Wagner's View
"Following one of our performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, a well-known local critic asked me, "What is this hypnotic power you wield over your singers? And why did you form the Chorale?" The first question is indeed flattering; however, just the opposite is true. Singers hypnotize me, especially when they are good. The second question can best be answered, I think, by telling something about the Chorale. Every Monday evening 200 singers converge on the Chorale studios to do one thing...sing.
They sing choral masterworks, large and small, and find the experience good. School teachers, salesmen, housewives, executives, factory workers, students, professional musicians and others from all walks of life and from distances up to a hundred miles, come with one aim of trying to produce fine choral singing. Each has had some musical training, can read music and loves to sing. To them the Chorale is an ideal, as it is to me, and they dedicate themselves to it with an almost unbelievable devotion. Several have changed or even left jobs that continually interfered with rehearsals. This sort of thing naturally calls for whatever best I have to offer. It would be presumptuous of me to assume that these intelligent people make such sacrifices out of deference to me alone. The main attraction I have stated above. But aside from the quality of the music we perform and unceasing drive toward perfection, we work hard, accomplish a good deal but manage to have a little fun along the way. We have many beliefs in common. We believe music should become a living expression of human emotions and creeds. When we rehearse great works we feel we are truly living through a great experience. We are not concerned with political affiliations or social questions; our interests are purely musical. The Chorale is a heterogeneous mixture of races, colors and creeds whose members lose sight of any differences in a common endeavor. And one thing in which we unanimously concur is the right of self-expression and of the dignity of individuals who make sincere efforts to raise choral art to the highest possible level."
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Famous quotes containing the words wagner and/or view:
“Well then! Wagner was a revolutionary—he fled the Germans.... As an artist one has no home in Europe outside Paris: the délicatesse in all five artistic senses that is presupposed by Wagner’s art, the fingers for nuances, the psychological morbidity are found only in Paris. Nowhere else is this passion in questions of form to be found, this seriousness in mise en scène—which is Parisian seriousness par excellence.”
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