I completely agree that the incessant pedantry of certain analyses of Wagner’s operas is not only highly reductive, but approaches the operas in anatomic units instead of as a total work of art, and what’s more, an experience. I think one other way of understanding the use of leitmotivs in circumstances that are (ostensibly) contradictory to the leitmotiv’s “meaning” is as a precursor to Brecht’s concept of the gesture. Though it’s anachronistic to use Brecht to understand Wagner, I still think locating the leitmotiv in praxis as opposed to theory, and taking into account Brecht (and Walter Benjamin’s) contention that the gesture plays an important role in situations where the gesture has ceased to hold its original meaning, enriches a theoretical and historical understanding of the leitmotiv, and comes closer to actual human experience which is rife with contradictions.
I must confess that in the dim mists of yesteryear, when I was a very, very young child, I spent some time in my Grandmother's house, in the late 1950's. She was a brilliant woman who spoke and wrote fluently in seven languages, in addition to reading ancient Greek and Latin. But she also had a fondness for serialized radio dramas, especially those of the policier genre, many of which made occasional use of short, musical phrases that were almost leitmotifs - though, truth be told, they may have been closer to radio jingles - though they did give the dramas a slightly operatic touch. Ever since then, I think I've had a secret fondness for at least some radio jingles, which though definitely overtly characteristic of certain aspects of bourgeois musical culture, nonetheless seemed to me to both occasionally subvert or bypass it, en route into my then-younger eardrums. Thank you for this piece, Kate - it inspires me both to dive back into the Niebelungian sagas... and also to revisit the long-lost radio dramas of a previous existence.
thanks Kate.
I completely agree that the incessant pedantry of certain analyses of Wagner’s operas is not only highly reductive, but approaches the operas in anatomic units instead of as a total work of art, and what’s more, an experience. I think one other way of understanding the use of leitmotivs in circumstances that are (ostensibly) contradictory to the leitmotiv’s “meaning” is as a precursor to Brecht’s concept of the gesture. Though it’s anachronistic to use Brecht to understand Wagner, I still think locating the leitmotiv in praxis as opposed to theory, and taking into account Brecht (and Walter Benjamin’s) contention that the gesture plays an important role in situations where the gesture has ceased to hold its original meaning, enriches a theoretical and historical understanding of the leitmotiv, and comes closer to actual human experience which is rife with contradictions.
What a phenomenal essay, I absolutely ate it up despite knowing basically zilch about opera.
I must confess that in the dim mists of yesteryear, when I was a very, very young child, I spent some time in my Grandmother's house, in the late 1950's. She was a brilliant woman who spoke and wrote fluently in seven languages, in addition to reading ancient Greek and Latin. But she also had a fondness for serialized radio dramas, especially those of the policier genre, many of which made occasional use of short, musical phrases that were almost leitmotifs - though, truth be told, they may have been closer to radio jingles - though they did give the dramas a slightly operatic touch. Ever since then, I think I've had a secret fondness for at least some radio jingles, which though definitely overtly characteristic of certain aspects of bourgeois musical culture, nonetheless seemed to me to both occasionally subvert or bypass it, en route into my then-younger eardrums. Thank you for this piece, Kate - it inspires me both to dive back into the Niebelungian sagas... and also to revisit the long-lost radio dramas of a previous existence.
Those William Ashton Ellis translations are really a menace aren’t they 😅
they really are