A Case of Tannhauser

This clip reveals, I think, the magnetiseur and melancholia that Nietzsche finds in Wagner. I would like to highlight the segment (5:59-8:13 min) that accompanies the second quotation. You will find here a rare moment (7:06 min), when the weight of the overture falls on just two violins in the principal circle. The velvet-gloved clarinet softly transitions the orchestra into a quiet slumber, almost inducing an inebriated haze that coats the upper-register trills in the strings sections. The concertmaster plays a lazy, shut-eyed melody while the assistant concertmaster industriously urges a resistance to sleep, an earnest undercurrent, a refusal that becomes increasingly futile when the clarinet returns with his saccharine and seductive mournful call. We hear a duo become trio, but melodically, the clarinet as counter-point seems to pull the violin into a dripping lethargy. Enjoy.

0:00-3:07 min: "Once more: Wagner is admirable and gracious only in the invention of what is smallest, in spinning out the details. Here one is entirely justified in proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatest miniaturist in music who crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness. His wealth of colors, of half shadows, of the secrecies of dying light spoils one to such an extent that afterwards almost all other musicians seem to robust" (Section 7, pp. 171, 1967 Kaufmann translation).

5:59-8:13 min:"But quite apart from the magnetiseur and fresco-painter Wagner, there is another Wagner who lays aside small gems: our greatest melancholiac in music, full of glances, tendernesses, and comforting words in which nobody has anticipated him, the master in tones of heavy-hearted and drowsy happiness" (Section 7, pp. 171, 1967 Kaufmann translation).