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A piece of Wagnerio-Schoenbergian frippery
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Anselm
May 16, 2013, 4:50:50 PM5/16/13
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If you're looking for a stunning insight into the relationship between the music of these two composers - forget it. That's beyond me. If, however, you're looking for the sort of light-hearted observation that occurs to Wagnerians on their days off, read on.
In his essay "Wagner's Musical Language" in Burbidge and Sutton's anthology "The Wagner Companion", Deryck Cooke famously "fingered" a Wagnerian fingerprint, a mannerism that's the equivalent of a writer's characteristic - and probably subconscious - turn of phrase. It consists of one, or occasionally two, downward leaps followed by two steps up. You could visualise it as a capital "L". It appears in his orchestral as well as his dramatic works, and spans practically his entire oeuvre from "Die Feen" to "Parsifal". Inasmuch as it has an overarching meaning, it seems to be connected with the idea of frustration. Sometimes it is a passing reference, sometimes it assumes major motivic significance: it's Lohengrin's forbidden question, Fricka's theme when she enters in Act II of "Die Walkuere", the "Day" motive that opens Act II of "Tristan", Gutrune's theme and the "Spear" motive in "Parsifal".
Moving swiftly on to Schoenberg's serialism, his tone rows are manipulated in three ways: inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion. Back to Wagner: it strikes me that he does the same thing with that "fingerprint", every time with motivic significance. Examples of its inversion (an upside down L) are the first three notes of the Tristan prelude, its retrograde (a backwards L) Bruennhilde's "War es so schmaelich" and the "murder" theme from "Gotterdaemmerung", and its retrograde inversion (upside down and back to front) the "Glance" motive from Tristan.
Is it worth running with this, I wonder, or is this no more than a passing idle fancy?
In his essay "Wagner's Musical Language" in Burbidge and Sutton's anthology "The Wagner Companion", Deryck Cooke famously "fingered" a Wagnerian fingerprint, a mannerism that's the equivalent of a writer's characteristic - and probably subconscious - turn of phrase. It consists of one, or occasionally two, downward leaps followed by two steps up. You could visualise it as a capital "L". It appears in his orchestral as well as his dramatic works, and spans practically his entire oeuvre from "Die Feen" to "Parsifal". Inasmuch as it has an overarching meaning, it seems to be connected with the idea of frustration. Sometimes it is a passing reference, sometimes it assumes major motivic significance: it's Lohengrin's forbidden question, Fricka's theme when she enters in Act II of "Die Walkuere", the "Day" motive that opens Act II of "Tristan", Gutrune's theme and the "Spear" motive in "Parsifal".
Moving swiftly on to Schoenberg's serialism, his tone rows are manipulated in three ways: inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion. Back to Wagner: it strikes me that he does the same thing with that "fingerprint", every time with motivic significance. Examples of its inversion (an upside down L) are the first three notes of the Tristan prelude, its retrograde (a backwards L) Bruennhilde's "War es so schmaelich" and the "murder" theme from "Gotterdaemmerung", and its retrograde inversion (upside down and back to front) the "Glance" motive from Tristan.
Is it worth running with this, I wonder, or is this no more than a passing idle fancy?
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