Wagner's The Case Of Wagnerianism And Music

Wagner’s newfound focus on redemption rather than overcoming, yes, would have upset Nietzsche. But as most can relate, seeing poppy boy bands remain on the top of the charts over true artists; Nietzsche in that what he considered to be Wagner’s weakest moment become his most shining, must have been infuriating for him. The wrath is not focused solely on Wagner however, but as well at the masses that gathered to worship at his alter; Wagner himself was a slave to Wagnerianism and European decadence. Nietzsche recalls a story of Goethe reflecting on what dangers romanticism the most, to which he though ““suffocating of the rumination of moral and religious absurdities.” In brief: Parsifal.” (EH, “The Case of Wagner, 3). The performance so intertwined with the symbolism of a moral-religious world that it distracts from its content. Nietzsche almost asks us to strip these connotations and motifs away to see what stands. In a non-Christian light, does Parsifal even exist? Deconstructed and without the pieces, the many props and abundant imagery, could the opera even be written? “The musician now becomes an actor” Nietzsche says of Wagner; more performer than composer. European decadence has burdened music by forcing it away from its focus on life to the escape from living.

Wagner is not however the corruptor. He, in Nietzsche’s eyes sadly has found himself among the common man, indoctrinated by Christianity in the face of meaninglessness. Nietzsche’s portrayal of his former friend then takes on a more sympathetic tone. Wagner, as evident by Nietzsche’s early praise and admiration, is the most shining example of both, our best chance at post-Socratic salvation in art as well as a depiction of the destructive power that the illness of ...

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...loss of their friendship but of a man who was both an idol and kindred spirit. In the space Wagner left, Bizet was able to root himself by planting his music. It had roots; it was real and based on experience in that it allowed the audience to brings theirs to the theatre. Where Wagnerian theatre told the audience what to feel, Carmen just told them to feel. It asked the audience to overcome its imperfections, to evaluate why they liked it, what it made them feel. Parsifal made them feel till they believed. Bizet was more appropriate for small theatres in that he only sought to produce the best thing that he could; what was his best over the best. That is the realm of Wagner, and in order to compose the greatest, most popular opera one has to pander to the masses. Those rabble which Nietzsche says are afflicted by the illness of Christianity, morality and decadence.