IfRichard Wagner were alive today what kind of music would he likely compose?
Ken B Lane
take advantage of the possibilities inherent in electronic music and be
inventing instrumentsto further his expressive potential.
The symbiosis of his textual and audio language channeled his stream of
consciousness into such a networking of words with their leading motive
counterparts that there is a homogeous core unity in his oeuvre that exists in
very few other composers.
My own composing started at age 12 when I first heard Wagner's music on radio
station WNYC.
I felt then as I feel now that nothingso extends one's commentary on life as
inwardly personal as music composition, especially when bedfellowed by words.
The Movies, FILM, and any visual format, be it video or some other expression
of the visual, affords the only full scope of the potentialities of WAGNER!
Vinyl records of Wagner's music contain the greatest singing of Wagner's music
"live" and/or recorded. The transfers onto CDs have only, pardon the pun,
scratched the surface!
Vinyl record collectors have a resource that is incomparable.
No singers today of Wagner's music even begin to have the talent nor the size
of voice nor uniqueness of timbre nor the stamina exhibited on the vinyls of
yesteryear.
But, CDs must explore further, and may one day open the eyes/ears of those who,
only hearing today's singers, may regard Wagner's music with less than the
respect and zealous ardor it deserves.
Wagner's music-dramas, his unmatched lofty aural splendor sprocketed to a
mighty wheel of cause-and-effect historical and emotional circumstance, offer
a view of the triumph of the spirit over the status-quo.
Bruennhilde is womanhood in full flower: a warrior, a lover, a loyal-to-death
partner to her man Siegfried and a loving daughter to her father Wotan, whose
true wishes for the Walsungs, she comprehends and aims to achieve even at the
expense of defiance to her godhead father, whose power is circumscribed by his
womanizing, and his wife Fricka's insistence on Oath to the Runes' morality.
In every age, the relevancy of Wagner's heroes and heroines, whatever their
genealogy, and their moment in history, their problems reflect the human
condition.
The male contingent of Wagner's ouevre are super-heroes, but often flawed.
Their flaws bring on their ultimate Greek-like tragedies. Wagner's most
often deference to Women is based on his endearing remembrances of his mother
and sister.
The Shakespeare of Opera, Wagner, deserves a wide audience, and I hope that
others feel as I do. Anything I can do to promote his work output in
performance, I shall do,. and I shall seek to proselitize others to do
likewise.
Kenneth Bennett Lane, Wagnerian romantischer heldentenor
Teacher of singing at Carnegie Hall & Festspielhaus of Boonton, NJ
Bell Atlantic [current] (now re-named Verizon) Manhattan [NYC]
Classified Yellow Pages Telephone Directory [with current pix] AD,
page 1064 under headings: MUSIC:Instruction:vocal
"2001" Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts AD
on page 408, describing my opera "Shakespeare" & reviews & CDs
"2000" Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts AD
on page 404, with reviews of my 4th Main Hall Carnegie Hall solo
concert, "WAGNER-The Epic & The Lyric," including 6 songs Wagner wrote
between ages 25 and 27 that I at that concert world- premiered in a major
concert venue
Websites: WagnerOpera.com [under reconstruction]; in preparation:
Wagner-Opera.org and FestspielhausBoonton.org [all actually lower case]
E-Mail: KenB...@aol.com
Mailing address: Post Office Box #131, Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey 07034-0131,
USA
Tels: (973) 335-0111 & (973) 541-1678
"The highest reward for a man's toil is not WHAT he GETS for it, but WHAT he
BECOMES by it" John Ruskin