The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Last week I posted some Wagner, the overture to Tannhauser. As a counterpoint, here is Wagner in a much gentler mood. This is the Prelude to Lohengrin, that magnificent opera about a Knight of the Grail whose name can never be revealed.
This music is, to me, a wondrous distillation of The Grail and the sad, lonely duty of a Knight of the Grail.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have posted this before, but I’m not wading through two or three years’ worth of Something for Thursdays* to find out. I’ve always loved the music of Richard Wagner. Always, always, always. As long as I’ve been aware of Richard Wagner I’ve loved his music. So it’s a bit of Wagner today.
The thing with Wagner is that, if he’s a food, he is a very, very heavy bread, the kind of bread that’s an inch thick and sits in your stomach like a brick after you swallow it. Oh, and it’s dark bread. Almost black, really. Thick, dark, heavy bread. The kind of bread that, when you make a sandwich with it, you have to use spicy mustard and thick cuts of ham just to taste anything other than bread. The kind of bread where…well, that’s enough. There’s such a thing as overkneading a metaphor.
But anyway, of all of Wagner’s music, this is the piece of his that works its magic on me more than any other. The overture may be my favorite form of shorter orchestral work, but in Wagner’s hand, the overture — or Prelude — reached heights that no one else has reached since. Fifteen minutes of a great musical journey…here is the overture to Tannhauser.
When that famous chorale theme recurs at the overture’s end (the 1:49 mark of the second video), the effect is astonishing, with those shimmering strings that weren’t there the first time we heard this same theme. And when the entire orchestra takes up the theme, with those magnificent trombones leading the way, it’s nearly overwhelming…and then Wagner tops it off, at the very end, with the brass in a slow arpeggio that to me sounds like the Heavens opening. I never listen to Wagner unless I’m willing to go somewhere, emotionally. To listen to Wagner is to listen to the most purely proud musical arrogance — in the best sense of the word — that has ever been written. Wagner is not a composer who for one second even considers that his listener may not wish to follow him where he wants to go.
Oh, two final notes: Check out the 3:24 mark, when you can see the trumpets and the trombones. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but for many years, the Chicago Symphony was regarded as having the greatest brass section in the world. That trumpet player sitting there, next the trombones, is Adolph Herseth, who was likewise for years regarded as the greatest symphonic trumpet player in the world (as well as one of my personal musical heroes, especially when I was a trumpet player in college — let other trumpet players lust after Wynton Marsalis’s skill, what I wanted was the ability to completely dominate an orchestra the way Herseth could). And check out what Sir Georg Solti — one of the greatest Wagnerian conductors of all time — has his horns do at 4:04 and 4:30. He directs them to lift their instruments up so the bells are pointed, not into their own laps as is normally the case with the French horn, but at the back wall, to make their counterfigure heard brightly.
What a wondrous, magnificent overture. This is one of the most perfect pieces of symphonic music I know.
* Or would that be “Somethings for Thursday”? Hmmmm….
A movie scene this week, from Steven Spielberg’s astonishing Schindler’s List.
If you haven’t seen the film, Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler, a businessman and member of the Nazi party who decides to take advantage of the increasingly punitive measures being taken against the Jewish people of Poland by using Jews as free labor. Over time, his factory gradually shifts into more of a haven, where Jews can find some modicum of protection from the Nazi brutality. This goes on until toward the end of the film, when, as Germany’s position in WWII becomes untenable, the order is sent out: Kill them all. Pack them all up and send them to Auschwitz.
This is when Schindler decides that he needs to act to save the thousand Jews who have been working for him — and this is how he does it. He runs a scam against Amon Goeth (the Nazi commandant, played by Ralph Fiennes) that is breathtaking in its simplicity: Goeth has such rock-solid faith in Schindler’s abilities as a businessman that he just assumes that Schindler is making huge money on the deal, when in reality Schindler is literally buying the lives of his workers. The deal struck, Schindler and his main assistant, Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley), begin the important task of creating the master list of Jews to be spared the trains to Auschwitz and instead sent to Poland to work for Schindler.
This is an amazing scene, from an amazing film.