The Hammock Papers: Wagner

Showing posts with label Wagner. Show all posts

22 May 2026

Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner

I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men; - I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to Her for ever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved.

Richard Wagner, born on this day in 1813, from "An End of a Musician in Paris"

Musicians from the Oslo Philharmonic perform "Siegfried Idyll"...

29 March 2026

Ample.

Delacroix, A Vase of Flowers, 1833

We are nothing but links in a chain. Old Gauguin and I understand each other basically, and if we are a bit mad, what of it? Aren't we also thoroughly artists enough to contradict suspicions on that score by what we say with our brush? Perhaps someday everyone will have neurosis, St. Vitus' dance, or something else.

But doesn't the antidote exist? In Delacroix, in Berlioz, and Wagner? And really, as for the artist's madness of all the rest of us, I do not say that I especially am not infected through and through, but I say and will maintain that our antidotes and consolations may, with a little good will, be considered ample compensation.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh. Monday, 28 January 1889

29 December 2025

Wagner, The Ring Cycle

Richard Farnes, Music Director of Opera North from 2004-2016, conducts the entirety of Wagner's epic, Der Ring des Nibelungen ...

22 May 2024

Happy Birthday, Wagner

Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being -- musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.

Richard Wagner, born on this day in 1813

Solti drives the bus in a masterful performance of the overture to The Flying Dutchman ...

22 May 2023

Happy Birthday, Wagner

Richard Wagner was born on this day in 1813.

Siegfried Idyll, performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by Alain Altinoglu ...

22 February 2023

Wagner, Siegfried, WWV 86

Zoltán Szőke performs the horn call ...

25 September 2022

Wagner, Siegfried

Anneke Scott performs the "Long Call" from Act II ...

'Tis Autumn.

30 January 2022

Wagner, Siegfried, WWV 86C

Annamia Eriksson plays the horn call from Act Two ...

27 May 2021

Believe.

Richard Wagner

22 May 2021

Happy Birthday, Wagner

Richard Wagner was born on this day in 1813.

Emmanuel Krivine conducts the Orchestre National de France in a performance of the "Siegfried-Idyll" ...

27 February 2021

Wagner, Wesendock Lieder

Elīna Garanča performs with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic ...

14 August 2020

Wagner, Tristan and Isolde

The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra performs the Prelude ...

13 August 2020

Premiered.

Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung premiered on this date in 1876.

Watch from his stand as Richard Farnes conducts the entirety of Der Ring des Nibelungen ...

Bruno Lussato's documentary, In the Eye of the Ring ...

10 June 2020

Premiered.

Wagner, Tristan and Isolde Score, 1865

Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde premiered on this date in 1865.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra ...

22 May 2020

Happy Birthday, Wagner

Richard Wagner was born on this date in 1813.

Emmanuel Krivine conducts The National Orchestra of France in a performance of the "Siegfried Idyll" ...

04 April 2020

Wagner, Lohengrin

Simon Rattle leads the Berlin Philharmonic in the Prelude ...

24 February 2020

Wagner, Siegfried

Annamia Eriksson performs the horn call from Act II, Scene 2 ...

Good morning.

04 January 2020

Wagner, The Ring Without Words

Lorin Maazel conducts the Berlin Philharmonic ...

02 January 2020

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

29 December 2019

Wagner, Wesendonck-Lieder

Anna-Caterina Antonacci performs with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin ...

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."