Arts & Manners: Wagner Lives

The impulse of a musical tradition— like the soul of a great people—must possess a considerable reserve of inspiration for it to weather at once the grossest perversions and the lasting imprint of the heavy palm of barbarism. Bayreuth and the legacy of Richard Wagner have had to endure both.

Consider the allegation that Wagner was wont to recline above perfumed baths at Wahnfried imploring Parisiennes to dispatch him their underthings. View the distorted face of his beloved Germany: the abject but telling architecture of both Berlins, the petty indecencies of the Communists on the Autobahn. The distinct experience of Bayreuth—to surmount the enormities of the epoch which intervene like a traffic jam in Hamburg to drive the music from your head—must have roots running far deeper than the evanescent impression stemming from a mere musical score.

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Brad Evans

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The impulse of a musical tradition— like the soul of a great people—must possess a considerable reserve of inspiration for it to weather at once the grossest perversions and the lasting imprint of the heavy palm of barbarism. Bayreuth and the legacy of Richard Wagner have had to endure both.

Consider the allegation that Wagner was wont to recline above perfumed baths at Wahnfried imploring Parisiennes to dispatch him their underthings. View the distorted face of his beloved Germany: the abject but telling architecture of both Berlins, the petty indecencies of the Communists on the Autobahn. The distinct experience of Bayreuth—to surmount the enormities of the epoch which intervene like a traffic jam in Hamburg to drive the music from your head—must have roots running far deeper than the evanescent impression stemming from a mere musical score.