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eltamina
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Are your clocks in syn with Wgner's
May 25, 2003
How to Synchronize Our Clock and Wagner's
By BERNARD HOLLAND
New York Times
WAGNER'S operas are long only to those who expect them to be shorter. Two clocks are at work: the one on the wall and the one to which Wagner ticks. Audience members who by Act III of "Parsifal" squirm and contemplate the road home have lost the battle; others, their wristwatches slowed to a Wagnerian crawl, are entirely refreshed and genuinely sorry that these holy Wagnerian knights will now go home to dinner and we to our beds.
Wasn't it Einstein who told us that time shrinks or expands according to where we are and what we are doing? Music confirms relativity without the help of astrophysics. The Wagnerian arrives at the opera house by 6 and burrows into a drawling time continuum. The "victims" of Wagner's operas (if we may call them that) are the unsuspecting: eager novitiates wound tightly for "Die Meistersinger" and stunned by the six-hour German sitcom that stretches out before them.
Wagnerians know the jokes but laugh anyway. Prudently, they go to the bathroom and snack furtively on homemade sandwiches between acts. They never hurry and are rewarded by periodic eruptions of breathtaking music. Wagnerians abandon Wagnerian time only while monitoring the vocal health of Walther, Eva, Hans and the whole gang. "Die Meistersinger," with characteristic perversity, saves the best and the most challenging for last, and as midnight approaches at the Metropolitan Opera, everyone is tired.
Wagner annoys those who love him most. He has wrenched a contract from us, made an offer we can't refuse. We drum our fingers mentally at the garrulous self-examination, description and historic recapitulation. But we receive in exchange the days that follow, as the music seems to occupy our bodies and devour every musical memory around it. Wagner's unique quality is the power to bypass civilized discourse and descend straight to the gut.
Fiddling with time is what music is all about. Our gray hairs tell us that we cannot beat the clock, but music is our symbolic way of pushing and pulling at it according to whim. Try not to look at your watch during "Die Meistersinger"; it will only put you on the outside looking in.
Baseball is not a bad analogy for "Die Meistersinger." The patriotic self-congratulation is pretty much the same. So is the pattern of uneventfulness ruptured by moments of ecstatic excitement. But Wagner's listeners are trapped in their seats, attentive if not by desire, then by coercion. Baseball fans come and go in search of hot dogs, beer and other necessities. One of the endearingly American qualities of the Robert Wilson-Philip Glass opera "Einstein on the Beach" was the opportunity to walk to the lobby at any juncture, remain for 10 minutes, then re-enter with little danger of having missed a thing. Repetition and a glacial flow of time worked in our favor.
Where did those clocks on the wall first come from, remote as they are from the true pulse of our minds and bodies? "Real time" operates in territory foreign to the inner twitches that cause music. Real time is like an outside accountant come to audit our books. Length measured by clocks and length measured by the degree of eventfulness between Point A and Point B are different things. This is why music people keep two sets of books. One records that an Alice Tully Hall recital lasted 1 hour 40 minutes. In the other, each item performed moved to its own meter.
Compare the Chopin D flat Nocturne (four and three-quarters minutes long) and the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony (more than a half hour). Doesn't at least as much dark vision, lyrical imagination, conflict and harmonic exploration occur in one as in the other? Chopin's modest A-B-A song form has a capacity clocks don't understand.
Why, as well, do Bruckner's symphonies seem shorter than Mahler's, though they last similar numbers of hours and minutes? Maybe it is Bruckner's orderliness against Mahler's excursive narrative. Inside Bruckner's fat symphonies lurks thin Mozartean symmetry trying to get out.
One of the oldest clichés concerning human memory is that instants in our lives can acquire the proportions of years, and years in retrospect pass in an instant. Music makes the idea a little less tired. On the other hand, if we all operated by our own clocks, no one would show up for "Die Meistersinger" at the same time.
Guerrilla warfare at "Die Meistersinger" is futile. Lateness will not rescue you, if it is rescue you seek. Never forget the famous adage: No matter how late you come to "Tristan und Isolde," there are always two more acts. Wagner wears you down until a series of points is reached: from surrender to acceptance to assimilation to helpless embrace. There is a political metaphor here, but let it pass.
May 25, 2003
How to Synchronize Our Clock and Wagner's
By BERNARD HOLLAND
New York Times
WAGNER'S operas are long only to those who expect them to be shorter. Two clocks are at work: the one on the wall and the one to which Wagner ticks. Audience members who by Act III of "Parsifal" squirm and contemplate the road home have lost the battle; others, their wristwatches slowed to a Wagnerian crawl, are entirely refreshed and genuinely sorry that these holy Wagnerian knights will now go home to dinner and we to our beds.
Wasn't it Einstein who told us that time shrinks or expands according to where we are and what we are doing? Music confirms relativity without the help of astrophysics. The Wagnerian arrives at the opera house by 6 and burrows into a drawling time continuum. The "victims" of Wagner's operas (if we may call them that) are the unsuspecting: eager novitiates wound tightly for "Die Meistersinger" and stunned by the six-hour German sitcom that stretches out before them.
Wagnerians know the jokes but laugh anyway. Prudently, they go to the bathroom and snack furtively on homemade sandwiches between acts. They never hurry and are rewarded by periodic eruptions of breathtaking music. Wagnerians abandon Wagnerian time only while monitoring the vocal health of Walther, Eva, Hans and the whole gang. "Die Meistersinger," with characteristic perversity, saves the best and the most challenging for last, and as midnight approaches at the Metropolitan Opera, everyone is tired.
Wagner annoys those who love him most. He has wrenched a contract from us, made an offer we can't refuse. We drum our fingers mentally at the garrulous self-examination, description and historic recapitulation. But we receive in exchange the days that follow, as the music seems to occupy our bodies and devour every musical memory around it. Wagner's unique quality is the power to bypass civilized discourse and descend straight to the gut.
Fiddling with time is what music is all about. Our gray hairs tell us that we cannot beat the clock, but music is our symbolic way of pushing and pulling at it according to whim. Try not to look at your watch during "Die Meistersinger"; it will only put you on the outside looking in.
Baseball is not a bad analogy for "Die Meistersinger." The patriotic self-congratulation is pretty much the same. So is the pattern of uneventfulness ruptured by moments of ecstatic excitement. But Wagner's listeners are trapped in their seats, attentive if not by desire, then by coercion. Baseball fans come and go in search of hot dogs, beer and other necessities. One of the endearingly American qualities of the Robert Wilson-Philip Glass opera "Einstein on the Beach" was the opportunity to walk to the lobby at any juncture, remain for 10 minutes, then re-enter with little danger of having missed a thing. Repetition and a glacial flow of time worked in our favor.
Where did those clocks on the wall first come from, remote as they are from the true pulse of our minds and bodies? "Real time" operates in territory foreign to the inner twitches that cause music. Real time is like an outside accountant come to audit our books. Length measured by clocks and length measured by the degree of eventfulness between Point A and Point B are different things. This is why music people keep two sets of books. One records that an Alice Tully Hall recital lasted 1 hour 40 minutes. In the other, each item performed moved to its own meter.
Compare the Chopin D flat Nocturne (four and three-quarters minutes long) and the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony (more than a half hour). Doesn't at least as much dark vision, lyrical imagination, conflict and harmonic exploration occur in one as in the other? Chopin's modest A-B-A song form has a capacity clocks don't understand.
Why, as well, do Bruckner's symphonies seem shorter than Mahler's, though they last similar numbers of hours and minutes? Maybe it is Bruckner's orderliness against Mahler's excursive narrative. Inside Bruckner's fat symphonies lurks thin Mozartean symmetry trying to get out.
One of the oldest clichés concerning human memory is that instants in our lives can acquire the proportions of years, and years in retrospect pass in an instant. Music makes the idea a little less tired. On the other hand, if we all operated by our own clocks, no one would show up for "Die Meistersinger" at the same time.
Guerrilla warfare at "Die Meistersinger" is futile. Lateness will not rescue you, if it is rescue you seek. Never forget the famous adage: No matter how late you come to "Tristan und Isolde," there are always two more acts. Wagner wears you down until a series of points is reached: from surrender to acceptance to assimilation to helpless embrace. There is a political metaphor here, but let it pass.
