Nietzsche reflects on his one time pal, Wagner.

".......Wagner represents a great corruption of music. He has guessed that it is a means to excite weary nerves,—and with that he has made music sick. His inventiveness is not inconsiderable in the art of goading again those who are weariest, calling back into life those who are half-dead. He is a master of hypnotic tricks, he manages to throw down the strongest like bulls. Wagner's success—his success with nerves and consequently with women—has turned the whole world of ambitious musicians into disciples of his secret art. And not only the ambitious, the clever, too ... Only sick music makes money today; our big theaters subsist on Wagner...."

Das stimmt. And Fritz was at least as decent an ivory-tickler as RW. Wagner's far more Xtian than pagan; rather, Xtianity, filtered through norse myths. Heroics, the militarism, anti-semitism. Nietzsche realized what a bombastic, pompous, bourgeois, loud bore RW could be. Most modern germans detest that crap, and would prefer Satie. The American hicks who flock to Wagner shows in the Gay Area or El Lay are mostly just opportunists, sort of scots or irish mafiosos. Conspicuous consumption, as Veblen called it: they generally know nothing about German kultur or musick.

Wagner's mostly the Beer Barrel Polka with some ornamentations. Advanced Oom pah pah …..Be assured Bach and Beethoven laugh at Fieldmarshall Wagner somewhere beyond–as do all the great russian and french composers.


Mark Twain was no fan of the Wagnerian spectacle:


""""I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide."""""""


Heh heh.