Decoding Wagner: A Basic Guide into His World of Music Drama Unlocking the Masters Series, No. 1 by Thomas May

Author:Thomas May
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-fiction: Music
Published: 2010-10-16T16:07:00+00:00

Sachs (suddenly a good Schopenhauerian) laments the ubiquity of Wahn in human nature (0:15): not even his beloved Nuremberg is immune from its effects (2:03), as the riot of the night before demonstrated (the violent music of 3:14 ff). But the Wahn Sachs depicts is like a more humanistic version of the Will pulsing through Tristan. Sachs gently recognizes its role in bringing the young lovers together (3:53). Wahn even plays a role in making sure Walther's art, like his love, attains success: for such success cannot come about "without a touch of madness" (5:47). Art itself, in other words, cannot escape the circle of illusion. But it is a necessary illusion, one that allows us to face life rather than be consumed by it in defeat. Wagner conveys this complex web of thoughts again in a masterfully immediate stroke later in the act. The audience is reminded that Sachs too loves Eva. Yet Sachs renounces the chance to enjoy this love and become part of the inevitable pattern that 11'ahn, following human will, constantly replays.

The pattern even has its perfect point of reference, Sachs suggests: the story of Tristan and Isolde. The orchestra then directly quotes the chromatic, stepwise desire theme from Wagner's Tristan. The message could hardly be clearer: illusory as art is (that is, the "story of Tristan and Isolde"), it encodes a wisdom that Sachs draws on to avoid a worse illusion: the illusion that expressing his love for Eva could avoid replicating Tristan's fatal pattern. And he goes further: he actually reclaims the "foreign" sound of his Tristan music and integrates it as an essential part of the quintet's fabric, drawing on the climax of Tristan's duet (as well as a quote again from the Walkure love music).

Walther presents his latest inspiration to Sachs it arrived, unsurprisingly, in a dream but his improvisation requires shaping. David's comical attempt at schooling in act I had no impact. Now, however, Walther is willing to listen. Sachs clarifies the role of form in taming what would otherwise remain the impetuous art Walther introduced in his audition before the Mastersingers. Its emotional sincerity is not in question; but if' no one can understand it, not even someone as willing as Sachs, what use is the art? Wagner manages to make an apparently esoteric topic in fact fascinating, dramatizing the evolution of Walther's "Prize Song" (CI) 1, track 8) at the same time as he illustrates the basic AAB form underlying the master-song. This is the so-called bar form: it features two strophes to the same melody but with harmonic modulation (starting at 0:23 and 2:10, beginning "in the morning" and "in the evening," respectively). These are followed by a final strophe with an entirely new melody ( 3:44: the melody introduced in the 11eistersinger prelude, climaxing on the tenor's high A at 4:55) that synthesizes elements of the former.

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