Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde w/Case Scaglione

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0:00Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor, and I'm the music director of the Orchestre National de Lille and the chief conductor of the Allborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank all of my new Patreon sponsors, Donato, Sarah, Andrew, Issa, George,

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1:09So as you can tell, there are a lot of new Patreon subscribers this week, and that is because over on my Facebook page I announced this, but I haven't announced it on the actual show yet. I am starting a new Patreon-exclusive series, a mini-series, on Schubert's Die Schöne-Müllerin, The Incredible Song Cycle. Every week I'll go through one of the 21 songs in the cycle, so it's going to be a series that's going to last about six months. So I'm really excited to get that started. I think the first

1:40episode will go up next week, so head over to patreon.com slash sticky notes podcast to learn a any new listeners, because it was a big surprise, a fantastic surprise, to find my podcast featured in the New York Times last week about six classical music podcasts. I was in some great company as well, so this was really exciting, and welcome to all of those new listeners. We've got some really exciting episodes coming up on the Liszt-Faust symphony, Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, Dvorak's Piano

2:14Quintet, and in the archive, basically the entire standard symphonic repertoire is covered. There's also lots of new discoveries. You can search in any podcast app by composer, and you'll see those episodes. Now, the other thing that I want to mention in this longer-than-usual introduction is I got so much helpful feedback from my question about the sound of the show a couple of weeks ago, in my episode about Lili Boulanger's Psalm 130. There was some feedback that everything was fine,

2:47but also other feedback that basically my voice is generally a bit too soft compared to the music, and this is something that's really tricky with classical music, because the soft dynamics are really soft, and the loud dynamics are really loud. So what I've tried to do for this episode, there are less clips than usual in this episode, is to just basically raise the volume of my voice and keep the sound of the music the same. So if you can continue to send feedback based on this episode today, it'll really help me over the course of the next few episodes to, I think,

3:20solve this once and for all with the sound level. And then finally, to introduce today's episode,

Introducing guest Case Scaglione

3:26this is a continuation of the series I started with my friend Aram Dimersian on Handel's Messiah, where I have a friend, conductor, musician, come in and tell me a little bit about a piece that I just don't know that well. And longtime listeners of this show know about my very complicated relationship with Wagner and his music. So I was so thrilled to be joined by my great friend, Case Scaglione, who is one of the great Wagner experts and great Wagner conductors around, to talk me through the prelude in Liebestod to Tristan and Isolde. You'll soon hear that we

4:00quickly left any sort of analysis and got into something a lot more metaphysical about Wagner, which is, I think, perfectly appropriate for the music of this seminal composer. Thank you so much for listening to this very long, but I think important introduction. And on to Case Scaglione and the prelude in Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.

Childhood memories of Wagner

4:24A big welcome to my good friend, Case Scaglione, the music director of the Orquestre Nationale Ile-de-France and an amazing conductor and has been a friend of mine for, what, like 20 years now? Oh my God, it's true.

4:42We met in Aspen as conducting students at the Aspen Conducting Academy. We were basically like roommates. And brothers ever since. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, and for 20 years, Case has been trying to get me into Wagner in different ways. And so to continue this series on pieces that I don't know as well as I should, I thought Case, who is like one of the most passionate people about Wagner that I've ever met. I've already done

5:15an episode where I talked about why I don't like Wagner with my brother-in-law, Raphael. So I'm not going to do that, but just to, as a sort of way into the prelude in Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, why Wagner?

5:29Yeah, I mean, interestingly, I came to classical music through my parents bringing me to a performance and it was a, it was a, you know, I was seven or eight years old and we went to Tristan because of a kind of, of a babysitter cancellation. And, uh, needless to say, I had absolutely no idea what was going on as a kid, uh, hearing this music, but I found it so intoxicating. And even in my, my, my young brain, the music sounded important to me and, uh, and I was drawn to it. And I, there were years when

6:08I started that I would order Wagner scores and kind of thumb through them. And I didn't really understand. And I, it was, uh, this was actually the, the prelude in Liebestod was one of the first pieces that I conducted, uh, in, um, in, in graduate school. And it was very difficult for me. I didn't understand the language, but there was something elemental, the way that it felt that felt important to me. And, uh, and it's been a, it's been a lifelong journey and all of these years, not only

6:40is it continued to, to be, uh, to be fulfilling and moving to me on the level of like Bach and Mozart, uh, but the profundity and the bottomlessness of it is, uh, is so generous. It's a, it's a lifelong thing. Yeah. Even with my often expressed skepticism about Wagner, when you start to listen to any of this, uh, I mean, I think actually for me, especially this piece, there's this sort of feeling in your stomach that you get from no other composer, uh, that I have to admit is there,

7:11um, all the time. Um, well, I mean, even, you know, even in, in Brahms's life, when they had this rock and roll rivalry between the two of them, uh, this might be apocryphal, but there was some sort of, I can't remember where I read this. There was some sort of interview. Somebody was asking and Wagner said, I mean, as we all know, he was a first rate composer and an 11th rate human being, uh, you know, not, not only a racist, but probably some sort of antisocial personality disorder, you know, uh, like the, the bad things about his, his, his person continue after racism for quite a

7:45while. Um, but he said these horrible things, you know, about Brahms and someone, uh, talked to Brahms specifically about it and said, you know, what do you say about this and this? And he said something along the lines of very, with, you know, very humbly, uh, what can I say about the person who wrote Tristan and Isolde? Uh, and it is absolutely true. Oh, I mean, but even people who hate him, I, I was, uh, uh, Thomas Addis was working with us at the New York Phil, uh, and he is someone who's not the biggest, uh, Wagner fan. Uh, he said something, uh, uh, about Wagner corrupting notes,

8:20which I don't agree with, but that's not, that is not an unfair, um, uh, an unfair assessment. Uh, and he even said the same thing. I mean, he said, you know, Tristan is a perfect piece. What can you say?

8:50So we're not going to talk about the whole opera because obviously we don't have 10 hours, but we're, we're going to focus on the Prelin Liebestod and I found, um, a wonderful thing. Speaking of big names who said beautiful things about Wagner, uh, Nietzsche wrote, uh, I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music. Every nerve in me is a twitch and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture. And he was speaking about the

9:20prelude to Tristan. Um, so you said you first heard this when you were seven or eight years old. Do you have like a tactile memory or a sound memory of that, of the, of the prelude specifically? There's shreds of it, of what it felt like. Um, uh, there was a feeling in my chest that I, that I had again, the first time I conducted it. I know, you know what I'm talking about, where it's all, it is so, and you use this word, there is something narcotic about it where one

9:51has to go, when we conduct, there should be a level of detachment. You really have to fortify yourself in this. Um, uh, somebody asked Telemann once, you know, they were comparing Tristan to a, to a, to a kind of lion, you know, what do you do with this? And the, the interviews in, in, in German, but it's a, it's a brilliant interview nonetheless. And he says, uh, something along the lines of, I, I give the, the, the, um, the lion meat when it's time, but I keep my distance.

10:21He says, uh, and that is absolutely right because it will eat you. Um, and if it becomes, if it becomes this emotional thing, it'll be a mess. Nobody knows what's going on. Uh, so, um, there's, there's something about that, that we need, we need distance from it.

The significance of the Tristan chord

10:39Yeah. I, I definitely want to talk about the pacing of it as in a sort of conducting sense at some point. But so the thing that most people, even if they don't know this opera or they don't know anything about Wagner, even they know the Tristan chord. And I've talked about it like on the show before, because other composers used it, but what is, what is its significance to the rest of the opera? This, this famous chord. Yeah. It's not only its significance in the opera,

11:27it's its significance in the history of Western civilization. Right. Uh, you know, as well as I do, this is piece was written in the late 1850s, performed for the first time in the 1860s. Nevertheless, uh, if you take any 20th century music class, you, the 20th century makes no sense without these four notes. Um, the significance of, of, of this chord in the pieces, um, we had lived in a world before this opera of a kind of classical aesthetic where everything on

12:02the level of a symphony or a sonata had to do with tension and with resolution. Um, and in a classical sense, in a very, uh, in, in, in a micro sense, um, the way that a phrase worked had to do with the way that we set up a kind of chord that we move away from it. And then we resolve that we resolve back again. The chord itself is wholly unremarkable. It's four notes that, um, that Mozart or Beethoven could have used and that in itself, by the way, like that, this is the thing

12:35is that this chord is not some invention by Wagner. It's, it's a, it's a unusual, but you know, well-used chord. Yeah. Well, I mean, not only well-used it's, it's, it's, it's in the ABCs of the grammar of, um, of, of, of, of harmony. I mean, you would use it in any, I would, I would venture to say that almost any Bach chorale has these four notes. But what it implies to our classical ears doesn't come to pass. Um, it implies some kind of D minor chord,

13:29or, or something in D minor, but it doesn't behave this way at all. So it moves from this kind of tension that we expect resolution to a different kind of tension. And the device in, in this, in this entire opera is the not fulfilling of the promise of that chord. What this chord does is that it poses a kind of question. And there's a very Zen sort of thing about it that by the end of the opera, uh, it doesn't feel like

14:23a resolution, but rather a release into the infinite where the question itself is erased. I was going to say actually that I'm writing a show, which is going to come out two weeks after this one about lists fast symphony right now. I had a Patreon sponsorship because it's not a piece that I also another piece that I didn't really know, but that the, the quote unquote Tristan chord is all over that piece. And it was written seven years before Tristan. And it's, it's an amazing thing. I mean, it's really the, the kind of the, the revolutionary quote unquote revolutionary

14:57composers like Beethoven and Wagner and Schoenberg. Also they take what is quote unquote normal and do something completely unusual with it. So that the first, but for me, what's interesting when I listen to this piece is I know, you know, from, from, you know, all of what we know about this piece is that, you know, the idea of unresolved harmony and unresolved tension, but actually the appearance of that chord so early also after these kind of the famously longing sixths going up and then coming

15:32back down again, there's, there's something so kind of unexpected about it in that moment as well. So it's not just that it doesn't resolve. It's that the way he uses it is completely unusual. It's almost like he uses it as a kind of resolution in itself. Yeah. That we accept. That's the thing that, that the, the prelude, uh, if you're thinking about it in, in terms of the earlier 19th century is wholly unsatisfying. And if you're waiting for

16:05the D, um, um, uh, this never happens, but somehow, uh, there is a kind of cathartic thing about it where the, the, the metaphysical ethos of the entire thing is set up, uh, with something that on paper should be frustrating. Um, and this is, I mean, this is the interesting thing about it. It's just four notes. They don't mean anything. Right. And then continuing on from that, talk to me about like the harmony in general in the prelude, because the idea of this unsatisfied longing and, and, and constant striving, which you never get the answer to, as you said, that is, I mean,

16:42in terms of a compositional sense, that's a huge risk to take because people are, like, as you said, people are expecting a resolution at some point and he just strings it out. I mean, not, of course, not only in the prelude, but for another three hours to come, but how does, I mean, in terms of, you know, harmonically speaking, like, how does he achieve that without in a sense, creating a kind of, um, frustration that you, with, with this? Well, I mean, it's like, I, like I said before,

17:13the way that the chord, um, and of course, when you're talking about music, it's a little bit like dancing about poetry. It doesn't make any sense, you know? Uh, but thank you for devaluing the entire idea of all critics and your podcast is you're wasting your time. Yeah, no, no. It's, um, um, yeah, I mean, it's somehow our ears become accustomed to not getting the thing that we're after. And so, um, not only is he doing this revolutionary thing, but at the same time,

17:47he makes us okay with it so that we forget what it is that we're after in the first place. That's why I said at the end, when we finally get this, this resolution, this B major chord at the end, it's, it is an erasure of the question itself rather than the answering of it. Um, and this, this ties very much into, like I said, conducting the thing. And what I've found in my, in my own life is that, uh, it doesn't need help. It speaks by itself. If you can create the conditions where it

18:21needs to happen, I find that non-interference with the thing actually allows it, allows it to, uh, to, to speak properly. Yeah. And that's the, you know, we're going to be listening to your

Pacing and conducting Tristan

18:32recording interspersed with this, um, as, as we, as we go, but in terms of, you know, how to pace this piece. And when, when I talk about pacing for people who don't know, I mean, the idea that you don't overplay early climaxes, the idea that you don't go as you, as you were talking about this kind of sense of detachment, always kind of knowing where you are in the structure of the piece, something that I, I, you just did Mahler nine. So you'll be very familiar with this. I, I watched a video of Leonard Bernstein rehearsing Mahler nine. And he said that when he was younger,

19:03he tried to underplay early climaxes. And then he realized it's impossible. And you have to give, what did he say? Everything you have to bar 31 and then eight bars later, even more, which is a great Bernstein thing to say, but it's actually implies a kind of pacing, which is that you go to the maximum and then you just keep going from there. Yeah. And how do you feel about Wagner in that sense? Do you feel like you've got to ring every, every drop of it out from the prelude or you have to keep going? One can't. Yeah. It's just not possible. And of course, you know, uh, you know, what can we say?

19:37I mean, Lenny is all of, as American conductors, he is our father. He's the, he's the godfather. And I must say, it's a, it's a very Lenny thing to say, you know, uh, that you give all, and then six measures later. Um, I know, I know what he means by that, but in the case of Wagner, uh, you know, conducting in general is something it's like an alligator. The more you give, the more it will take. Um, and if, if, if one put themselves 2000% into every measure, you'd be wasted by the time you

20:08got to the, to, to the actual, uh, to the actual singing part. I think in, in, in Wagner, um, there is, uh, there is an implied sort of tempo in a way that the thing unfolds. And I find it very much connected to like Schubert songs. I think we often think of it as this sort of massive thing, but I think if we can keep the clarity of text and of pacing in a very classical sense, um, that, that, that, that it, that it, it speaks for itself. Um, yeah, I, I, there is an implied tempo and a pulse

20:44of every measure. Brahms prepares us for the, for this a bit. Uh, you can't play a Brahms symphony in the same tempo all the time, the way that you would have Beethoven symphony. Um, and in Wagner, I think it's taken to, to an even more degree, but I think if we can find the simplicity and the plain speakingness of it and the classicism in it, this is something that allows it to go, uh, to go so that we become sort of facilitators for this river to take its natural course. I, I just find it really dangerous, uh, in any music, but particularly in Wagner

21:19to get, uh, over involved. Like I said, it feels and sounds so good that in any interpretation, there needs to be this balance of heart and of intellect. Uh, and the risk in Wagner is that it goes 2000% heart and no intellect so quickly because the music is so intoxicating. And while it feels good, the tendency will be for it to not make any sense to who's listening to it. Yeah. I've had a few experiences where I've been not happy with myself after, and I don't conduct

21:53very much Wagner, but it's general. I'm trying to change that. This is a, this is a, this is a plot. This is the show. The point of this show is to make like next year, I'll be doing 10 performances of the ring. Exactly. Okay. Let's start with Tristan. We're in a ring, the ring. I, you know, we have, I have other issues with, but I've had performances of very emotional music. Um, you know, especially like Rachmaninoff or something or, or Mahler, where I've felt a little bit personally detached and it's been more difficult for me. And then those are always the performances where

22:27people are the most moved. And it's this kind of amazing, again, it's actually the opposite of something that Bernstein would, was, would say that when he felt his greatest performances were when he was very far away and he was in another world and how long it took him to come back to the world after. But actually there's something very strange psychologically about how, if you have this sense of slight detachment, the, the emotion of the piece almost goes over your head and into the audience. Yeah. And that, that's kind of the, the magical thing about it. Yeah. Well, I mean,

22:59it's the, it's the disillusion of the, of the ego that I think is necessary for any, um, for any artists, you know, whether you're a poet hoping to write a true, uh, a true word or, or for us that would like to, to, to, to, to give a moving performance, one does require. And I think that if we have this feeling that it is us, that's doing it, somehow we're, we're destroying the thing. This doesn't mean to be passive, of course, uh, to be absolutely present. There's a wonderful,

23:30uh, quote in, in T S Elliott. I forget where it's from. Something that between the, the thought and the act lies the shadow, uh, and the extent to which we have good technique, so to say, whether one is painting or writing is that there is no difference between the intent and the doing of it. You know, I imagine Michelangelo on, on his back painting the Sistine Chapel. Uh, and he was, I suppose, half a meter from this thing, um, in no way able to see what this perspective from

24:06the floor would look like, but the, the, the technical artistry was so sophisticated that when we stand on the floor, we have a sense of, uh, space and of three dimensions in a way that's masterful. And you know what it's like on the podium, you, we can hear things, but it's very warped, you know? Uh, and it, it does require that, that, that level of kind of, of, of repose, uh, to be able to, to, uh, to give the thing. I just think with, with, with Wagner, it's like, it's a complete other level. One really runs the risk of becoming

24:39over-involved in it. ORGAN PLAYS

25:10ORGAN PLAYS

25:40Well, and it goes to actually a paragraph that I found of Wagner writing about what he was going to do with this opera. He said, And the use of the word simple when these are, for its time, you know, the most complex harmonic

26:20for hours and hours takes a harmonic sophistication that is remarkable. But there is a simplicity to it. Also, ostensibly, it's supposed to be pretty easy to stage. There aren't that many characters. The choir's not too involved. Now, ironically, you know, people, like, died trying to sing it the first time after he said that it was simple. It's very Wagner. And something else that I find really disturbing about this, Wagner, I have always thought, was probably a sociopath or something of this kind.

26:51But how awful is it that someone who did not probably experience true love in the way a normal human being does writes this thing? And I think you, Josh, knowing you, one of the things I love about you is your idealism. And this just, I mean, this is disturbing. I mean, even for me, you think, how is this possible? But, I mean, the artistry was so great that he succeeded in doing it that even non-Wagner fans say, my goodness, this is a pretty good piece.

27:36Yeah, it's inescapable. And it is one of these mysteries about how someone who was really, as you said, just such a completely awful person in almost every way, not, as you said, not speaking about just the anti-Semitism and all of the things that we know famously about him.

28:22The non-famous parts of this man's personality were also quite disturbing. And yet, yeah, you get this sense of a kind of worldly, this intoxication from listening to this music. And I'm curious, because I know how much, you know, you know about philosophy and how much you've dived into this, to it in the last years.

Schopenhauer's philosophical influence

28:47But, obviously, one of the main influences on this music and the idea of this music was Schopenhauer. Absolutely. And can you talk a little bit about his influence on Wagner and on this piece? Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting story because what he learned is quite antithetical to how he was in the world. I think this is, you know, for anybody that's a literature fan, I think the most interesting characters are ones who are contradictions because we as humans don't behave how we're supposed to based on what we profess to believe.

29:19Yeah, I mean, before Schopenhauer, Wagner was very much into this direction of the hero's journey and this kind of resolution that the hero goes through trials and tribulations and ends up winning. He's in the middle of writing Siegfried and comes into contact with Schopenhauer, also the Upanishads indirectly, things like this, very, very Eastern thought. And Schopenhauer basically talks about this idea that what it is that we truly want is something that we have no sense of.

29:56It's something that we can't know, that there is this unknown will that powers us. So he leaves Siegfried and I think he even wrote over Siegfried's line wherever he was writing Until We Meet Again or something like this.

30:13Interestingly, I mean, he continued to work on Siegfried after that, but there is a – he did make a decision to go and do this. And in a metaphysical sense, this opera is about longing and it is the feeling of desire and he comes back to the ring and the ring is not this hero's story anymore. It completely changes. The gold ends up right back where it started again.

30:45It melts and goes down to the bottom of the river Rhine and nothing is resolved, all of this pain and suffering and we're back to square one. In Tristan, particularly in Act 2, this is the most Schopenhauerian of all of it. The idea that daytime represents the lie and that nighttime is the truth, meaning that Schopenhauer talked about this idea of phenomenon and noumenon.

31:17Kant talked about it a bit, but Schopenhauer sort of took it a step further. Phenomenon in Schopenhauer's world is everything that we can kind of see and touch. Our titles, our stations, the story about the world. The noumenon sort of represents something much deeper. Well, in the light of day, Tristan and Isolde are not possible. Tristan is King Mark's right-hand man. He has obligations.

31:47Isolde is supposed to be marrying King Mark, all of this stuff. In Act 2, Brangena is waiting out front with Isolde. And the sign is supposed to be to let Tristan to come and see her that the light gets extinguished. This is a phenomenal metaphor. And Isolde says something along the lines in this huge climax in Act 2 because Brangena is warning Isolde the whole time. This is very dangerous.

32:19You shouldn't be doing this. And Isolde, under the influence of the potion, which, by the way, in Wagner's opera, serves a complete different purpose than in Gottfried von Strasbourg's version. But that's neither here nor there. The potion in Wagner's Tristan sort of unmasks something that was already there. Whereas in the original story, it's actually a potion that makes them... It's a real magic kind of thing. Exactly. And in this, it's a sort of, how do you say, a stripping down to the real noumenon of what's going on.

32:55Isolde says something along the lines of holding this lamp that when it goes out, Tristan's going to come. Brangena says, don't do it. Don't do it. Brangena's music is very agitated. Isolde, you can hear the murmur of the waters, and she's seeing the world as it is, so to speak. Isolde holds up this light and says, I wouldn't save this light if it was the light of my life, and throws it down.

33:36Brangena's music is very agitated.

34:06Brangena's music is very agitated. And then they have this beautiful scene where, ostensibly, they make love. And it's not just, it's not a longing in a traditional kind of Shakespearean sense. It's more that they talk about Tristan, Isolde, the idea of them together.

34:38They don't just want to be together. They want to destroy the conditions that make them separate. By the end of the opera, talking now about philosophy, it's unclear whether she dies or what's going on. It's very weird. She talks about being able to see him breathe, even though he's just died. And it's never fulfilled. Right? He doesn't see her at the end. He's there bleeding for what seems like three days, you know, in act three.

35:13And that longing never gets fulfilled. It is, like I said, the erasure of the question itself. And it's a catharsis at the end, but a release from the need for resolution. And that's what's so profound about it.

35:57And that's what's so profound about it.

36:27Yeah, so one of the things that in my research about this for our conversation is that I never knew this before,

The transfiguration and vocal performance

36:44is that Wagner did not call the end of this piece, the end of the opera, the Liebestod. He called the prelude, the Liebestod, and the end, the transfiguration. And it's exactly what you're talking about. And it does seem more accurate to me to talk about, not as a love death, because as you said, it is, I mean, depending on the staging you see, it is unclear what happens at the end. It's fascinating. She kind of dissolves into the music. And that's actually something, if we get into talking about what we now refer to as the Liebestod, in a concert performance of this, often you will hear it without the voice, which is, if you think about it, completely remarkable that the piece works.

37:31A hundred percent. A hundred percent. As well, without the voice, as with. And there is a sense when you hear it with the voice that the soprano is kind of dissolving into the orchestra, kind of in and out. And there's a... Well, she's also dying because it's the most awful thing to have to sing after three days of going through this opera, you know? Exactly, exactly. The poor thing. Yeah, I mean, and the orchestration remains exactly the same, whether you play it with or without the voice.

38:02And I think that that's something really remarkable and also kind of part of this philosophy that you're talking about.

38:24I don't know if you're a James Joyce fan, but like Finnegan's Wake is completely unreadable. However, this nonsense that it speaks, you know, the Humpty Hillhead of himself promptly sends an unquiring one.

38:57A child knows that Joyce is talking about Humpty Dumpty, the round sounds. And there's something about the Wagner that is exactly the same way. You don't need to know the text to feel what it's talking about. And I think that's what makes it truly great is that it requires no explanation. You know, she's talking about being, it doesn't translate well into English, Weltatmen, you know, to be in the world breath, to be sinking, drowning, unconscious.

39:28In German, it's so beautiful, but all of that is in the music already.

39:46In German, it's so beautiful, but all of that is in the music already. I was reading Wagner said before, again, he wrote the operas.

40:28He said, I've become exclusively preoccupied with a man, albeit only in literary form, who has entered my lonely life like a gift from heaven, talking about Schopenhauer. His principal idea, the final denial of the will to live, is of terrible seriousness, but it is uniquely redeeming. And I was reading that, very interestingly, Schopenhauer did not like Wagner's music at all and found it, he much preferred Rossini operas. Also good pieces, by the way. Also great pieces.

40:58But you would think that Schopenhauer would prefer something like Wagner. Yeah, let me tell you, him being a Rossini fan was not on my bingo card for today, you know, having read his literature, you know, like, really? Yeah, exactly. But I think it really shows that Wagner was trying to do something with music that, I mean, it's a cliche to say it's ahead of its time, but it was ahead of its time, not just for the regular audience, it was ahead of its time for one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century, which is quite remarkable.

Eastern thought and desire

41:29Well, I think, yeah, somehow, the things that are so metaphysically and philosophically serious, like this piece, go to this kind of, for lack of a better term, a very Buddhist place. I don't know if you know the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. This matters here, because T.S. Eliot was a devout Anglican. This poem that he wrote, which is perhaps the greatest poem written in English, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for it, and then never wrote another poem again afterwards.

42:07It reads like a Zen koan. And the reason is that if you go far enough in any direction, whether it's existentialism or Anglicanism or whatever, you ultimately get to this, what Schopenhauer calls the denial of the will to live, I have to say that's very German and severe. But in the Buddhist sense, it's that desire is the source of all suffering, and that the only way to become free of that is to be desireless.

42:40Now, the problem, and why this is a very simple but a difficult idea to grasp, is that if you want to get rid of desire, then you're desiring to get rid of desire. You're caught in this horrible jiu-jitsu match. You know, and that is what Tristan is about. It is a release from desire itself and the recognition that there is no self, that we are bundles of nerves.

43:10We are systems in which emotions are happening. But the story of us being a fixed person that wants this or that thing is ultimately a fiction that is the source of all of our suffering.

43:44The story of us being a fixed person that wants this or that thing is the source of all of us being a fixed person that wants this or that thing is the source of all of us being a fixed person.

44:14So, as a last question, what do you, somebody who's coming to this, let's say, listening to this, who has never heard this opera in its entirety, who doesn't really know Wagner, other than what you read about him, which obviously you mostly read about his personality, where do they start?

Approaching the music as a listener

44:42Do they start with this conversation and trying to learn about philosophy and Schopenhauer and Buddhism, or do they just dive right in? Absolutely not. All of these things are just stories. What they should start with is the torrent of emotion and feelings that is this piece. And particularly the prelude in Love Death, the best thing one could do is forget everything about Schopenhauer, phenomenon, noumenon, desire, all of that stuff. And just go with the waves.

45:14That is, I think, ultimately what makes this such incredible music is that it is such a tactile and physical experience. And that's what makes it great. Like all art, obviously we can have an interesting conversation about philosophy and Schopenhauer and how that changed Wagner. None of that is necessary in order to feel the singular experience of this emotional ride. And I think that's what makes it so interesting is that, you know, they say if you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you don't understand it.

45:50And I think it's true. You know, whether it's quantum mechanics or Wagner, there is a world where we can just sit back and enjoy the thing and marvel at it. Of course, it's interesting to have this conversation. But the fact of the matter is we will never get to the bottom of it, that when you get to the heart of the thing, it defies explanation somehow. Is it, hmm, how do I put this? Is it less, okay, I know, I feel like I know how you're going to answer this, but I'm still going to ask you anyway.

Conducting versus listening

46:24Is it less satisfying to conduct this piece than it is to listen to it? Absolutely not. Even with that sense of detachment, because you're talking, the reason I'm asking is because you're talking about a listener coming into it to follow the torrent of emotions that it creates. But as we have been saying, as a conductor, one has to not fall into that. You can't or else you're destroyed by it. So there's definitely a different feeling conducting it versus listening to it.

46:57That's obvious, but the emotional side of it's very different, too. Yeah, I mean, but I think there's something. I think there's something. You can see the smile on Case's face right now as he is talking about it. I can see him conducting this piece in his head right now. Yeah, there's something very satisfying about, this goes for all music, but as I've said again, with Wagner, it's particularly dangerous. You know how long we study these things. I mean, I just did Mauler 9.

47:29I've had it for a year.

47:32The instinct is to hug every single note. You've got the coffee stains and you've sat and poured over. What does this chord mean? But the danger of it is that we want to hug it too tightly and we destroy the thing. And this goes back to the ethos of the opera itself, the idea of letting go of this desire. We pour over these notes for a long time, but I think that in the performance of something like Tristan, there is something very satisfying about having looked at this ocean of material and of notes and of allowing it to speak for itself.

48:14We are servants of the composer. And to be able to get through something like this without hugging on to each measure, I think that in and of itself of allowing it to speak is enough of an accomplishment that conducting it is much more satisfying than listening to it for me. In spite of the fact that if we conduct a good performance of it, there is that level of detachment, which is, you know, Isolde at the end dissolving the need for desire itself.

48:50Well, there you go. Well, as always, it's so great to chat with you and it's nice to share one of our long discussions because this is pretty much how we talk on the phone. So, you know, people... Exactly. This is me and Josh on a random Tuesday. Exactly. Or Saturday morning in this case. Thank you so much, Case. And as I've been saying, we've been listening to Case's recording of this piece with the Orquestre Nationale Ville de France. And this is on Spotify, on basically anywhere you can get classical music.

49:23And it's a fantastic recording. And thank you so much for joining me. And may I say, I've always loved how you talk about music. And I have been a fan of Sticky Notes from the get-go. And it's just an honor to be here with you. Thank you. Thank you.

50:10Thank you. Thank you.