The Fredösphere

I turned on the radio during the drive to work this morning.  I turned to WGTE out of Toledo.  They were playing a Stokowski transcription of music from act III of Parsifal.  In a moment, I was There.

I haven't been There in a long time.  Wagner used to be my favorite composer, but maturity (or simple overexposure) has cooled my passion for that kind of over-the-top emotionalism.  Sadly, I was also turned off by listening to a Ring Cycle lecture on CD delivered by Peter Allen, who was for many years the famous voice of the metropolitan opera broadcasts.  Allen loves Wagner opera and knows it well, and he has a voice I could gladly listen to all day.  Yet, in spite of his enthusiasm, the plain truth of The Ring leaked out:  it has a dumb plot .  Siegfried is an uninspiring hero.  His only two accomplishments -- slaying the dragon and scoring with the broad in the horned helmet -- are purely selfish acts.  The guy's got no community service in his resume.  Then comes the whole embarrassing business with the magic potion that makes him a helpless puppet.  The final unforgivable indignity happens during the whole shark scene where Wagner has Siegfried visiting Florida so he can go water skiing.  This is lame, people.

I think the best packaging of the Ring is a CD called The Ring Without Words.  Lorin Maazel condenses the entire cycle into one hour of purely orchestral music.  You know me; normally I would prefer to hear the voices, but in this case I think this trampling on the composer's intention is okay.  I am somewhat familiar with the motifs and their meanings, so I can let the drama play out in my head while the music is playing; I'm not sure how much someone without that information would enjoy this disc.

Back to Parsifal.  I've ignored the opera down through the years.  I mainly know of it from an organ transcription of the prelude by Anthony Newman.  So many people have been bored by the opera, I've been scared off.  Today's broadcast reminded me it occupies it's own unique emotional space.  It reminds me of a gorgeous choral piece, the Corpus Christi Carol by Trond Kverno (hear far too little of it here and read a version of the text here) which recaptures Parsifal's strange, heterodox ambiance, the music that most perfectly expresses Wagner's carnal spirituality of asexual eroticism.

Carnal spirituality of asexual eroticism.  If you understand what that means, please let me know.  Or better, don't let me know; rather, seek professional help.  Like Wagner's music, these words intoxicate me by their strange beauty, not their meaning.