Misreading Wagner

Re: “Hear works of three master composers,” (Life, May 5).

To characterise Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg, one of Wagner’s mature masterpieces, as “a lighthearted tale about historical German singers and their singing contests” is so utterly wrong and laughable. This sublime opera is actually not “about” singing contests at all, at anything other than a comically superficial level. Like all great art, whether it be a Rembrandt self portrait, a Shakespearean tragedy or a Tolstoy novel, the story of Die Meistersinger is merely a vehicle to explore some of the universal features of our common humanity. The story may be fiction but the art is true.

What Die Meistersinger is “about” is many things: the nature of creative genius and its bringing about the new through the destruction and reincorporation of what has gone before; the relationship between form and content in art; the arrogance, impatience and misplaced confidence of youth; the pathos of old age and the love of an old man for a young woman; the nature of resignation, sacrifice and renunciation; the process of learning from the old;

the madness of crowds; the bitterness of being surpassed and the siren call for revenge; schadenfreude and the nature of forgiveness. And much more besides.

To be sure, Die Meistersinger has its moments of levity and lightheartedness, but equally certain is that it contains some of the most poignant and heartbreaking music in the entire canon. Its 1st Act Prelude is bombastic, conservative and confidant — wonderfully so — but it is merely the first stone in a narrative arch that takes us very far away from that. Invest a few minutes to listen to the 3rd Act Prelude and the sublime aria which follows it, “Wahn, Wahn! Uberall Wahn” and the listener will be transported to a very different world indeed.

Wagner is one of the greatest musical geniuses in the history of Western music — and unfortunately also one of the most misunderstood. Our understanding of this seminal figure in our musical heritage is not helped by misreadings.

LUDWIG