough, but those seemed to be your implications.

For a start he didn't have to - he was the establishment.

Brahms was the establishment? No, that's not accurate. First, Wagner and Brahms inhabited different musical worlds...Brahms being in Vienna, Wagner having established himself in Bach's old haunt of Leipzig. Wagner was hardly a musical underdog fighting da man, considering Bayreuth became an artistic mecca. Wagner wielded enormous influence as a composer, and was quite the shrewd conniver. Brahms, for his part, pretty much avoided the politics of music and just sailed a steady course. His works were invariably given unpretentious premieres, unlike Wagner's works at Bayreuth. I don't see Brahms as being the establishment at all--he certainly never enjoyed the immense power that Haydn and Beethoven did.

For me Brahms conservatism is evident in his music. I find myself after listening to it asking "so?".

The vaunted revolution may well have petered out, but it produced some great music along the way and a new sense of what an Orchestra could do. That's enough to keep RW in the firmament.

I'm sorry, I just can't empathize with Brahms at all - it's just stodge to me.

How could one claim that a guy who wrote an Academic overture based entirely on his old college drinking songs is stogy?

One's own taste in music is one's own, there can't be much argument about that. But I would suggest that your assessment of Brahms is superficial and based on stereotypes. When I first encountered Brahms in college, it was in the chorus, singing Ein Deutsches Requiem. When I first listened to a recording, I didn't think much of it. But with repeated listenings, and performing it, I realized there was an incredible richness under the surface. As one critic put it at the time, listening to Brahms is like looking deep into a well. At first you may not see much, but as you look deeper, you then see the reflection of stars.

Brahms' music is sonorous, soulful and cerebral. He had little use for maudlin sentimentality or heart-on-the-sleeve emotionalism. His method was using rigorous, intelligent music to touch at aspects of the human soul. That's why he championed absolute music over programmatic works, since they allowed the listener more freedom to enjoy the music for music's sake. I, for one, really love his restraint. He seems to capture the perfect blend of intellectualism and emotional expression. There aren't any cheap tunes, no obvious harmonies--such things didn't interest him.

One also has to blame, of course, modern interpretation. The whole "intent of the composer" movement has produced a bunch of hogwash that people claim is what the artists would have wanted. In that sense, unjust stereotypes of Brahms have been solidified in recordings by conductors and performers who, for some reason, think the stodge is accurate. It certainly isn't, and I believe that, were Brahms to hear modern recordings of his works, he'd be appalled by the turgidity and slowness. Brahms liked fast tempi, and he liked the interpolation of lots of expressiveness--his own letters to friends supports this. That's why I miss the days of Furtwangler, Weingarten and Beecham. These guys took music and made it their own, made it express what mattered in the here and now, not some apocryphal notion of what the composer might have wanted. That's the way music should be. **** perfection, I want expression. Who cares if the orchestra has perfect ensemble work if the interpretation is so literal boring that one might as well just have programmed the notes into a computer?

In the end, people's tastes are their tastes, but I'd recommend having an open mind and willingness to dig below the surface. I and the other Brahms fans I know often shake our heads in pity at those who don't know what it's like to have a "Brahmsian moment."

And Rossini? Well there you go.

Oh lord. You complain about stoginess, yet disparage Rossini, perhaps one of the most un-stogy composers there was?

I find it amazing that people who idolize Wagner would have the temerity to accuse Brahms of being boring. I don't think you know what boring is until you've had to sit through Die Meistersinger, Parsifal or much of Lohengrin, to name a few. I believe Wagner is the reason we have highlights albums--lest we gnaw off our own legs waiting for the next scene.

[Agathon]

I'm not accusing Rossini of being stodgy, he just isn't my cup of tea. You can add Verdi, Puccini and Bizet to the list as well. I'd much rather listen to "Peter Grimes" than any of that stuff.

I guess I prefer music with an "edge" to it. That is when we are talking about music post-Wagner. I still like Bach, Mozart, Haydn, et al.

I've made various honest attempts to listen to Brahms, but it does nothing for me - so no "Brahmsian moments" here. I own a few Brahms disks, but he just does nothing for me.

Meistersinger I don't know well at all, and Parsifal I really don't like. The Dutchman is a pretty good opera and Tristan and the Ring cycle are sublime. I don't have any problems with their length, but then again someone who grew up with Mahler probably wouldn't.

My own admiration for Wagner is that he has managed both to portray and express the Schopenhauerian metaphysics in music. While I don't subscribe to that sort of post-Kantian metaphysics I think that, phenomenologically, it is pretty much spot on. The idea that our ordinary personalities are in large part a fictive mask which can be removed by the experience of great art has something going for it. That's why, when you say you detest Wagner's philosophising, I'd be inclined to say that it's inseparable from the complete experience of his work (and this is precisely what Hanslick was criticising). This is a powerful idea that resonates via Wagner through Nietzsche and beyond. While I wouldn't go as far as they did and endorse it as a complete theory of art, it is a phenomenological tool by which we can understand our aesthetic experiences more completely. And it is the core of a "revolution" in thinking which extended far beyond music to literature and the other arts.

That's why Wagner is great and why I'd take his side.