Wagner

He was a beautiful sunset confused for a sunrise.
( Debussy, on Wagner )

Wagner was never of service to music.
( Debussy )

Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments
but bad quarters of an hour.
( Rossini )

The stern and loyal mastery of our great Beethoven
easily triumphed over this vague
and high-flown charlatanism [of Wagner].
( Debussy )

Wagner’s art can never completely die.
It will suffer that inevitable decay,
the cruel mark of time on all beautiful things;
yet noble ruins must remain,
in the shadow of which our grandchildren
will brood over the past splendor of this man,
who, if he had been a little more human,
would have been altogether great.
( Debussy )

Parsifal is one of the loveliest monuments of sound
ever raised to the serene glory of music.
( Debussy )

Parsifal – the kind of opera that starts at 6 o’clock
and after it’s been going for three hours,
you look at your watch and it says 6:20.
( David Randolph )

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
( Mark Twain )

One supreme fact which I have discovered
is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates.
Imagination is the creative force.
Imagination creates reality.
( Wagner )

You lose your identity when in his presence;
you are sadly inclined to forget that there is something else in the world
beside Wagner and his music.
( Sir Hubert Herkomer, who painted Wagner’s portrait )

…the revered and detested, admirable
and despicable man [Wagner]
who bestrides the nineteenth century like a colossus.
(A. J. B. Hutchings, the Pelican History of Music )

This work [Liebesverbot]
represents a bold glorification of free sensuousness.
( Wagner )

I write music with an exclamation point!
( Wagner )

This singing of duets, trios, and quartets, this whimpering,
is quite insanely stupid and tasteless;
for it remains entirely without charm for the senses,
and thus amounts only to a playing and singing of mere notes.
Whatever is an exception to this statement,
I shall be glad to admit.
( Wagner )

…to be sure, my talents, taken separately and individually,
are not great at all; I am something and achieve something
only when I bring them all together
in an effect and when they and I
are recklessly consumed therein.
( Wagner, in a letter to Liszt )

To me Tristan is and remains a wonder!
I shall never be able to understand
how I could have written
anything like it.
( Wagner )

It [Lohengrin] is poison – rank poison.
( London Music Critic )

I do not believe that a single composition of Wagner
will survive him.
( Moritz Hauptman )

Wagner’s art is sick.
Wagner is a great injury to music.
( Friedrich Nietzsche )

This is a stupid Punch-and-Judy show,
which is much too poor for children
over seven years of age;
moreover, it is not music.
( Leo Tolstoy, referring to Siegfried )

This work of yours gives me
the greatest pleasure.
( Wagner, to Bruckner,
on his 3rd Symphony )

WILHELM RICHARD
WAGNER
born: Leipzig, 22 May 1813
died: Venice, 13 February 1883, aged sixty-nine