Wagner the Revolutionary

[00:00:02][music] [music] [music] [music] Hello, Sublianation Media viewers. Um, would be socialists, cranky Marxists, heathens, uh, art connoisseurs and massified audience members.

[00:00:46]Um we are getting together here today with uh Jim um Jim Ego Kenbach to speak about opera and vagna and yeah Jim do you want to introduce yourself?

[00:01:05]Yes, sure. I'm uh Jim Igua. I'm a musicologist, perfect vagnarite, uh wannabe socialist, would be socialist, activist, um and um uh art shage.

[00:01:26]>> Okay, >> that's great.

[00:01:27]>> Opera hooligan.

[00:01:29][laughter] >> An opera hooligan.

[00:01:31]>> The generated aristocrat. Opera hooligan. Okay. All right.

[00:01:36]>> Yes. And I uh I might start with a little clip for you uh Americans. I'm also German.

[00:01:43]>> German. Perfect. Vagner, right?

[00:01:45]>> Mhm.

[00:01:45]>> Um and maybe to get into it because also we are in the in the still in the week of the uh 250 years of American independence.

[00:01:56]>> Um and there's a little connection of Vagnner to that.

[00:02:01]I give you uh three minutes of uh very unknown music of Vner. Okay.

[00:02:06]>> Okay.

[00:02:10]>> So, here we go.

[00:02:12]>> You got it.

[00:02:14]>> Yeah.

[00:02:17]>> So, let's see. I'm going to >> It's from the middle of it.

[00:02:26]>> [music] >> How do you [music] [music] [music] Heat.

[00:02:55][music] [music] Heat.

[00:03:09][music] Heat. Heat.

[00:03:19][music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:03:38][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:04:12][music] >> [music] >> Maybe that's enough.

[00:04:32]>> Mhm.

[00:04:35]>> Do you know this >> you're muted?

[00:04:40]>> I felt like I heard a little soua in there as a marching kind of band um in there.

[00:04:49]>> It's a centennial march that uh Vagner composed for the 100 years centennial of the American Revolution of the Independence Day 1876.

[00:05:00]It was committed by the um commissioned by the Centennial Women's Committee or something like this. It was the opening uh the music for the opening celebration of the festives in Philadelphia in 1876.

[00:05:18]The same year that also Vagner opened his uh broid festival the first year which is also of course this year 150 years celebrated in Germany.

[00:05:31]Uh more than the American Revolution is celebrated here of course.

[00:05:36]>> Of course. Yeah, I wouldn't expect that the American Revolution is celebrated at all.

[00:05:43]>> Vagner did. Vagner did. And that might be the first surprise. Uh >> right.

[00:05:49]>> Right. Well, maybe a little less surprising considering when he he wrote that the American Revolution was more uh it was understood as having a global import in the 19th century, I think.

[00:06:06]>> Yes. It wasn't considered as imperialist, but let's say in today's terms as anti-imperialist.

[00:06:13]>> Right. [laughter] Right.

[00:06:15]>> As an emancipation from uh suppression.

[00:06:19]>> Mhm.

[00:06:20]>> And also slave them. And um today it seems to be considered the opposite.

[00:06:27]Well, also Vagner seems to be considered the opposite though.

[00:06:32]>> Yeah. when we prepared when we when we spoke about you coming on we are thinking about um because nowadays in Germany I don't know like you can speak more duck to how Vakna is perceived in America if at all or if he's just like a distant weird European um remainder but um in Germany Vagnner is very much uh perceived as a Nazi and as a proto like a proto antise-semite and a conservative artist who was embraced by by the national socialists and not as an expression of uh a bajgeois revolutionary sentiment.

[00:07:31]Right. So, what what would you say, Doug, to how it's perceived in America?

[00:07:38]And maybe Jim, you can then uh reply or try attempt to reply to the conservatism of Vakna.

[00:07:48]>> Well, in I used to I worked for the Oregon Symphony in the ticket office for for 20 years. Um, and so I know that there is an American audience for classical music and people who appreciate Vagner. But even amongst symphony goers, I think Vagner is understood first through uh like Apocalypse Now, the film Apocalypse Now.

[00:08:18]Um, and the ride of the Valkyries being performed while their n like blowing up a village. Um uh I I uh the other reference to Vagner that I recall from the movies is um uh Woody Allen is in it's in the movie Annie Hall and Woody Allen's walking down the street with his friend Max and he says uh I went to the music store and I I asked uh and and the guy behind the counter said that they had a a discount on Vagner. The anti-semitism in this in even in New York City is rampant. Vagner Max Vagner and he says you're you're paranoid but um so uh yeah the Vagner uh is certainly it's one of those he's a composer where to perform his music certain in especially in certain contexts is controversial and and sus people suspect some sort of [snorts] anti-semitic or right-wing agenda. Just when you perform Vagner, I think it took a long time before Israel that Vagner was performed in Israel. Um, and it I think it was in this century that he that he was performed there for the first time since the war. Um, so, uh, yeah, I I for me, I like listening to Vagner, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm being uplifted, but it's like I like listening to Vagner and I'll play Grand Theft Auto, you know, [laughter] the sort of regressive uh maybe overly masculine kind of uh part of my personality. [snorts] But so, what do you want to say to that?

[00:10:07]>> That's all very very interesting. I mean I can I can that gives many points to start with >> um many perspectives to start with.

[00:10:16]Let's say the first one is Vagner was an anti-semite. Like sometimes there is um discussion like was he really an anti-semite? Did he mean it and stuff like this like first point is yes he was an anti-semite. There's no question about this. uh he even was um a proto national socialism anti-semite in the way that his pamphlet on Judaism in music was really the first um um pamphlet that uh had a theory an anti-semitic theory that was not based on religion not based on uh religious dis dispute like the Jews killed Jesus or stuff like this or like theological difference but really race difference they like he um um conceptualized the Jewish people as the auntie people and the German people as the as the real people. Interestingly enough, uh in a way that is very also very specific and let's say typical um because what both um unites the Jewish and the German people in in his in his uh construction is that they have no uh specific um uh people's character. They have no specific national character. Like let's say the Spain, they have like romance in their blood. The French, they are fine and delicate. The Italians uh like enjoying stuff like this kind of cliches. And he says the Germans and the Jews both have don't have this. They both have no uh uh uh substantial national character. And this makes them um uh anti- each other and gives a a spe a specific potential which is this potential of universality like Vagner is looking let's say a bit like Marx uh in the proletariat for a particular group a particular people that can on the earth represent universal humanity. the the particular the particularity that can represent uh the universal humanity. A bit like the proletariat, the class that by realizing and dissolving itself can rep can constitute humanity as a nonparated non um conflicted uh um subject.

[00:12:46]uh and now he con and he was also before 1848 um he used also uh Judaism as a metaphor for this idea like the Jewish people fleeing the slaveholder society of Egypt into the desert and in the desert there's not nothing and they are there the poor workers like of society in the dirty desert to then come to the promised land and um uh emancipate uh whole humanity like this was before 1848 also Va's vision and this kind of changed after uh 1848 uh onto the Jews because they have no national character they um do mimicry and kind of absorb other uh um um national characters to imitate them and then to suck suck all the all the energy and the blood from these >> uh nations also So his terminology while the Germans then he has a like uh um a poetic picture. They sit on their castle around the uh campfire um and they have no own character. They have no own experience but they go to all the other countries make experience come back to the campfire and tell the stories of the other people but in the universal German language. And this is kind of how uh like but this is like a real like a bit metaphysical um transcendent and um race-based um distinction between really the the the universal people and the anti- people and this is this has also organizal like line to Hitler personally >> there are from Vagner on from this pamphlet and on the basis of this pamphlet They start like um in the 1870s and '90s from then on anti-semitic societies all over the world internationally but especially Germany, England. Um that also start anti-semitic parties. They call themselves like the anti-semitic party. Um it's an intellectual movement based on Vagner really that uh uh is the proto ideology like also transforms organizatorally into the uh national socialist uh organizations and ideology. So he's an anti I want to I want to say something Rudy if I can. when you when you described Vagner's view of the Jews [snorts] as vampiric and anti- people uh who uh go to other uh succulent, you know, peoples filled with lifeblood and suck them dry and and steal their culture through mimicry.

[00:15:40]Um I thought, "Oh, well that's how uh Europeans see Americans. You know, we have nothing here. We're brutal, uncultured, anti- people who just exploit Europe and the rest of the world imp through American empire and steal their culture and steal their resources and so forth. But then you you you told the same story but with just a twist about the German people. So being an anti-person and being a universal person are kind of the same thing. So I I I wonder uh was Vagner aware of how close that he was drawing, how thin a line he was drawing between the Germans and the Jews in his own imagination.

[00:16:25]Uh there's a lot also to that like he was a fan of America because of this.

[00:16:31]>> Mhm. Um his whole musical history construction is around Beethoven and him being the step after Beethoven. And Beethoven he describes as Columbus as the one coming from the old world burdened with all the traditions and all the regressions of centuries of European aristocratic culture.

[00:16:54]Uh finding uh the new land. With the Jews we had the promised land. with Columbus, the new land that is that is just a world of open creation like where there's no cultural burdens but the space to create and also this is of course something that Europeans would say a lot about Americans that they have no um genuine culture but they're a mix of uh which also makes them also for Vagner um um a revolutionary a potentially revolutionary people that he also thought shortly before his death to move to America because he also felt that his reactionary turn like with the German Reich that was founded like uh in the time of the Paris Commune and the Franco Prussian War uh 1871 um he was he was disappointed with uh this let's say conservative national project um and wanted even thought about moving to to the states. And so he changed in his ideas uh about this and especially what you ask about this thin line.

[00:18:05]This thin line in Vagner is really the revolution of 1848 like until 1848 until the failure of the revolution of 1848.

[00:18:15]He writes revolutionary pamphlets such as art and revolution. His uh like most famous revolutionary pamphlet, the artwork of the future. The the the letter they are all like written 48 49.

[00:18:31]The letter finishes with this image of the artist is like the Jew coming from the slave house of Egypt into the desert being the being the dirt of society now.

[00:18:44]but they will be the foundation of the new society like the Jews are. And so it's a real identification immediate identification with uh the Jewish people even as himself uh being kind of the Moses of that. Um and he has a total cosmopolitan ideology like he believes in cosmopolitan radical bourgeoa revolution even socialist. He uses the term communism a lot. Um his whole vision of the artwork of the future and the gazant is um is uh liberal radical anarchic communist let's say you like like um radical bourgeoa thought. He he read Hegel Foyabach was friends with Bakunin. Um and he fought on the in 1848 in Diston. He fought on the barricades against the Prusian troops for the revolution.

[00:19:48]>> Was and and was then um um searched by the police uh for years. he had to flee for years uh and live in the underground because of because he was like active revolutionary and really with the failure of the revolution and this is for example something that um uh in musiccology is is not at all um known or like registered that it's really the revolution is this thin line the failure of the revolution precisely that then this um cosmopolitan liber liberal anti-state uh um he is a real anti-stater like he says everything that is rotten in our society comes from the state everything that is healthy comes from the people and their relations um >> uh >> how did how did his um political theory inform his musical theory or how did how did he see what he was doing as a composer is aligned with this this political revolutionary spirit that then went I guess kind of went wrong turned anti-semitic um how explain that to me how should I understand Vagner as a musician as a composer >> let's say first of all um it's it's like I I think as a general um category it is the um transfigur eration or even liquidation of all the borders of all formal borders. Let's say it's it's a working through and working within the borders between everything in the art.

[00:21:34]Uh and to make it more concrete, let's say between the arts there there seem to be formal separations of the art especially within opera. You have the stage, you have the music, you have the text and they are all um in the way that Vagner conceives their production um reified and separated from each other as artistic crafts or um as their like relation. That's we can also think about um how film um does in a very reified way use the difference of the arts like e either in imitation or um highlighting but there's no like let's say critical relation between the art forms uh within film anymore or mostly like in the um and Vagner is the first one already in 48 to talk about opera industry >> you know The term of culture culture industry it was a it was a provocation of Hoka Madono when they said culture is actually an industry it's industrial capitalism also culture is not the other thing there's not industry and then there's art and culture but it's culture industry it was a provocation but a provocation that vagna already did 100 years before talking about the which is of course 1848 >> the time of the of capitalism when capitalism becomes a conscious a political phenomenon that um appears on the stage of history and also then in the arts and vag reflecting this within the arts and this is then in two ways like as I said um trying to mediate all formal um borders boundaries between the arts but also within the arts like there would be a lot to talk about but let's say in opera there um was developed um through the last 50 to 100 year more than 100 years uh before Vagnner as kind of scheme that is between action and reflection or it says Pacio in Latin Pacio the passion and the action one is active one is passive >> aio is the is the um the action that happens so there's a specific style in opera to to um bring forward the action which is the reitativo the recitative. It's a form of singing that is not about the music but about telling the story.

[00:24:15]>> So it's very close to language uh not uh uh no like big lines or something but very close to language and very um gentle accompaniment.

[00:24:28]And then there's like the the story is told the Romans uh uh dear lord the Romans came they attacked us um your wife the the the princess was caught by them. Um what should we do? Okay this is the action part and then comes the passion part which is the avia which is there's no action anymore. Then the king uh uh who was told uh uh this says, "Oh, I'm suffering. I'm suffering.

[00:24:58]My heart is so my heart is so heavy. My heart is so heavy. I love my daughter. I love my daughter. I love my daughter. I love my daughter. Nothing happens. Time stands still." Like this is let's say even theory and practice are separated in in opera. Vagner is for example famous for bringing together a we don't have the schemes anymore. But this then counts on every level like on the level of stage, text, music and also within the music of course harmony like the the liquidation of tonal harmony is a process that Vagner um very fundamentally starts.

[00:25:35]the um if I may jump in the theativo aio um separation seems to me when I listen to you very renaiss uh renaissance enlightenment in the sense that it's repeating the form of antique theater right where you have have choir and actor and it's only this call and response uh interplay but never that they can develop um uh a less formalistic metabolism.

[00:26:17]Right? In a sense it is it is static and in that sense debt right which had still back then the allure of of um religious ritual which would supplant it but that in this um the period you're describing now the prevagna period uh this is very much repeated historically.

[00:26:46]Yes, very much like there are um also different sides to this. First opera was started uh around 1600 um with the aim to uh for a revival a renaissance of the Greek tragedy.

[00:27:05]Um and Vagner and this is what nature like the birth of tragedy uh from the spirit of music. call it the birth of tragedy uh his book which is about Vagner um um where he's saying like this is the real rebirth um of the tragedy what but which is a complete transformation of the um uh Greek tragedy of course it's not a step back but step there and to make it very short how Vagner conceptualized this was also to um um the like the the most the hardest um boundary to transcend for bourgeoa art.

[00:27:50]So that means for art at all um is the separation of art and life.

[00:27:57]And this is what what um is the is the uh mark of the Greek tragedy that it was either part of life or at least um the real the true expression of the life of the Greek people of the polish. Um and Vagner like of course like all of them in this time um adored the Greeks and uh wanted to be or like it was the ideal society from the Greeks on it's a history of regression um from Socrates on history of regression that is what in a way all of them thought like Schiller also Hegel in a way that there's a regression from the ideal but also in within this regression regression a new potential like there's after um after praising the Greeks Markner uh uh makes a turn in his text and says like but do we want to become Greeks again?

[00:28:58]No, we cannot and most of all we do not want to. Why? Because um the Greek freedom was a limited freedom because it was nationally limited. It was the uh it was the freedom of just one people.

[00:29:15]Today we have uh worldwide international social relations. We can now free the whole world, humanity as a universal subject, not as a nationally limited subject. First and second, the Greek freedom was based on slave labor.

[00:29:34]Um they could be free because they had slaves to do all the stuff.

[00:29:39]um what is today? He says what is the what is the development from Greeks to us? It's not the the freedom the that the slave became free. This is not the history from the Greeks to us but it's the universal universal slave. We all became slaves now. There's no one free anymore. This is the situation 1848.

[00:30:01]Um we didn't become freer but everyone is now a slave. But >> whom are we slaves to is Vagner asking and he's saying to the machines.

[00:30:13]>> Mhm.

[00:30:13]>> So all we have to do is make the machines our slaves like the Greeks made slaves their slaves.

[00:30:21]>> Mhm.

[00:30:21]>> Instead of us being the slaves of the machines. And then if that's the case, then the machine does every necessary labor, everything that we don't want to do. And then what humans do is just what they want to do. And this Vagner understands as the possibility that everyone is engaged in free creative designing, creation, working of the world, shaping the world out of freedom.

[00:30:50]And this means for him aesthetical labor. And then he says the the sentence that is also that is attributed or that also uh Ysef Boyce said, everybody is an artist. Vagner says it also 1848. And then if the machines do the labor and we just create out of freedom not about out out of need and necessity then everyone will be an artist and the artwork that they produce will be the society and the society will be the artist and the artwork and this is what Vagnner calls the total work of art. The gazam like if people today say gazam total work of art it is text scene or stage and music. No this is opera or everything else. But actually the term gazam vagner uses for this social uh ideal where everyone where society itself becomes an artist because it's produced out of free creation and aesthetical uh sentiment because which is a like dealing with the machine you know which is just possible because >> there are the machines to do everything.

[00:32:01]>> I [snorts] think I have a lot >> I want to can I jump in real briefly? I just want to point out that the background that we're our pictures are on is a a work of art from the situationist journal, the international situationist journal. Um and it's a cut up. Yeah.

[00:32:21]Yeah. See the arrows and everything.

[00:32:23][snorts] And um and the situationists with Gabaorg uh aimed at overcoming the uh the necessity for labor, aimed at this exact kind of emancipation, wanted to erase the boundaries between art and life and and art and politics. Um, so and when I started uh the podcast Diet Soap, which is what you're on, actually be the very original uh story of uh of the podcast was that it wasn't a podcast, it was a Zen in the 90s.

[00:33:06]And one of the very first issues of the Zen had a a collage I'd made uh and it was titled art versus life.

[00:33:18]And um I had taken up from the situationists and from people like Alan Watts then this the need to overcome the artificial distinction between art and life and to make your life into a kind of artwork. Um, and I had no at no point in all of my life at 55 years did I think that I was repeating the ideology of Vagner. So I am I am um a little chagrined and I also have Adorno in the back of my head uh saying you know actually the what makes art great under modernity is that it is alienated from life is that it is is not identical um with the social relations because the social relations are in contradiction to themselves and art might be in contradiction to itself but in a different way and that's why it's free um or has the potential to be So anyway, I just wanted to tell that little autobiographical detail or story >> very very much like the the uh uh PhD that I'm working on now is actually about this. It's about how Fluxus and 60s and 70s avanguards in music especially but for for example the Fluxus movement is kind of a unconscious mostly unconscious um taking up of that task which what you said before about Adono I think is a kind of necessary task in modernity like the constitutional element of art in modernity is the separation which makes it free But which makes it also unfree because the the the um deal to be free is to not change the world for the art you know to be outside of of of the real practical relations of the world of changing it that's it can be free as long as it doesn't change the world as long as soon as it changes the world it's um >> it's not art anymore >> and has a >> has the idea of overcoming art or the overcoming the necessity of art, which means overcoming a sphere of freedom separated from the freedom of society.

[00:35:32]I I'm going to hold up my book, After the Saucers Landed. The protagonist in this book, or one of them, is a a Fluxist artist. Um, Fluxus is a major component of my book about aliens. Um, and this desire to uh create art out of out of contemporary life to and to escape the commodification of art to to because today under conditions of capitalism, the way to change the world is to create a commodity that becomes necessary for production and alters social relations and technological relations and economic relations. So you can change a world by creating Facebook, right? But Fluxus didn't and and actually you could change the world to a degree or at least participate in it by creating a masterpiece that you know is uh a store of value for financial people like you know participate in the art market and they wanted to break from that. Um so the problem for contemporary artists under capitalism according to the fluxist artists was that they they the world dominated uh our subjectivity and our our lives in such a way that to participate in it by creating art um meant that you couldn't be free. that the society the social relations weren't free and the only avenues towards for success as an artist would condemn you to reproducing that the unfreedom. So maybe there's one one aspect to this also in Vagner's personal >> Mhm.

[00:37:21]>> because he had to deal with it too.

[00:37:23]>> He wanted he he said stuff like um only free people can understand my art. it doesn't make any sense for me to write art now. Uh um it can be only understood but thus really also only produced after the revolution.

[00:37:41]Um but still like this was one attitude of him still and it was like about destroying the opera and uh uh his starting point as I said uh um his starting point was the death of opera.

[00:37:55]This was the starting point of Vagner's thinking about uh music. Um so he conceived what he did not as opera but still what we know about Vagner is that he composed operas you know like he's played in operas all of his works beside this centennial march for the uh uh American revolution but beside of this single work and very little few few others his work is operas um and that also means it changed like um uh it maybe they became opera for us because the overcoming of opera failed like also the fluxus project failed uh in a way but Vagner um for example there are letters where he to his friend list very famous virtuosic pianist in the 19th century he was like the the door opener for every everything like uh Paris opera and in all Europe he wrote about his um ring of of the nibbleong He said if I don't if I will not be able no if I will be able to finish this work in my lifetime I will put a little stage in a meadow in the woods have one performance of the four parts of it with picked musicians no money involved little wooden stage and in the end the gut dear room the twilight of the gods I will just burn the burn the stage and burn the score and that's it because he thought and and then he wrote to list if I can't make it I will send the score to you before I die you finish it you burn it and if you can't make it then you just burn it then we just burn the score like this is this work is enshrined it's the evergreen of every opera house you know it's the the reified enshrined um um entity uh uh possession of the commodity of the opera holders since 150 years.

[00:40:06]>> Vagner thought it should be something that is an expression of a historical moment that is a transition into a next historical moment and make space for the next. But this says a lot about 150 years of reification of art. Let's say >> I would I would suggest if you have anything prepared that's good to play now, Jim, that we take a look or take a listen rather.

[00:40:35]>> Mhm.

[00:40:37]>> Um, let me see what we could do.

[00:40:46]I just while you're looking I'm going to say to fill the air um >> that it seems to me that Vagner is you you should keep looking though. Uh >> I I have I got something so you >> okay I'll just make this point then.

[00:40:59]Yeah. um that Vagner uh is a uh should be taken up as a a problem for today's left and for artists today um rather than merely condemned as an anti-semite or thought of as a failure that his failure uh you know is not the failure of his idiosyncrasies or his individual character but it's a historical failure that we have to tackle and and understand.

[00:41:34]>> And I would add with having heard uh everyone listening to this after the fact after we have recorded this to try to examine if anything changed after having gotten all that input from from us about Vakna.

[00:41:57]I'm not sure if I got what you said, but I think you addressed also the audience more than we.

[00:42:01]>> Yeah, the does the audience change have their understanding of Vagner changed and and how do you hear the music after listening to this is maybe the way to to ask the question.

[00:42:13]>> Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:42:15]>> So go ahead, Jim. But >> no, I I say a little word before. It's actually mostly not good to talk before music because one should just listen but also that we have just very little um bits I would say word. Um it's now about a bit like he stages the relation of the let's say formally schematic opera that that he deals with as an object of his like musical critique and the form of uh opera with let's say just to make it uh short many dissonances and u um an overcoming of given forms.

[00:42:58]Um he calls it and will develop in later operas more the um infinite melody also have to do with this area um vegetativo thing. It's not this anymore but it's a infinite melody. It's from the overur of Tanhoer which is a pre-1848 um opera. So when he was let's say still a revolutionary also in his conscious mind not just in his musical composition. And it's just a little um excerpt from the overure from the um for the prelute of the uh Tan Hoiser is the opera. And um just to give a little um word about the opera, it's about an artist. Tanoa is an artist that is kind of a social outcast because he came into contact with sex.

[00:43:53]Mhm.

[00:43:53]>> And you see now the like the representation of both the artistic the the the the trying to find artistic form and the emancipation of the of the sexual and uh I just ask you to like listen maybe a bit to this uh two aspects of the music and also you will see it because it's staged very much also in this direction you see.

[00:44:20]>> Mhm.

[00:44:21]>> Okay. Play.

[00:44:24][music] [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:45:01][music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:45:28][music] Heat. Heat.

[00:45:35][music] [music] Heat.

[00:46:02][music] [music] Heat.

[00:46:17][music] Heat.

[00:46:23][music] [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat.

[00:47:21]Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat.

[00:47:45][music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:48:12]Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [snorts] >> I'm really tempted to share something with you that would be irreverent for me to share after that. Do Do I get Do I have permission to do this?

[00:49:50]>> Yeah, of course, Doug.

[00:49:51]>> Okay. All right.

[00:49:54]Let's see if I can >> Sorry, Jim. I think you're muted.

[00:50:00]>> Right. Yes. I just said I vote for Duck Sharing something.

[00:50:10]That's it. [music] [music] Oh, you're so far away.

[00:50:33]Yes, I know it. I can't help it.

[00:50:38]>> Up one [singing] be my love.

[00:50:45][music] Yeah, very nice.

[00:51:02]>> [laughter] >> Yes.

[00:51:06]>> So just a little bit of that.

[00:51:08]>> It comes in the right context always marker in the [laughter] pop culture like both the the um uh uh Vietnam village uh burning down burning down a Vietnam village or this LSD love >> big horse uh thing.

[00:51:29]>> Yeah. And of course that's Bugs Bunny >> and dressed in drag.

[00:51:35]>> Yes. [laughter] Yes. Yes. Yes. It's totally drag. And also there's stories about Vagner being a crossdresser.

[00:51:42]>> Um and like a sexual like uh living in se sexual libertina.

[00:51:50]Um yes and also the the let's say a bit LSD uh notion. And it's also crossing of course the different operas like Hilda and Se that is there is um uh from the ring cycle while the music was from the tunneler that I >> showed you before.

[00:52:11]>> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Right.

[00:52:13]Right. Yeah. And I would have never have known that watching that as a kid. You know that there was a mixing of of operas there. But um Yeah. So, what do you think Vagner would think of the Bugs Bunny version of his work?

[00:52:31]>> Yes, as I said, I think that I mean there's of course uh if he talked about opera industry, he would be also a critic of culture industry and um the way that is um probably betraying uh the idea of creative music for example by copying him. It's already a betrayal of him that he's being copied.

[00:52:55]>> It's we are new children. We should make new music.

[00:52:59]>> Um >> uh maybe also a betrayal of the idea of love in making fun of it. I don't know how serious this love is there.

[00:53:09]>> Um [laughter] yes. But on the other hand um yes let's say the the crossdressing the comic as a as a you also know all this Disney fantasia which is a very good example of the um very creative use of an approach to classical music which already became classical of course in this time >> like for Vagner music was not classical music it was just music [laughter] you know or even it might be he might have considered of music of the future, >> not of classical music, but of course it became classical music which is a >> category of culture industry >> but let's say the fantasia is an interesting approach to bring something new out of it. Um we can also maybe show something of it and probably >> sure yeah people people might know it.

[00:54:08]Did I don't know who said about like in his uh I don't know his essay on mass television that he said uh the problem with cartoons is that they have to um get dominated and they have to relate back to the usual the usual order um of of society and they cannot roam completely free.

[00:54:33]Right? So the problem with the with the Bunny clip is rather that it's um it remains in the joke. It remains separated and relegated into the joke and does not transcend into Bunny wants to trick the hunter guy.

[00:54:53]>> Mhm.

[00:54:54]>> But they actually fall in love, right?

[00:54:56]And that there's a transcending moment of of life.

[00:55:03]Here's here's this. I think this is from Fantasia.

[00:55:11][music] >> [bell] [music] [music] [bell] >> I'm not sure, but I don't think it's fantastic. Fantasia.

[00:56:12]>> Okay.

[00:56:16]>> I I I just >> it on YouTube like this. It's a very also trippy, right? Trippy cartoon on classical m trippy cartoons on classical music.

[00:56:26]>> Yeah. I'm not I I typed in um Fantasia Vagner and I didn't >> I think there's no Vagner in in Fantasia. No real. Um >> Oh, okay.

[00:56:38]>> They don't have a Vagner.

[00:56:39]>> Yeah. Uh but it's just also the classical music becoming this token or also seeing a potential in the visualization of absolute music like music without text and scene.

[00:56:53]>> Right.

[00:56:59]Do you want to show Okay. So here here's some from from Fantasia. Here we go.

[00:57:27]>> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:57:32]Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:58:01][music] [music] [music] Fire.

[00:58:31][music] >> [music] >> It's also very symptomatic that um they use this kind of music like this is also second half 19th century classical music and actually this is the whole repertoire we have in opera. houses and the concert like symphony concerts >> it's really u mostly from Mozart there's Mozart Beethoven but then there's a lot of all the romantics and this is really a a place um where the history of music kind of got stuck and the point is really vagner like the the point where it got frozen is the question of music and capitalism before Vagner there was like in the n in the 1830s it started that uh uh pieces were repeated at all like um there's a very very famous occasion that Felix Mendelson Bati uh uh made a Bach um performance he organized a Bach performance where very famous people were in the audience even heel uh um uh was in the audience and I and other famous ones you can you can look it up and it is the first time in a way that the history of music asks for its own history in this in this way making this repetition and from then it starts to be the canon uh becomes a thing or the separation between new music and classical music. Before it was everything was new music. And now we are kind of frozen in the period of um the possibility of overcoming music and capitalism or consciously dealing with capitalism in music. And we are still on this point. The repertoire is today the same like uh 1890 or 1920.

[01:00:54]And it becomes a bit it becomes a bit like uh uh narrower. It doesn't widen as you might think like the repertoire widens. It becomes narrower and narrower.

[01:01:04]>> Um it didn't kind of change but becoming narrower in the last 100 years.

[01:01:12]Do you think there is an um analogy between uh Vagna's political change after 1848 and the this impossibility of music and capitalism?

[01:01:35]Is there an interplay between the two >> very >> or does Yeah.

[01:01:42]>> Um let's say it's it's very like actually um Vagner's uh theory about it. How would this situation uh uh come to place that um society becomes the aesthetic creator of its own of itself as a subject object let's say say of its own uh pro process um vagner things through free associations of singers artists musicians uh tala so it's very very close to also this the project of the social democratic party um the socialist party in the 19th century and let's say the fate of music and the question of um the relation of music and life is um very much bound to this political project and also Vagner's art and revolution it was kind of the program of the social democratic party until the 1930s um >> uh um Claratin they all refer in their polit in their cultural conceptions they refer to Vagner art and revolution. It was kind of the manifesto communist manifesto for politics art and revolution for arts. Um >> yeah, >> thank you very much.

[01:03:13]>> Yes.

[01:03:16]Okay. Um, I have uh something I want to I want to ask about um the canon uh because it does seem to me it just strikes me as obvious that it's useful to have a body of work that musicians would be trained in and that pe and even just people uh in a in you know citizens in a society would be familiar with in order to have a common reference point to to for the development. of new music perhaps.

[01:03:48]Um so I wonder if if the if there if there really wasn't any canon uh before the 19th century. Um uh it certainly did seem to me does seem to me at least a story I tell myself that I've been told is that you know Beethoven would refer back uh was familiar with Bach you know uh um so I I wonder what it is about the canon that's um restrictive today that it wouldn't might not have been before.

[01:04:22]And then the other question I have just so why don't we just ask I'll ask that question and I want to have a followup that's completely off to the side of that. So what do you think Jim?

[01:04:33]>> Um I make it short but I think of course there was a a cannon uh um of um learning tradition and all of this beeth would consider of course Bach a master but there wouldn't be a performance of the uh Matthew passion. There wouldn't be a choir and an orchestra that would play this. he would have the score maybe which was also hard like it also starts in the 19th century of course with the um development of um like scholarship that there was something developing like musiccology by passionate lovers of music that would try to find old scores by Bach would try to make them possible arrange them for modern instruments and stuff like this like it was a it was also with the development ment of the bourgeoa separation let's say of the of the sciences or of the um uh different disciplines of of research >> um and it was of course yes it was known it was studied they saw themselves in a tradition of like teacher being teachers and scholars of each other maybe also without knowing each other of course but >> uh um continuing their projects in a way and this also started especially in the 18th century when there was a discourse between schools in music. It started then that the Italian versus the French school and stuff like this and >> uh fought within a public criticism not like monks discussing what is the the theory of music that is most adequate to God. but newspapers that would sell um a lot of uh uh newspapers because there was the new discussion of the new piece in the in Laara the Paris like was involved in this a lot >> um in in this kind of public discourse and fight among camps in music. So um there was a very productive way of course and the canon also today is a is a productive form I would say or a necessary weight of relating to the tradition but of course let's say if we think canon we also should think probably va mean it's of course a cannon of domination still >> yes maybe we we could we could formulate it as like that the cannon um became positivistic >> right >> first this and Second, it is let's say at least an expression of an uh problem not worked through that let's say just audiences opera audiences today.

[01:07:13]>> Mhm. Like most people today would just say I don't get classical music and probably they are right because it does not express anything of their life or maybe it even expresses more of their life because it's still bour society and capitalism and the questions still but let's say there is a there is a alienation of the masses from classical music. But the people that would listen to classical music like most of the of the uh high culture music audiences they would say I don't understand new music I don't understand contemporary music it's strange it sounds it's like experimental music they would say they don't understand which is the actual music of their time um but and Adorno would for sure say no no no what they don't understand is the isholden like they enjoy because they enjoy Beethoven they for sure don't understand it.

[01:08:10]But at the same time you could also say make the point that maybe in loving Vagner in this reified way by the bourgeoa audiences of the present um maybe they are right that they want to remember or are nostalgic about a point in music history where there was a vision of the future of music. Maybe their conservatism is actually um um utopian. Could also be let's say that maybe it's an subconscious way of sticking to the possibility of overcoming refi music by going back to the point where it actually seemed possible for someone like Vagner um to overcome this opera industry or concert industry. But then it would the danger is sorry D last point I know you you want to jump in but but maybe then when we go when we speculate about this maybe that that is an aspect of the um misrecognition between Jew Jewish characteristics Jewish universality and German universality >> in which sense um >> that um how you how you relate to the to the crisis that you're facing that in a that in a sense you you um you redirect your longing into into the past, right? Because the the the Germanic people around the bonfires, right? That is an ideal of the past much less so than the the um the Jewish tribes right like the Jewish universality we're strewn about we are the modern people because we are the negation and in the same sense it would be a repetition of Vagna's politics to be like okay so now we have to hold on to Vagna and Vagnner's truth and thereby possibly losing it. Although the the the impetus, the desire to to conserve it is justified.

[01:10:33]I want to just throw something onto the screen and let you react to it. And I I consider this to be classical music, relatively contemporary from the 70s, I think it was, maybe early 80s.

[01:10:46][music] >> [music] >> What did you think of that, Jim?

[01:11:04]>> Oh, you're you're muted somehow.

[01:11:07]>> I think it's for sure kit.

[01:11:09]>> Yeah, [laughter] >> whatever it is. Because you asked if it's classical music or not. And this I cannot say for sure if it is or not. Um there's a lot of stuff in it. There's I think this folk tune. Then there's this minimalist repetitive >> right >> um thing. Then is like from let's say pop music also uh the drum set, the syncop syncopic beat and the four bar four four uh rhythm.

[01:11:39]Um, so there's a lot in it. Then there's all this uh um scenery that is like they are in a circle. Why are they in a circle? It what is a circle in music?

[01:11:49]It's it it suggests that there's not people presenting to others but just playing with each other.

[01:11:57]>> They are the totality of people. It's not the separation of the audience listening, receiving the music and others expressing, but they are the totality of the people. Like this is the ritualistic character that was in premodern music.

[01:12:12]>> Let's say in the in the church, >> the there was no one singing for someone. They were all singing and maybe the only receiver of the music was God.

[01:12:23]>> Yeah. Okay.

[01:12:24]>> Was also the substance of the music. But but they're filmed.

[01:12:31]The ritual is captured on film.

[01:12:32]>> This is why I say it's not a ritual but k. [laughter] >> Right. Right. We all get >> we're all invited to be part of the the little circle and we get the views with from within it and we get to be get the experience of producing the this repetition. And what I what I I mean I actually I it's maybe kit, but I I listen to this all the time. It's called the >> Yeah. Yeah. And um >> the nice thing about kit is that it's nice. [laughter] >> Yeah. But it is it it's stuck. This is a piece that's completely stuck. It doesn't go anywhere. Right.

[01:13:13]>> Um it doesn't develop. Um it just enjoys its own repetition.

[01:13:19]>> Yes. Yes. Actually, it made me um I had a weird moment where it made me sad because I noticed like in all our listening experiences in this conversation that I'm annoyed by the bandwidth >> of the upload.

[01:13:37]>> Yes.

[01:13:38]>> That I can never never never get the fullness of of the music and I long for like people actually in an acoustic space playing it for me and not this flattened. So the first thing that I today always experienced was the the strangledness of the music and the tightness.

[01:14:02]Um, and here, weirdly enough, here it came to its conclusion when the the music and even the the image when the credits wrote was relegated to the back and it was this weird TV um like TV ritual, right, where it was like, "Oh, the credits are rolling now.

[01:14:26]This is the end."

[01:14:27]>> Mhm. And that acc accentuated the flatness of it and the minimalism of it to such a degree that I um I I got really sad uh looking at it.

[01:14:44]>> Okay. [laughter] Not the reaction I that I had to it but but uh I can understand it. What do you what do you think of minimalism, Jim? Of like Phil someone like Philip Glass. Is that a is he a kit artist as well?

[01:15:01]>> I would say like let's say just in the in the embracement of the repetition.

[01:15:07]>> Mhm. But uh making the repetition about um let's say an ontological dive into the music that after so many repetitions you get like really into it >> as if there's something >> that you that is not in the notes but in the eternal repetition of the notes.

[01:15:28]Let's say in this um I think there's a there's a um a very like let's say even high degarian um um I I let's say I I would say I missed the break but of course there's also a reification of the like the the cut the uh destructive moment um and but of course there's also a reification of the destructive element in music very much. So it's it could can also not be a positive principle or um something but it's a hard one. Let's say that um it's I think I like um it's it's there is no principle about um what is new in music or how how to avoid being kit or repetition.

[01:16:20]>> Yeah.

[01:16:21]>> I mean I have a bit of an example but it's I think it goes a bit too far. um or we can make maybe another uh session about it. But um the the new music of course is a whole field um of of this question uh of music and life, art and life um and the inner uh uh musical questions. I mean this the question of repetition is actually of of course an inner musical form. I wanted Yeah. I wanted to I just thought about when you spoke about the repetition, right? That there and in this onto ontological exploration, but there's an absence and it's even in this piece for a found harmonica that you showed, Doug.

[01:17:11]>> Harmonium.

[01:17:12]>> Harmonium. There's a there's a weird absent there's an absence of uh libido of of interplay, right, of like overflowing.

[01:17:25]I get an echo back that I didn't see coming and it's it's swelling and and uh drawing back again.

[01:17:34]Um that's that's it's a very um closed off or like fenced off form of life.

[01:17:47]Everything has its proper place >> in the beat, right?

[01:17:52]>> Mhm. Mhm.

[01:17:54]>> I mean, we can What What are you up to?

[01:17:56]Um I I would have a very good wrap-up, let's say.

[01:18:00]>> Okay. for what you just said Rudy and we can make u another uh time uh uh say we talk about I don't know specific operas the ring of the neolong or whatever pival that we we heard a bit um just as a response >> to the question of the swelling and the libido and the drive um to listen to the end of Tristan and Dolder which is the love death. Like this is >> insane love tried to be expressed in music. But the but the insaness of love, not the uh being happy and the harmonic couple, but um the necess necessity to overcome individuality >> that is one of the liidinous driving forces in love and I don't know if it works you know it's art very respected it's not life and and we are 150 years later maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's the same like the minimal repetition or maybe it's something else. But at least I see the categories that you brought um Hoody. Um I see them in the Let's take a listen.

[01:19:36]>> Okay.

[01:19:37]>> Yeah. While Jim is Jim is looking, Duck, how are you fairing with with the the crazy Europeans?

[01:19:48]>> Oh, up the libido.

[01:19:50]>> No, I'm fine. No, I uh I've been criticized for being um uh sex obsessed by audience members that I bring up sex all the time on, you know, on the podcast. So, um, >> so we have good working relations stuck if if I [laughter] do that instead.

[01:20:09]>> That's right.

[01:20:11]Here we go.

[01:20:12]>> You ready?

[01:20:13]>> Yep.

[01:20:28]Let's go.

[01:20:47][music] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:21:24]Thank you.

[01:21:27][music] Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat.

[01:21:59]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> I think that's a good place to to end it.

[01:23:08]Okay, we'll we'll end it there.

[01:23:13]Let's see here.

[01:23:16]Um I I'll end it and spoil it.

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[01:23:55][music]