My Musical Life

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

519-20

text excerpt

The grotesque music given to both Mime and Alberich, like so much of WAGNER'S misunderstood recitative, aims, no doubt, at following the inflections of the human voice as it is affected often by very commonplace moods, as well as by the meaner impulses of arrogance, vexation, anger, and spite. What we lose in musical charm we gain in a certain ingenious sense of reality. I think the power of WAGNER, the solidity of his work, largely turns upon this. He is never afraid of length, of silence, even of dulness, caused by protracted or delayed action. Like DE BALZAC, he knew well how to work up slowly and surely to a consummate effect, and his effect never hangs fire, nor is it ever liable to an anticlimax, that bane of second-rate artists.

The grotesque music given to both Mime and Alberich, like so much of WAGNER'S misunderstood recitative, aims, no doubt, at following the inflections of the human voice as it is affected often by very commonplace moods, as well as by the meaner impulses of arrogance, vexation, anger, and spite. What we lose in musical charm we gain in a certain ingenious sense of reality. I think the power of WAGNER, the solidity of his work, largely turns upon this. He is never afraid of length, of silence, even of dulness, caused by protracted or delayed action. Like DE BALZAC, he knew well how to work up slowly and surely to a consummate effect, and his effect never hangs fire, nor is it ever liable to an anticlimax, that bane of second-rate artists.

excerpt from 'My Musical Life' pp. 519-20 (132 words)

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