Introduction

I don't think you will need to know anything about Wagner to understand and, even, enjoy this blog. I can promise you that it will be different than anything written before about Wagner and very contemporary in its focus and concerns, but historical in its perspective. 

While anyone is welcome to read it in whole or part, I am writing this in large part with the “I love Wagner’s music but I hate him” folks in mind.  To my mind that is a nonsensical statement.  Wagner’s music was a window to his soul, and he was completely conjoined to his music in a way unique to opera composers. At least I will spend a year trying to make that point. (This, by the way, is some of the dissonance resolution part of the blog’s subtitle.)

I first started thinking seriously about—and writing about —Wagner on a road trip to Seattle to see my first Ring Cycle in 2001. As I was driving, my mind was dribbling out random thoughts about him, which I jotted down as I went along.  (Okay, okay, I admit this probably isn't the safest way to write, but I kept my eyes on the road at all times, which made many of my scribblings near-illegible.) Since then, I have continued thinking—and safely writing—about Wagner on long trips. (You will, perhaps, be relieved to know that I fly way more than I drive on such journeys).

However, it was not on that sort of a trip that I fell in love with opera in general, and Wagner in specific. It was on LSD. My love affair with tripping and opera will take up some blog posts (and be focused on the ecstasy in the subtitle).

While I originally became enamoured with Wagner under the influence, the love remained when I came down. Various blog posts will be focused on his musical effects on me and countless others. (Yep, more ecstasy...)

When I first encountered Wagner's music, I knew nothing about him. I assumed that anyone who could write such profound and beautiful music had to reflect those traits personally in some way. Interested to find out about the man behind these works, I began reading. Boy, what a let down! "A monster"  "a dreadful human being"  "an impossible human being"  "arrogant, dishonest, jealous, hypocritical, racist, sexist and passionately anti-Semitic." Was Wagner as bad as all that?  (This is the other part of the dissonance to be resolved.) 

After much further reading and reflection (and tripping out on it), my answer is a resounding no. I will argue that one of the things that has been lost in history is an accurate sense of Wagner as a man—only a negative caricature remains. I will try to correct that problem in a series of posts. 

A large part of the reason I wanted to write this blog is to counter some of the extremely sloppy scholarship and gratuitous bashing that is ubiquitous.  Some bashing is just mindless repetition, while others really go after him in a systematic, but rarely fair, way.  I will take on a selected few of these “scholarly” critiques in some detail.  These particular posts may not be of interest to many people but I am driven to do this because they really piss me off. Hey, then I can post them on Amazon, too, and give them one of those 1 star reviews.

You just don't get credit for writing a fair and balanced book about Wagner. (By the way, I wrote that phrase “fair and balanced" way before obnoxious Fox claimed it, but hell if I am going to let them have sole claim to it.) Any book that attempts a reasonable perspective is immediately dismissed as an "an apology."  As if perspective isn't important!  Well, that is utter nonsense, which is why I feel forced to write a few posts just to establish some historical perspective.  I hope I will thus be able to show what a rotten deal Wagner has been given, particularly in the last several decades.

The last blog post of the year will bring it all together to reclaim and celebrate him as a full, and quite remarkable, human being.  I am, for one, very glad he was born 200 years ago.

Anyway, that is the plan.  How much I end up doing of it, who knows?  But I will give it my best. My plan is to try to write a post about once a week.  Next post up: there will be very little Wagner, but lots of Tripping

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End note

I am going to back-edit this whenever I feel like the need, usually without noting it unless I think the change is particularly significant.  The truth is that, while I have points I want to make to the ambivalent Wagner crowd, I am really writing this for me.  My aim is that the blog will be what I always wanted to read about Wagner but never found.  I’m just fantasizing about the time in 10 or 20 years when I reread it and I say, "Damn, I am glad someone said that!"  

Preface

Happy New Year's Day! And much more importantly to me, Happy Wagner's bicentennial year!

To celebrate this occasion, I am commencing, for one year only, my latest blog: Wagner Tripping. (More about the blog and the title—and subtitle—in the next blog, but tripping does mean that, among other things.)

Now this probably isn't of great moment for most people—either the bicentennial or my blog. Many people—in the United States, I would say the vast majority of people—have little knowledge about him and virtually no knowledge about his music (except for this and that exception, the latter aka kill the wabbit). In any case, these folks couldn't care less one way or the other. He's not their cup of tea, they presume (for some, certainly wrongly). Others are more aggressively hostile and would rather Wagner sank into the cesspool of history, usually with almost no real knowledge about Wagner or his music, which I find most irritating.

I love Wagner's music. He is certainly the musical love of my life, and that came as a thunderbolt to me. (Thanks, Donner.) But I am not in the “love the music, hate the man” camp. I actually like Wagner the man, warts and all. But how can I love someone often described as a monster? Well, that's one of the many reasons I want to write a blog, actually. There is no quick but meaningful response to that question, at least none that have come to my mind.

I have been planning to write about Wagner since 2001. Originally, I had thought about it as a book, but that was before blogging was a thing. Plus, it works better as a blog because of links to the actual music or other material. I had originally planned to start the book upon my retirement in 2007 and finish it in 2013 to coincide with the bicentennial of Wagner's birth. But life, and laziness, got in the way. You know, there was Obama's election in 2008, work on the Miramar house, the Hilo house, a lot of travel, helping a friend with a mental illness from 2010 on, the cancer in 2011 and so forth. I kept pushing it back and now here we are in 2013. So I decided to just put out what I could in a year and that would be that.

My intent in this blog is not to censor myself, much.  Christopher Hitches once wrote: "a serious person should try to write posthumously...one should compose as if the usual constraints—of fashion, commerce, self-censorship, public and, perhaps especially, intellectual opinion—did not operate."  That's my aim, as embarrassing as it going to be when I talk about sex and Wagner, and even though I feel quite ambivalent about revealing—hell, reveling in—felonious behavior.  But I will be.  Sorry, mom—and don't worry!

Now, I want to say at this point that I'm obviously not a scholar. (I did work at a university, but as a maintenance person—I plunged scholars' toilets.)  And I don't read music.  I can't tell a sharp from a flat.  Or play an instrument.  I can't sing.  And I grew up hating classical music. (Actually, I am exactly who Wagner was writing for as a later blog post will no doubt cover.)

Because this isn't a blog with academic pretensions, I will tend towards plain speaking.  I don't plan to mince words.  There will be the occasional—regular?—vulgarity because, frankly, so much stuff surrounding Wagner can only be called bullshit.  No other word would work.

The above should not be taken to mean that this blog will be less reliable than a scholarly article.  I care deeply about truth and fairness.  I believe any analysis should be based on clearly established facts. My feeling is if you can't—or don't—back up something controversial that is presented as a fact, you shouldn't say it.  I'm not from Missouri, but I should be.  If you believe I haven't adequately supported a statement, please let me know and I will track it down like a pig after truffles (or retract it if I can't support it.) That said, I am at a bit of a disadvantage as most of my Wagner books are in Santa Cruz and I am here in Hilo until June. I did bring about 50 lbs. of Wagner material with me, but I will be writing without the sources at hand from time to time.  I will use links as my footnotes.

So let my personal little celebration of and reflections on Wagner begin!