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Roger Scruton - Wagner and Philosophy | Philosophical Conversations with Sarah-Jane Leslie | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Roger Scruton - Wagner and Philosophy
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Video Transcript
Welcome to philosophical ical
conversations. I am Sarah Jane Lesley.
The great German philosopher Emanuel
Kant proposed that human beings find
themselves in a peculiar metaphysical predicament.
predicament.
On the one hand, we are objects in the
empirical world, bound by the laws of
nature. Just like any other organism,
we're buffeted by the causal intrusions
of the physical realm. Yet, we also
conceive of ourselves as more than
determined objects. We are also free
subjects gazing out on the world from
the horizon of firstpersonal experience.
As objects, we are bound by natural law.
But as rational subjects, we bind
ourselves from within by moral law. This
moral law for Kant requires above all
else that we treat each other as the
free transcendental subjects that we are
and not merely as objects to be used for
others ends.
This contian world view invites us to
take a particular view of the erotic.
Sexual love plays on our dual nature. We
are not disembodied subjects, but nor
are we merely objects. Erotic desire is
directed towards the incarnate person,
the subject made flesh. It brings into
view the other as an embodied thou,
allowing us to find the transcendental
and the physical, the numinal and the
phenomenal. And in this way, we find in
our beloved a revelation of the sacred.
Of course, not all sexual encounters
have this character. The pornographic
attitude towards the other sees not a
free incarnate thou, but a mere object
wholly of the realm of flesh,
replaceable and desecrable.
The ultimate devolution of this attitude
is found in rape. The victim is
compelled as an empirical object denied
any trappings of autonomy and
subjachthood. There is perhaps no
clearer illustration of what it is to
break the fundamental contean
commandment of what it is to treat
another as a mere means and not as an
end in themselves.
In his acclaimed book, Death Devoted
Heart, Roger Scrutin uses this framework
of Kantean morality and contean erotics
to develop a rich interpretation of
Vagner's Tristan Zalda. But one might
wonder whether Vagner's other mature
tragedies can also be understood through
this lens. It is far from obvious that
the megthereal four opera masterpiece
daring destungan has the same moral
core. And what of Vagner's last opera
parcifol which Friedrich Nichze
describes as a work of perity of
vindictiveness of a secret attempt to
poison the very presuppositions of life.
a bad work.
Nietze goes on to say, "The preaching of
chastity remains an incitement to anti-
nature. I despise anyone who does not
experience parcifol as an attempted
assassination of basic ethics."
Surely this opera cannot be construed as
one in which sex and the sacred are
intertwined in the way they are in
Vagner's other later works.
But joining us today to discuss these
questions is Professor Roger Scrutin who
is currently a senior scholar at the
Ethics and Public Policy Center and
visiting professor at St. Andrews
University and Oxford University.
Professor Scrutin, it's delightful to
have you join us here today. Now many
operas have been written by many
composers and one very rarely hears
philosophers discuss them outside of
perhaps uh the intermissions at the Met.
Why is it that Vagner captures the
imaginations of philosophers?
One reason is that Vagner was himself a
philosopher. There's no doubt about it
from his writings and from his liberty
that this was a guy who was thinking
about all the major philosophical
questions of his day. And I think people
pick that up and they want to engage in
it. They want to know why it is that
that these dramas have such significance
and they look for the significance in
the underlying philosophy. Now one thing
we should clarify at the beginning is
the status of the historical claims that
are being made. Is your idea that Vagner
specifically read Kant and intended to
dramatize these ideas or is it more that
this gives us a fruitful framework in
which to understand these operas? The
latter it's about a framework of course
a framework that I happen to accept
because although I'm not entirely
persuaded by Kant's vision of the human
being I do think it contains the basic
truth focused in a specific way and uh
it also has to be remembered that
following Kant there is a whole stream
of Kantian and postcantian philosophers including
including
Vika Shelling Hegel and so on whom Vagna
certainly did read and who created the
intellectual atmosphere of the Germany
of his day and the fundamental intention
of all those philosophers was to
dramatize the human condition as the
condition of the subject. You know the
subject in a world of objects and the
potential uh tension between those two
aspects of our being. Now how do you
think Tristan and Isizolda is
illuminated by this way of thinking?
Well, Tristan and his older is obviously
a very self-contained work. It's about a
two specific people in a very concrete
situation. And Vagna makes a brilliant
job of using the medieval legend to
dramatize an aspect of human sexual desire.
desire.
It's it's not an aspect that all of us
necessarily know. Although what one
suspects is that he thought that it was
there in all human sexual feeling
somewhere but not necessarily uh brought
to the surface. But what he is doing is
taking that aspect and making it into
the whole of desire. The aspect being
that focusing on the individual subject
and being lost in it and recognizing in
the course of this that in a certain
sense the subject is nothing. It's not
an it's not an item in the world. It's
the thing that as it were stands on the
edge of the world absorbing it into
itself. And so that when two two human
beings are in this way lost in each
other through looking into each other's
eyes, which is the principal thing that
he's trying to dramatize in the whole
opera, when they're lost in each other
in that way, they are already on the
path towards nothingness.
And by by dramatizing this through their
eventual death, he he is able in in the
most extraordinary way to show that as
it were underlying our erotic feelings,
there's there's this sense that we
belong to this great cavernous
nothingness to which finally we will be
will be released. And so how does death
intertwine with love in this? Well,
death is that final nothingness and it's
something which is constantly there in
our mind
in the act of love and in the well in
the courtship as well.
what he is, you might sort of summarize
it by saying that for Vagnner, erotic
love is a relation between dying things.
And it's knowing themselves as dying,
which which is uh um as it were comes to
these two lovers partly through the
situation in which they've got nothing
else to look forward to. And one thing
that these lovers do and which is
perhaps the fundamental core of the love
that's portrayed is that they're able to
see each other eye to eye or eye to eye
as it were. Recognize each other as
transcendental subject. That's that's
really what I think he is trying to do
is is to put before us the sense that in
erotic love u the the whole physical
world as it were falls away and there is
just that look which um which unites the
lovers in a as a single
already not fully existent thing
and um okay he's dramatizing it in a
particular way and to do that He has to
introduce all the apparatus of you know
his older marriage to King Mark and and
the the presence of the courtiers and so
on and the normal life all around and
he's portraying their love as a sort of
radical transgression something which
takes them out of that normal life of
ordinary relations and puts them in a
world of their own uh a world in which
they have nothing except each other and
only that aspect of each other which is
uh destined towards death anyway. And of
course in the initial opening act we see
Isolda's situation portrayed quite dramatically
dramatically
and that situation she's been taken from
her homeland to be shipped off to be
married to King Mark
against her will.
It's only incidental that she is older
is in that situation. another with her
rank, station, and looks would have done
equally well. She's quintessentially
there being treated as an object and not
as a subject. That's right. That that's
all very cleverly done by Vagnner,
showing that um her rage comes through
being treated as a marketable entity.
you know, she's been whereas she knows
very little about herself except that
she's not that, you know, and that's um
that's what she learned about herself
when having uh sort of plucked up
courage to kill this intruder, Tristan,
whom she was looking after, having
discovered that he'd killed her official
fiance. He turns and looks in her eyes.
She then discovers that precisely she's
not one of those marketable girls that
she belongs here with this she drops the
sword lets him live. Yes. All that is uh
you know vagna's hence of poetry is
impeccable I think in that note but in
this contian interpretation
we really see a contrast between how is
old is initially treated by Mara and all
the other um people in his retinue and
indeed initially by Tristan though he
has to fight himself to do it treated as
an object as a means versus how she
comes to be seen and treated by Tristan
as a subject object as an end in herself.
herself.
That's true. Of course, I think that's
the whole truth because let's face it,
the the Canian philosophy which
summarized in in terms you just given in
terms of the categorical imperative
which says thou shalt treat humanity as
an end and not as a means only. um that
that isn't the whole truth about sexual desire.
desire.
And sexual desire doesn't have a huge
place in K's philosophy or in his life.
Indeed, without going into it, he was
obviously not really a natural ladies
man. But um Vagnner certainly was
maybe you say we might say an unnatural
ladies man given the the variety and so
on. But he took it on. For Vagnner, the
erotic is the quintessential feeling
that distinguishes humanity from the
rest of nature. For Kant, it's K is a
bit more like Plato thinking that it is
the bit that unites us with the other
animals, the bit that brings us down
into the earthly condition. Whereas
Vagnner thinks no, that's not not it at
all. The erotic is where we are at our
highest so to speak that we really are
pure subjectivity
in in in having to find our redemption
there. That's something that of course
Tristan is defined only in death. But in
the ring cycle you get the same idea
spread through a whole um cosmology. you
know that that that the the human
neurotic is the only thing that we're
given in all this that can possibly
redeem us from the workings of power.
Tristan Unizalda depicts two lovers who
finally find redemption in each other
and in death. Vagner's four opera
masterpiece dingongan
tells the interlocking tales of gods,
heroes and dragons of love, redemption
and sacrifice.
So would you extend this framework to
the ring? I think so. Uh and um you know
you and I have talked about this before
and I know that you you would because
you're a Brunhilder fan. You you and
which is perfectly right. But what I
think is happening in the um in the ring
is that he Vagnner is showing how legal
order, the order of government and
contract and uh and um law depends upon
a primeval act of eucipation whereby
somebody seizes the power to to to
create that situation. It's votan who
sees the power to create that situation.
But this act of eucipation because it's
outside law and precedes law is itself
lawless and involves the primeval
injustice. So, so that everything in
Rinold is a is a story of injustices.
But through those injustices, Vultan is
able to rule the world according to the
um to the principles of law and and
conflict resolution. So, his power is in
a certain way justified, but um the
long-term price must be paid. And um
in order to prevent this happening
obviously Votan has to uh find another
way of being some some way in which in
which uh he can call upon other powers
than his own power to protect him and
that's where he gets involved in the
human world. And we come to see that the
human world is not ordered only by the
pursuit of power. It's also ordered by
the pursuit of love.
And love is a kind of renunciation.
That's that's the fundamental varian
idea I think that that our redemption in
the end depends upon renouncing things
and not constantly asserting things. And
it's what Brunhilder confronts when she
confronts the love between Sigmund and
Siginder. Here is a love which is more
powerful than power precisely because it
doesn't want power and can renounce
itself just for its for the sake of
renounce life for the sake of love and
she I think as it were incarnates
herself as a effectively through this
and becomes the the a kind of Christlike
figure who's taken on on board the need
to sacrifice herself for the redemption
of the world. Right? You could also
argue, not that it's at odds with the
description that you just gave, that the
world of Valhalla, from which Brun Hilda
comes, which Votan rules over, is an
incredibly instrumental world. Um, it's
uh Votan describes bringing these heroes
to Valhalla to specifically use them in
an army, individuals that he bound and
curbed by shady treaties. And indeed,
it's not clearly depicted that Votan's
initial act of user pasian is the cause
of all the ills so much as his using his
sister-in-law Fria as uh payment which
enables him to use the giants to build
Valhalla, intending to trick them out of
the payment he promised. This is
actually what precipitates his inability
to return the ring to the rind maidens
and what causes everything to unravel.
And what Brun Hilda sees when she
encounters Ziegmund is the first time
she's ever seen someone view another as
an irreplaceable
sacred subject, an end in themselves.
That's a very good description. Couldn't
do better myself. Um and I I agree with
every word of it. What is also
interesting is that Valhalla as she Brun
Hilda presents it to Ziggman in inviting
him or telling him that he that's where
he's going uh as he recognizes is a a
place a cold place. It's a place in
which there is no love and the the all
the the vents that are promised to him
these um delicious girls. It's like it's
a bit like the paradise of the Quran.
You know, there isn't any love in this.
It's just enjoying a variety of females
whenever you happen to want one. And uh
so again, that instrumental view of
sexual love in in the background too of
Vagna Vagna's drama. He he wants to say
that that's the wrong way to see sex too.
too.
And Brun Hilda of course expresses
surprise that Ziggmun would prefer this
mortal woman who's lying limp and
sorrowful in his lap to all this
immortal splendor that Valhalla has to
offer. That's right. Well, this is what
makes um Valkura in my view the most
human thing that that Vagna ever wrote
and also the most tragic of course. I
mean the first act is all but unbearable
and Vagna himself recognized that. But
what is extraordinary of course is that
the the opera moves towards resolution
in the third act through Brun Hilda's
incarnation. She has become a mortal and
is now going to sleep and be part of
this mortal world. And so there's sort
of hope in her presence there. And I
think Voton achieves a degree of
redemption at a personal level at the
end of uh Valkura where he finally sees
Brun Hilda in those final moments as an
end in herself. He's finally able to
look her in the eye, that pair of eyes
that must then shut on him. That's
right. But he it's his first recognition
that fatherhood is not simply
reproduction. Mhm. Um yes, of course all
this uh the question of where what
philosophy has to say about this is
another matter. I mean you've mentioned
uh the the role of sexual feeling and a
particular theory about sexual feeling
which seems to be motivating Vagnner.
There there is the question about
whether that is the right view. You
know, I argue that it that it is and we
live in a world in which as you know the
the IU relation which which I think and
I think you think too is fundamental to
sexual true sexual desire is being
eclipsed by this I it relation
pornography and or in the the standard
representation of what sex is which is
even creeping into sex education less
lessons in school and all that. It's not
even an I it. It's an it it relation,
you know, a conjunction of of body
parts. And that, you know, I think it's
one of the great evils that we're living
through today in this society. This
eclipsing of of the
of the whole realm of of sexual desire
and sexual fulfillment by a false image
of what it is. But I think it's a
philosophical task to say why that is
false. And it mean it means going into
um as I try to in my book on sexual
desire going into the intentionality of
sexual feeling. Not just the intentional
what you're wanting in sexual desire
which itself is a complex thing but what
it is that that um what what the
thoughts are in sexual arousal itself.
How that is already uh as I argue an
epistemic state of mind. is a search for
knowledge of the other and a revelation
of the other uh in his or her flesh as
and a wanting to be related in the flesh
and that's you know very complex thing
and I think um one of the things that
analytical philosophy has really not
sufficiently engaged with how you how
you actually understand the
phenomenology of of those states of mind
and what the moral implication of them is.
is.
Well, I think that in your book, Sexual
Desire, you uh really bring these themes
to life in a in a very engaging way. I I
think you may be more of a pessimist
than I am about the extent to which this
is being stripped out of modern society.
While there are definitely influences
from pornography and the like, I think
people still do a good job at the end of
the day of finding another person. Um,
well, it's very nice that you can say
that. I think yeah, you and I made a
good job, but you still got to think of
all the others.
Vagner's final opera, Parcifal, depicts
an order of knights sworn to guard the
Holy Grail. The knights form a monkish
order, all male and celibate.
So now a phenomenon on the complete
other end of the spectrum to what we're
talking about would be the utter
renunciation of all kind of sexual
relations and that would be at odds with
the picture of the erotic as central to
salvation and redemption that Vagner
presents in Tristan and in the ring.
Isn't this what we find in Parallel
though? Yeah, passive how of course is
highly problematic work and it's extremely
extremely
difficult to arrive at a consensus with
anybody else as to what it means and
nobody can deny that it's it's one of
his most poetic achievements. every
episode in it, every symbol strikes home
and yet it strikes home as you say in a
completely different way from the erotic
relations in the other works. But how I
look at it is is like this that that um
in Parlel as in Tristan Vagnner has
taken the erotic as a central element in
the human condition and he's dramatizing
in an extreme form one part one part of
it that part of it is very familiar to
us from the whole Christian iconography
in the whole Christian tradition that
the the idea that that female Sexuality
in particular is a problem, a problem
for the man. And there's this u we're
constantly torn between the view of the
the of the woman as virgin and the view
of the woman as You know that
that that and this is this tension is
there today in Muslim society in a very
strong way. The the the the woman who is
truly to be desired is the virgin. the
one who has who when she gives herself
will give herself completely to you uh
or maybe not at all. But as soon as a
woman has done this, you know, her image
is polluted and she becomes this thing
that could belong to anyone. And this of
course is is uh epitomized in the
character of Kundri who's one of
Vagnner's most extraordinary creations
and totally believable. You know that
here is a woman who who for whom
chastity is the only way of being that
that would enable her to be what she
really wants to be but is in a state of
permanent repentance
and is identical with another woman so
to identical with this other creature in
the in Klingor's castle who is the the
expert the one who who really
knows how to simulate erotic love for
whomsoever whoever she's told to to do
it with. And that um you know that's a a
symbolic representation of a kind of
thought about sexual desire which
Vladner is rightly saying has been
animating our culture for 2,000 years
and is there in the cult of the Virgin
Mary and al and Mary Magdalene and so on
comes out of the gospels and produced
this extraordinary vision of womanhood
that we've inherited. Do you see Vagner
as endorsing that view of woman and the
erotic imple? I don't think he's
endorsing that because what he is
essentially doing is saying look uh
let's see how will that picture of
erotic desire would also um make
available to us a s a kind of redemption
of our earthly condition. Isn't that
what uh the Christian monastic tradition
has been trying to do for us? So it's as
though he's giving us a he's stepping
back into the Christian tradition and
saying look um there too there was an
idea of redemption of our earthly state
and there too it depended upon the
erotic but it was a particular
conception of the erotic which is not
something that we can live through now
pacifel is the is the only one of these
operas in which you know it's really set
in a in a historical con
uh condition in a historical state state
of affairs. It is a mysterious work
because we find it so difficult to see
things in that way. What Vagnner was
saying is that that not like any great
artist, you know, he's saying not that
I'm trying to uh convert you to this,
but that here is a way of looking at the
world and I'm dramatizing it. I'm
presenting it and you I'm inviting you
into it and if you come with me you will
see that it is a truly human world too.
On the surface of it though, any kind of
positive portrayal of that kind of world
would seem to be a pretty radical break
with the worlds presented in Tristan and
in the ring where um the erotic is seen
as the key to redemption where women are
uh transformative salvific redemptive
figures. Um my view is of course that
Brun Hilda is the central salvific
figure in the ring a theme we can return
to. And then we have in Parallel what
seems like an about face. Yeah. We seem
to see woman as presented not as savior
but as the uh key to sin, the downfall
of man. We seem to um have a celibate
order of knights, presented as the
highest ideal instead of a a strange and
somewhat spooky phenomenon in the way
that they're presented um by the heroes
in Valhalla in the ring. Um, so what are
we to make of this? I think one
interesting thought is that Parival is
actually a fairly subversive opera that
the way that it appears on the surface
is not actually the way that it is.
Well, you know, you've just developed a
whole theory of Passifel and I'm not
sure that whether it's right. It might
be. Obviously, nature thought that that
Vagnner was taking back everything in
with in pipel and he hated it or he
claimed to hate it but there is evidence
from his correspondence that he didn't
at all and that he recognized that the
prelude to passif is one of the greatest
pieces of music that exists but um the
what I would say is this that if you
look back at the erotic erotic relations
between man and woman as portrayed in
Tristan and the ring these are of course
explicit ly pagan works and the erotic
relation although it contains a certain
uh redemption that redemption is
obtained also only through death. So the
erotic is a deathdirected thing and you
might say that that's still there in the
parell that erot the erotic is a
deathdirected thing and that if we were
to imagine a community which was a
lifedirected thing something which had
its own eternal replication at its heart
then you would imagine something like
this in which the erotic is packed up in
one single woman who is then packed off
away from it who's who's lingering on
the edge of things and so that in a way
it could you can see that they are complimentary
complimentary
and um he is after all talking about an
explicitly Christian legend the legend
of Pacifal
and the legend of the grail he wasn't he
wasn't um blind to the fact that to the
phallic symbolism of the grail and the lance
lance
you know he was a great anthropologist
who saw bore in all these things
permanent features of the human
condition that we will always come back
to. And probably he would have said in
response to your thought that you're
taking back or contradicting everything
of your previous work, he would have
said, "No, it's human life that
contradicts itself."
Another perspective though that one
might take is it's not that Vagner's
view of the erotic has changed, but
rather that the erotic doesn't figure in
Paral. A peculiarity
of a superficial reading of it is that
Parcifal himself actually goes on to
have a son. Amas is in fact the son of
Titelm. All of which suggests that not
all sexual relations are actually there
must have been women hanging around
somewhere. The uh sexual relations that
Kundri enters into say she engages uh
with Afras and attempts to engage in
with Parcifol. These are not erotic
encounters any more than Sig Glinda's
rape at the hands of Hunding is an
erotic encounter. These are acts of
forced prostitution.
Clings compels Kundri. She's ultimately
compelled, you might think, by the
redeemer himself via her curse. Well,
we're getting into very difficult areas
here. But remember
there is at the back of Vagnner's mind
um an idea that of a distinction between
true chastity which is an overcoming of
sexual desire and false chastity which
is um
an inability to feel it which is what um
Klingaw represents. He is someone who's
frustrated himself because he can't
manage to be chased. And that is the
false chastity. The real chastity for
Vagnner is a kind of erotic being, but
it's an overcome eroticism. And
And
why is that valuable whereas the other
thing is not? I I suspect he would say something
something
again as I think most Christians of
Middle Ages would have said which is
that you know sexual desire is a
god-given thing which takes us out of ourselves
ourselves
gives us an interest in others. Um but
this but it can be abused and way one
way of not abusing it is overcoming it
and devoting that energy to the creation
of communities and so on to the
priesthood. You why should a priest be
chased? That's a big question that the
medievals had. But they've and right up
to the present day, the Catholic Church
has said that the priest should be
chased because of this. He must not
acquire that concentrated
need for another single human being that
the erotic otherwise might lead to.
the only way of being the true shepherd
of his flock is to stand back from all
of them. Now, of course, if we take the
more standard um surface reading of
parsal seriously, it's not only in the
erotic that we find attention, but also
in the way that death is presented.
death, which has previously been
presented as the key to redemption, the
ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate end to
which we're all moving, is now seen as
something, again on this, I would say,
more surface reading to be avoided. If
we take seriously the Grail Knights as
being exalted in the context of the
opera, well, they cluster around the
grail, begging for it to be disclosed,
almost like addicts reaching for a fix.
And what is this fix? It's the
prevention of death. Titel is inoned in
the grave and yet he lives. I mean, is
there anything more spooky? Uh, it never
gets portrayed.
All that is odd, but it's a way of dramatizing
dramatizing
what a monastic community really is. It
is a collective
a collective bid for immortality. Mhm.
Uh and um
again you might say that there is still
surviving in this the old theme of
Tristan and his older that that sex and
death are one and the same thing seen
under different light so to speak. But I
I agree that stuff about Titel in the
tomb is is spooky. And um I mean should
we take seriously the idea that this is
being presented as it would seem on the
surface to be as something that Vagner
is purposely exalting or should that
maybe give us pause for thought and
think again that there's something
perhaps more subversive going on in the
maybe there's something subversive but
here is what I would say in general
about this about Vagner's
uh dramaty
he he is taking a situation always
taking a situation out of a pre-existing
literature in a whole cultural context
and using it to symbolize something
and this is in this case it's extremely
important because the gospel story about
Christ's crucifixion
one way of reading it is that this is a particular
particular
episode in something which is in all our
lives you know that the the God that we
love and depend upon from our redemption
is also the God whom we crucify. You
know that and that the redeemer is there
in everybody's consciousness as the the
lamb of God that the thing that has been
granted for his salvation that he is
himself is going to kill. That's a
that's something you get in medieval
legends too. a sense that this of
eternal recurrence of these things and
that's what I think Vagna you might say
is doing in pipel
the story of the redeemer as this
mystical presence in everybody's life
who who um who can only redeem through
our own reenactment of these terrible
things and of course um Kundri is the
one who's laugh who who's who's mocked
the redeemer and therefore is outside
the possibility of redempion ion until
finally is offered to her and the others
are aiming for it in their own
particular way. But I think you know one
should see it in that way as something
like a a vision into a a constantly
repeated uh performance. It's like in a
cinema going on as soon as it's o over
once it starts again you know here is a
vision of it and that thing is going on
in all of us all the time and of course
if we take seriously the last line of
parall redemption to the redeemer then
this suggests that even perhaps the
redeemer has to take absolutely and this
is this is very modern view of what of
of what is happening in the gospel
gospels that this is a again the story
of something uh that happens in in all
of us and and we have the ability to
make this story come right. Now, of
course, our discussion thus far has been
focused solely on the dramatic issues,
the textual issues as it were, but of
course, Vagner's operas are well operas
where the music plays a substantial
role. So, how do you see that figuring?
Well, Vagnner's
real real importance as an artist is
precisely that he was able to embody
dramatic ideas in a musical form that
the the although the texts are very
beautiful and the the situations are
extraordinary. Nevertheless, he didn't
think that the words are going to convey
the feelings of the characters without
the aid of the music. And it indeed in
the Christian is older and in parifal
it's the music that does everything and
to for the to to manage this he had to
remake the language of music as he had
inherited it. He was obviously some a
very learned composer who knew how to
all the principles of counterpoint and
harmony as as they were taught in his
day. But he decided to add to them and
to change them. He his music is
extremely contrauntal. I say it's it's
always um conducted by multiple voices
each each moving in its own
completely logical line and forming
harmonies out of their confluence. But
uh in order to as it were transcribe the
feelings of the characters into it, he
had to make that the lines in which the
melodies move into something completely
new completely chromatic as say always
moving by semmitones or taking all the
12 notes of the scale as of uh equal
value and likewise moving through
harmonies which didn't have a clear
function in the traditional harmonies
that used by Beethoven and and Mozart
and so on.
For us it sounds perfectly logical and
because we're now habituated to it but
at the time it didn't sound logical at
all to many people. Indeed the opening
of Tristan is older which lands on that
strange discord the Tristan chord to
many people was something completely
weird and then he resolves that discord
onto another discord and then and then
another discord comes. So it in fact the
whole thing doesn't doesn't resolve
until 5 hours later which is an
extraordinary achievement and it's a way
of transcribing into music this idea
that he was wanting to put across of the
erotic as something which in which we're
totally engaged but can never find
satisfaction until in death that it's
always going to be renewed be because
there isn't any particular
mortal condition which counts Does it satisfaction?
satisfaction?
And that's something he in all his
operas he uses that sort of technique.
He and at the same time he has this kind
of grammar the grammar of the light
motif. Whenever some some important
episode or important character comes
into being, there is also an important
piece of music associated with it. And
that piece of music, the light motif,
which um doesn't exactly represent the
character or the this situation, but is
if you like a byproduct of it, it then
enters the orchestra like an independent
personality and the orchestra welcomes
it and develops it. So it goes through a
musical development through which we
understand the development of the
character or the situation much better
than we ever would through words. We
hear for instance the the Ryan Gold
motive uh which is just two chords at
the beginning of Ryan Gold. um we hear
that uh change and develop and uh it's
always two chords but the chords change
they become murky and oily and finally a
sort of horrible clotted sneeze at the
end of Gerta Demong through purely
musical development whereby you
understand that this pure this symbol of
the pure innocence of nature has become
by the end of the the ring uh the record
of all the greed and and resentment
which has been built into it and that's
an incredible achievement which is
impossible without music. Now in the
case of Parcifol is there something
distinctive about the music of that
opera there there certainly is um it's
uh it's not self-consciously advanced in
the way that Tristan and his older is
but it actually sounds more advanced in
many parts. The prelude to act three
sounds like Shernburgg. sort of these
jagged um peculiar
um uh chords and and melodic lines and
act two likewise. Uh uh but um one thing
that I think he does in Paripell which
which is uh
very characteristic is he takes little
fragments from the old lurggical move
music fragments of polifany sort of
almost palistrina like polifany and the
famous dresdon amen
which from the Protestant tradition
which Mendlesson had used in the
reformation symphony and so on and and
uses these to uh create a background of
of pure innocence so to speak and then
and then builds them in to his own much
more torturous
structures. But whether I think it's um
if you look at the perhaps the prelude
to act one of pacifel which is perhaps
his most beautiful piece of music he he
has found there using the chromatic
idiom of Tristan and adding to it this
innocent polifany one of the greatest
symbols of religious yearning that there
is in all of art. You know that there is
this from the very first notes a kind of
hung a spiritual hunger, a longing for
something and that longing goes on and
is never resolved. And that is until
finally the the the prelude ends just on
an open dominant seventh chord building
up like a great pillar of ice uh into
the heavens and then it opens onto the
Seen through the cont lens, the human
predicament embodies a profound duality.
The realm of morality and the realm of
the erotic are deeply informed by this
insight. While many of Vagner's
philosophical influences have been
acknowledged and discussed, this
particular way of interpreting Vagner's
operas makes vivid the deep moral core
shared by his mature works.
Professor Scrutin, thank you so much for
joining us here on Philosophical
Conversations. Great to have you. Was wonderful.
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