Alex Ross: evaluation

Transcript context

…Isn’t there something human — — it all went wrong. It all went wrong. He had the potential to become that kind of universal figure, and he did not because of his anti-Semitism, because of his extreme nationalism, and so it shadows his achievements. There will always be this asterisk next to Wagner, and you’re always aware of that issue. But I think that, in a weird way, enriches the experience for me, to be conscious of all this darkness. It takes this body of work out of the realm of the ideal — this idea that music just lifts us up and takes us into this other world for a little while, and we’re entertained or led into this sublime sphere, and then we come back to reality. With Wagner, you never leave reality, and everything sublime and magnificent and moving in Wagner is inseparable from this corruption, this darkness, this evil. And I think that makes him a very human, unfortunately, exemplary human phenomenon, where the greatness and the darkness are all mixed together because that’s who we are as a species. And Wagner really exemplifies our species, in some ways, in terms of this mixing together of creative and destructive energies all at once, and you can never separate them — if that’s not too drastic. [laughs] Maybe it’s our enthusiasm itself for Wagner that we should worry about. In your book, you mention, of course, Apocalypse Now — Francis Ford Coppola’s use of the music from Die Walküre when the helicopters are bombing the countryside, and there’s some combination of terror and beauty in the music that does make that a thrilling scene. Shouldn’t we be repulsed by our very attraction to Wagner? And thus, we’re always wanting to keep it at a distance. Maybe we listen to it two or three times a year just to remind ourselves of why we don’t treat it as we would Beethoven or Mozart, who were classical liberals, very human, very vulnerable figures, had a strong sense of humor. And the whole tradition of Wagner’s descendants, and how they connected with Hitler and the Nazis — shouldn’t we keep it at a very real distance from ourselves, but periodically pull it out of the drawer to remind ourselves why we’re attracted and then run away as fast as we can?…

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