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“So, he eagerly drove from Basel to Bayreuth before the festival began to watch the last rehearsals of The Ring Cycle. As he watched, it hit him like Odin's bowel movement: the opera was shit.”

Quote by Dylan Callens

Book:Operation Cosmic Teapot
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Operation Cosmic Teapot

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Dylan Callens

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“11 — I have explained where Wagner belongs—not in the history of music. What does he signify nevertheless in that history? The emergence of the actor in music: a capital event that invites thought, perhaps also fear. In a formula: "Wagner and Liszt."— Never yet has the integrity of musicians, their "authenticity," been put to the test so dangerously. One can grasp it with one's very hands: great success, success with the masses no longer sides with those who are authentic,—one has to be an actor to achieve that!— Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining civilizations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavorable. The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm.— And thus it is his golden age which is now dawning—his and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With drums and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation, in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors of orchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget the orchestra:—he "redeemed" them from monotony .... The movement that Wagner created has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole sciences pertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries of scholasticism. As an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to Riemann's [Hugo Riemann (1849-1919): music theoretician] services to rhythmic; he was the first who called attention to the leading idea in punctuation—even for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad word; he called it "phrasing"). All these people, and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner's admirers—they have a perfect right to honor Wagner. The same instinct unites them with one another; in him they recognize their highest type, and since he has inflamed them with his own ardor they feel themselves transformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's influence has really been beneficial. Never before has there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now exact and obtain from themselves, they had never extracted before Wagner's time—before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise very scarce—the good and the excellent have become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more "dramatic" effect. Even talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is what the Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of décadence—demands, is hardly compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue—that is to say, training, automatism, "self-denial." Neither taste, voices, nor gifts: Wagner's stage requires one thing only—Teutons! ... Definition of the Teuton: obedience and long legs ... It is full of profound significance that the arrival of Wagner coincides in time with the arrival of the "Reich": both actualities prove the very same thing: obedience and long legs.— Never has obedience been better, never has commanding. Wagnerian conductors in particular are worthy of an age that posterity will call one day, with awed respect, the classical age of war. Wagner understood how to command; in this, too, he was the great teacher. He commanded as the inexorable will to himself, as lifelong self-discipline: Wagner who furnishes perhaps the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art (—even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a Torinese). 12 The insight that our actors are more deserving of admiration than ever does not imply that they are any less dangerous ... But who could still doubt what I want,—what are the three demands for which my my love of art has compelled me?”

WagnerHugoLiszt
Author:Nietszche
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“But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of arts. I do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in history there do come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of thought at once. For a moment it’s splendid. Such a splash as never was. But afterwards—such a lot of mud; and the wells—as it were, they communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will run quite clear. That’s what Wagner’s done.”

MusicWagner
Book:Howard's End
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“Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. But as for Mr. Gibson's colored Venuses (stained, I believe, with tobacco juice), and all other nudities of to-day, I really do not understand what they have to say to this generation, and would be glad to see as many heaps of quicklime in their stead.”

ArtNakedNudeScuplture
Book:The Marble Faun
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