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Donnerstag, 12. Dezember 2013, 15 Uhr – Universität Bayreuth, Theaterraum
Konferenzeröffnung
Grußworte
Prof. Dr. Martin Huber, Vizepräsident der Universität Bayreuth
Prof. Dr. Jürgen E. Müller, Dekan der Sprach- und Literatur-
wissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Bayreuth
Kai Weßler, Staatstheater Nürnberg
Einführung
Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen, Universität Bayreuth
Prof. Dr. Nicholas Vazsonyi, University of South Carolina
Prof. Dr. Ivana Rentsch, Universität Hamburg
Prof. Dr. Arne Stollberg, Universität Basel
Eröffnungsvortrag
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Borchmeyer
“ich schreib’s euch auf, diktirt ihr mir! ” –
Richard Wagners medienästhetische Kritik der Schrift
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Freitag, 13. Dezember 2013, 18:30 Uhr – Schloss Thurnau, Ahnensaal
Festakt
Gründung Interdisziplinärer Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreis für Musiktheater an der Universität Bayreuth
und Vergabe Thurnauer Preis für Musiktheaterwissenschaft 2013
Musikalische Umrahmung: Peter Cervenec, Klavier
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Musik
Begrüßung (und Moderation)
Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen, Leiter des Forschungsinstituts für Musiktheater (fimt)
Grußworte
Dietmar Hofmann, Bürgermeister von Thurnau
Prof. Dr. Stefan Leible, Präsident der Universität Bayreuth
Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreis für Musiktheater
Gründung durch Prof. Eva Märtson, Präsidentin des
Richard-Wagner-Verbandes International
Vorstellung der Initiative: Frederike Krüger (Studierende Bachelor of Arts
Musiktheaterwissenschaft, 3. Semester), Björn Dornbusch und Bernd Hobe
(Promotionsprogramm Musik und Performance), Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen
Musik
Thurnauer Preis für Musiktheaterwissenschaft 2013
Preisverleihung durch Landrat Klaus Peter Söllner
Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Arne Stollberg, Mitglied der Jury
Grußwort der Preisträgerin Dr. Jelena Novak
Musik
anschließend Empfang im Schlosshotel (für geladene Gäste)
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www2013: Konferenzprogramm
WagnerWorldWide:Reflections
12.-15. Dezember 2013 in Bayreuth, Thurnau und Nürnberg
Wissenschaftliche Leitung: Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen (Bayreuth/Thurnau), Prof. Dr. Ivana Rentsch (Hamburg),
Prof. Dr. Arne Stollberg (Basel, Schweiz), Prof. Dr. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Columbia, USA)
Übersicht Tagung
Eröffnung Donnerstag, 12. Dezember, 15 Uhr
Sektion “Globalization/Markets” Freitag, 13. Dezember, 9 bis 10 Uhr, 15 bis 16 Uhr,
Sonntag, 15. Dezember, 12.30 bis 17.30 Uhr
Sektion “Media/Film” Freitag, 13. Dezember, 10.30 bis 13 Uhr
Sektion “Environment/Nature” Freitag, 13. Dezember, 16.30 bis 17.30 Uhr
Sektion “Gender/Sexuality” Samstag, 14. Dezember, 9 bis 10.30 Uhr
Sektion “History/Nationalism” Samstag, 14. Dezember 11 bis 18 Uhr
Sonntag, 15. Dezember 11 bis 12 Uhr
Übersicht Rahmenprogramm
Stadtrundfahrt Bayreuth/Besuch Villa Wahnfried und Festspielhaus,
Donnerstag, 12. Dezember, 17-19 Uhr
Finissage der Ausstellung www2013:Irre?! – Richard Wagner. Eine Würdigung des
Wahnsinns im Haus Steingraeber, Donnerstag, 12. Dezember, 19 Uhr
Vergabe Thurnauer Preis für Musiktheaterwissenschaft 2013 und Gründung des
Interdisziplinären Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreises für Musiktheater an der Universität
Bayreuth, Schloss Thurnau/Ahnensaal, Freitag, 13. Dezember, 18.30 Uhr;
anschließend Empfang im Schlosshotel (geladene Gäste)
“Hacking Wagner” – Olaf A. Schmitt im Gespräch mit Saar Magal zu ihrer Performance (Bayerische Staatsoper München, vom Juli 2012), Samstag, 14. Dezember, 18.15-19.15 Uhr
Stadtführung Alt-Nürnberg, Sonntag, 15. Dezember, 9.30-10.30 Uhr
Staatstheater Nürnberg “Das Rheingold”, Sonntag, 15. Dezember, 19 Uhr
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Detailliertes Programm
Donnerstag, 12. Dezember (Bayreuth, Campus/Theaterraum)
15.00-15.30 Eröffnung (siehe S. 3)
15.30-16.30 Eröffnungsvortrag: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Borchmeyer:
“ich schreib’s euch auf, diktirt ihr mir!“ –
Richard Wagners medienästhetische Kritik der Schrift
17.00-19.00 Stadtrundfahrt Bayreuth, Besuch Villa Wahnfried und Festspielhaus
19.00-20.00 Finissage im Steingraeber Haus: www2013: Irre?! - Richard Wagner.
Eine Würdigung des Wahnsinns – ein studentisches
Ausstellungsprojekt Freitag, 13. Dezember (Thurnau, Schloss/Ahnensaal)
Sektion “Globalization/Markets” I (Chair: Ivana Rentsch)
9.00-9.30 Barry Millington: Wagner 200 – Image, Reception, Legacy
9.30-10.00 Dr. Yaël Hêche: Commemorating Richard Wagner for Children:
“Siegfried-Idyll” dramatized
Kaffeepause
Sektion: “Media/Film” (Chair: Julie Hubbert)
10.30-11.00 Dr. David Trippett: Facing reality: on simulcast technology and the transfer of Wagner's music between digital platforms
11.00-11.30 Dr. Wendy Ligon Smith: Wagner and Fortuny: Designs for the Bayreuth Theatre
Kaffeepause
12.00-12.30 Frithwin Wagner-Lippok: #occupy wagner! – Performative
Aesthetics, Wagner’s Postdramatic legacy?
(Chair: Nicholas Vazsonyi)
12.30-13.00 Prof. Dr. Julie Hubbert: Not So “Loathsome Deutschtum”: Wagner,
Propaganda and American Documentary Films of the 1930s and 40s
Mittagspause
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Sektion “Globalization/Markets” II (Chair: Ivana Rentsch)
15.00-15.30 Prof. Dr. Gouzhong Sun: Wagner Research in China: Text and Context
15.30-16.00 Prof. Dr. Barbara Mittler: Wagner Goes East (and Back Again): Operatic Performance between Europe and China
Kaffeepause
Sektion: “Environment/Nature” (Chair: Arne Stollberg) 16.30-17.00 Dr. Joachim Junker: Luigi Nono’s Analytical Remarks on “Tristan
und Isolde” and the Manifestation of Nature in Wagner’s Music
17.00-17.30 Prof. Dr. Thomas Grey: Musical Landscapes in the “Ring”: An Eco-Musicological Perspective
18.30-19.30 Festakt (siehe S. 5)
Vergabe des Thurnauer Preises für Musiktheaterwissenschaft 2013 und Gründung des Interdisziplinären Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreises für Musiktheater an der Universität Bayreuth
ab 20:00 Empfang im Schlosshotel (geladene Gäste) Samstag, 14. Dezember (Thurnau, Schloss/Ahnensaal)
Sektion: “Gender/Sexuality” (Chair: Anno Mungen)
9.00-9.30 Dr. Anke Charton: “Wunschmädchen” and “Hehrste Helden”: Vocal Gender, Sexual Politics and the Embodiment of the Heroic in Wagner’s “Ring”
9.30-10.00 PD Dr. Gregor Herzfeld: Is it a Men’s World? The Construction
of Masculinities in Wagner
10.00-10.30 Dr. Mauro Fosco Bertola: Death Drive versus “Liebestod”?
Slavoj Žižek on Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”
Kaffeepause
Sektion: “History/Nationalism” I (Chair: Nicholas Vazsonyi) 11.00-11.30 Gero Tögl: The Bayreuth Enterprise as a 19th Century Network
12.00-12.30 Gwen D’Amico: Opera and Politics: “Die Meistersinger” at the
Intersection of New York City and World War II
Mittagspause
14.00-14.30 Dr. Anna Stoll Knecht: Beckmesser in a New Light: “Die Meistersinger” in Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
14.30-15.00 Dr. Brooke McCorkle: Twilight of an Empire: Staging Wagner in Wartime Tokyo
Kaffeepause
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15.30-16.00 Hermann Grampp: Bayreuth and the GDR
16.00-16.30 Dr. des. Golan Gur: Richard Wagner and Jewish/Israeli Identity in Music
Kaffeepause
17.00-17.30 Dr. des. Melanie Kleinschmidt: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism as Misconstrued Nationalism
17.30-18.00 Prof. Dr. Paul Lawrence Rose: The Problem of Anti-Semitism in the Wagner Operas
18.15-19.15 “Hacking Wagner” – Olaf A. Schmitt im Gespräch mit Saar Magal zu
ihrer Performance (Bayerische Staatsoper München, vom Juli 2012) Sonntag, 15. Dezember (Nürnberg, Staatstheater/Gluck-Saal)
9.30-10.30 Stadtführung Alt-Nürnberg
Sektion: “History/Nationalism” II (Chair: Nicholas Vazsonyi)
11.00-11.30 Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen: Wagner, Nürnberg und “Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg”
11.30-12.00 Dr. Matthew Werley: Wagners Ästhetik von Stadt und Staat:
“Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” und das Erbe des Historismus
in der deutschen Oper
Kaffeepause
Sektion: “Globalization/Markets” III (Chair: Arne Stollberg)
12.30-13.00 Elfi Vomberg: Wagnerianer heute
Mittagspause
15.00-15.30 Ann-Christine Karcher: Die Marke “Richard Wagner”
im Jubiläumsjahr 2013
16.00-17.30 Podiumsdiskussion: Wagner als “Marke” für Bayern?
mit Peter Theiler (Staatsintendant des Staatstheaters Nürnberg),
Prof. Dr. Claas Christian Germelmann (Professor für Marketing,
Universität Bayreuth), Dr. Markus Kiesel (Künstlerischer Leiter der
Essener Philharmoniker) und Prof. Dr. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Professor
für Germanistik und Komparatistik, University of South Carolina),
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen
19.00 Staatstheater Nürnberg: Das Rheingold
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Abstracts and Biographies
Dr. Mauro Fosco Bertola
Death Drive versus “Liebestod”? Slavoj Žižek on Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”
Over the last two decades the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has become one of the
most popular intellectuals in western society: His numerous appearances on talk shows
and TV programmes, as well as his idiosyncratic and humorous way of explaining his main
ideas with references to Hitchcock movies or to the banalities of everyday life have made
him, as Tony Myers put it, an “MTV philosopher”. But one of the most common sources of
examples in Žižek’s writings are Wagner’s operas and in the course of his prolific career he
has dedicated various essays and an entire book to Wagner’s music, by focussing his
critical attention particularly on the Ring, Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde.
Quite astonishing in the face of the conspicuous literature about Žižek’s philosophical and
political thinking is however the lack of critical reception of his writings on Wagner,
despite their stimulating insights. In my paper I intend to discuss Žižek’s interpretation of
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and his Lacanian use of Freud’s concept of the death drive in
order to explore new levels of meaning in Wagner’s work. In particular I will point out
how, on the basis of Isolde’s Liebestod, Žižek offers a new and highly interesting reading of
the link between Wagner’s reflections on sexuality and his political project.
Mauro Fosco Bertola is an Assistant Lecturer in Musicology at Heidelberg University. After
completing his Master’s Thesis in Philosophy in Italy, where he wrote on Nicolas
Malebranche, he studied Musicology in Heidelberg. In his PhD, which has recently been
published by Böhlau (Die List der Vergangenheit. Musikwissenschaft, Rundfunk und
Deutschlandbezug in Italien, 1890-1945), he considered the role of music traditions for
constructing national and fascist identities in Italian and German musicology and radio
broadcasting. His supervisor is Prof. Dr. Silke Leopold. Mauro Fosco Bertola has been a
Fellow of the Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg, of the Deutsches
Historisches Institut in Rome and of the Richard-Wagner-Verband. He has published
articles on the subject of the emergence of Italian musicology at the end of the 19th century,
the role of ancient music in Italian and German radio broadcasting before World War II,
and the links between fascist ideology and music.
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Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Borchmeyer
“ich schreib’s euch auf, diktirt ihr mir! ”– Richard Wagners medienästhetische Kritik der
Schrift
Für Richard Wagner stand die Schrift stets im Schatten der klingenden Rede. Damit fügt er
sich in die Tradition des abendländischen Phonozentrismus ein. In seinen Züricher
Reformschriften, besonders in Oper und Drama, hat er gegen die Künste polemisiert, die
bloß “Literatur” sind, d.h. sich in reiner Lesbarkeit erschöpfen und der sinnlichen
Realisierung entziehen. So nennt er das nur erzählende, sich “nicht an die Sinne, sondern
an die Einbildungskraft sich kundgebende Literaturgedicht” den lediglich “dürftigen
Todesschatten” des wahren, “sinnlich dargestellten” Kunstwerks, eben des dramatischen.
Sein Ideal ist in seinen späten Schriften das improvisierte, vor-schriftliche Kunstwerk.
Freilich muß die Improvisation “fixiert”, in die Schriftform überführt werden, aber so, daß
der improvisatorische Ursprung immer erkenn- und spürbar bleibt. Die große Parabel des
so entstehenden “Kunstwerks der Zukunft” findet sich in den “Meistersingern von
Nürnberg”, wo am Beispiel des Preislieds von Walther von Stolzing der Weg vom
improvisatorischem Einfall über dessen ,Diktat' und Aufzeichnung zu neuer, wiederum
improvisationsgeprägter Aus- und Aufführung in eine Opernhandlung überführt wird.
Dieter Borchmeyer war 1988-2006 Ordinarius für Neuere deutsche Literatur und
Theaterwissenschaft an der Universität Heidelberg, seit 2007 ist er Honorarprofessor für
Neuere deutsche Literatur an der Universität Graz und hält im Rahmen einer
Stiftungsdozentur für Kulturtheorie (Manfred-Lautenschläger-Stiftung) weiter
Vorlesungen an der Universität Heidelberg. Von 2004 bis 2013 war er Präsident der
Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste und Stiftungsratsvorsitzender der Ernst von
Siemens Musikstiftung. 2000 erhielt er den Bayerischen Literaturpreis (Karl Vossler-
Preis). Im Oktober 2005 wurde ihm von der Universität Montpellier III (Paul Valéry) der
Ehrendoktor verliehen. Er war und ist Gastprofessor an Universitäten in Frankreich
(Montpellier), Österreich (Graz) und besonders in den USA. Sein hauptsächliches
Arbeitsfeld ist die deutsche Literatur vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert und das Musiktheater,
mit dem Schwerpunkt auf Goethe, Schiller, Mozart, Richard Wagner und Thomas Mann.
Jüngste Buchveröffentlichungen: Goethe. Der Zeitbürger (1999), Richard Wagner.
Ahasvers Wandlungen (2002, amerikanische Ausgabe: Drama and the World of Richard
Wagner, 2003), Macht und Melancholie. Schillers Wallenstein (überarbeitete Neuauflage
2003), Mozart oder die Entdeckung der Liebe (2005) und: Nietzsche – Cosima - Wagner.
Porträt einer Freundschaft (2008). Seine neueste Publikation, zum 200. Geburtstag
Wagners erschienen: Richard Wagner – Werk, Leben, Zeit (2013).
Dr. Anke Charton
“Wunschmädchen” and “Hehrste Helden”: Vocal Gender, Sexual Politics and the
Embodiment of the Heroic in Wagner’s “Ring”
Through the examination of various stagings of the “Ring” performed for the bicentenary –
including Frank Castorf in Bayreuth and Robert Lepage at the MET/New York – against
the backdrop of historical positions regarding gender politics in opera, this paper centers
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on both historical and current presentations of gender in voice and performance and on its
ties to the heroic in the “Ring”. Special attention is being paid to the intersection of the
construction of vocal gender and the gendered idea of the hero(ine).
Viewed through this lens, the analysis of current Wagner staging is revealing both visual
and aural tropes, the history of which also implies delving into a broader concept of how
contemporary readings of Wagner for the stage are linked to a (gendered) performance
history. This includes a look at sexual politics in Wagner’s writing itself and especially to
the way these politics are being read and adapted for the stage today.
Anke Charton (Leipzig, Institute for Theatre Studies) earned her MA degree studying
Theatre Theory, Literature and Lingustics at the universities of Leipzig, Bologna and
Berkeley. She obtained her doctorate degree through a study of gender representation in
opera, applying an interdisciplinary approach in between Theatre Studies, Musicology and
Gender Studies. Charton has published and taught extensively on musical theatre, Early
Modern performance practice and especially the intersection of Gender Studies and the
Arts. Grants include two full scholarships by the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst and a
PhD commendation by the Mariann Steegmann Foundation. Current research projects
encompass Spanish theatre history, the gendered voice and the history of singing, and
early 19th century musical theatre.
Gwen D’Amico
Opera and Politics: “Die Meistersinger” at the Intersection of New York City and World
War II
In 1945, after a five-year hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera returned Richard Wagner’s Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg to its stage. It had been the only work of Wagner that had
been banned, and it was so treated ostensibly owing to its German nationalism and
association with the Third Reich. But was it the German nationalism or Wagner’s own
anti-Semitism that caused the unease? What resounded with the audiences? World War
II stands at an historic cross roads in the reception of Die Meistersinger in America. This
is where the “problem” with this work begins. As well, this episode has broader
implications for Wagnerism today. The Metropolitan Opera’s decision created a space that
allowed others to follow suit. In effect, the Metropolitan Opera’s cancellation tacitly
upheld and affirmed all that is perceived as negative within Die Meistersinger.
This study will examine the interior politics of Die Meistersinger and the environment at
the Metropolitan Opera in order to determine why the work was performed to acclaim in
New York from 1886 until World War I, but subsequently banned during both wars.
Cultural and political factors of 1940s New York will also be considered in order to
understand the response of audiences to what some perceived as a very “German” opera
within the larger context of American Wagnerism and, indeed, Wagnerism today. In the
end, this study will be “political history” of Die Meistersinger viewed through the prism of
wartime New York City.
Gwen D’Amico is a Doctoral Candidate in Musicology at the Graduate Center, City
University of New York and is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Conservatory of Music at
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Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is finishing her dissertation, “Richard
Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and World War II: The intersection of the
politics of war and opera in New York City, 1936-1945.” She is the current recipient of the
Martin E. Segal Dissertation Fellowship and has published in the Journal of the
International Alliance for Woman in Music. She has presented her work at the McGill
Music Symposium and the University of Leeds Conference, Richard Wagner’s Impact on
His World and Ours. Her areas of research include Richard Wagner, American reception
and gender issues; opera and politics; and American popular music.
Prof. Dr. Gouzhong Sun
Wagner Research in China: Text and Context
In present-day China, Wagner research seems in a marginal state. In last decades,
however, a few Chinese musicologists kept studying Richard Wagner, the man and the
music, and made some notable achievements, dealing with Wagner’s compositional
techniques, operatic ideas, practice of music dramas, and the aesthetic value of the
musical-theatrical work. The future of Wagner research in China may have expecting
possibilities: deeper analysis and interpretations of Wager’s works, a close reading of
music dramas with a comparative study of Chinese and Western musical-theatrical
systems, and reflection on the cultural significance of Wagner and his creation under the
context of contemporary globalization.
Guozhong Sun received his education at Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the
University of California at Los Angeles, where he earned his Ph.D. in Musicology. He is
Professor of Musicology at Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he has taught for many
years, and has held an appointment at Shanghai Normal University. He has written widely
on Mahler, Elgar, Chinese contemporary music and music historiography. He is currently
working on a book on music bibliography.
Hermann Grampp
Bayreuth and the GDR
Before 1961, many musicians coming from theatres of the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) were working at the Bayreuth Festival. Both Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner made a
special effort to establish ties with artists from East Germany in order to continue cultural
relations in a politically divided country. As from the year the Berlin wall was built (in
1961), and iron curtain also went down on the Bayreuth Festival house, preventing almost
all East German musicians from working for the Bayreuth Festival. This paper tries to
examine the exact relationship between the administration of the Bayreuth Festival and
GDR artists/the GDR state level between 1951 and 1990. There were well-known
international stars such as Theo Adam and Harry Kupfer who are known to have worked
for the Bayreuth Festival even though they were citizens of the GDR and thus, living
“behind the Berlin Wall”. However, looking at the matter in detail, one becomes aware that
there were a lot more GDR artists present in Bayreuth, before and after the building of the
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Berlin Wall. In examining this phenomenon, a completely new political aspect of the
Bayreuth Festival history becomes apparent which can be read as an “Cultural history of
the two Germanys”.
Hermann Grampp studied History, Economics and Political Science at the Free University
of Berlin, the University of Cambridge and the Sorbonne in Paris, holding Master degrees
from any of these institutions. In his historical research, he has focused on music history
and written on a variety of subjects, with a special emphasis on Wagner reception in
Europe. In 2013, he published his first book dedicated to Wagner, together with Dorian
Astor (in French: Comprendre Wagner, Max Milo Éditions). He occasionally works as an
opera critic, among others for altamusica.com and Opernwelt. Hermann Grampp lives in
Berlin and is currently finishing a PhD on the topic: “Social History of French Wagnerism
from 1860 to 1914”.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Grey
Musical Landscapes in the “Ring”: An Eco-Musicological Perspective
The representational affinity of music for myth and nature has been a constant throughout
the history of opera, culminating in the works of Richard Wagner, above all the Ring cycle.
While landscape scenery on painted backdrops or flats was generic in character and
necessarily static, the musical score infuses these fixed, generic representations with a
dynamic, imaginative dimension, elevating techniques developed in the realm of popular
panoramas and dioramas, as Anno Mungen has shown (BilderMusik, 2006).
Modern productions of the Ring have typically deconstructed Wagner’s mythical landscape
to convey the threat posed by industrial technology (symbolized by the Ring) to the natural
order. Is it possible, however, to view the natural environment as an agent in the drama,
not merely a fixed, generic backdrop? Does Wagner transform “wilderness” from a neutral
or hostile environment to a positive force, to be valued and defended? Does the Ring posit
a symbiosis of utopian socialism and utopian pastoral? Drawing on Lawrence Buell (The
Environmental Imagination, 1995) and subsequent eco-critical scholarship, this paper
reconsiders the status of the natural landscape in Wagner’s Ring cycle and its modern
reception.
Thomas Grey is Professor of music at Stanford University. He is the author of Wagner's
Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts (1995), as well as editor and co-author of the
Cambridge Opera Handbook on Wagner's Flying Dutchman (2000), the Cambridge
Companion to Wagner (2008), and Wagner and his World (Princeton University Press,
2009). He has also written on Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and history of 19th-century
opera. Recent projects include the painting of Hans Makart in relation to Wagner
reception in the late 19th century, essays on the idea of “absolute music,” eco-critical
perspectives on landscape and nature in 19th century music, and the entry on Richard
Wagner for Oxford Bibliographies Online. Other new fields of interest are American
musical theater and relations between music and the “Gothic” in theater and fiction.
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Dr. des. Golan Gur
Richard Wagner and Jewish/Israeli Identity in Music
Already a major cultural figure in his own life time, the significance of Richard Wagner’s
philosophical, political, and social views can hardly be exaggerated. The paper addresses
relatively little-explored aspects of Wagner’s reception history outside Germany, focusing
on the writings of selected musicologists and ethnomusicologists active around 1900. The
aim of the paper is to show how Wagner inspired thoughts about national and racial
identity in music, and, secondly, to investigate the ramifications of these to more recent
history. Of particular interest is Wagner’s contribution to the discourse about the nature of
German music vis-à-vis other national traditions as well as music by Jewish composers.
The paper will open by exploring Wagner’s positions in ‘Was ist Deutsch?’, ‘Das
Judenthum in der Musik’ and other pertinent essays. Following this, I will discuss the
influence of his aesthetic and historical convictions to the work of two Viennese scholars,
Richard Wallasche and Robert Lach, and the Jewish ethnomusicologist Abraham Zvi
Idelsohn. With regard to the latter, I will show that some Wagnerian ideas proved
surprisingly useful to the study of Jewish music at exactly the time of the Jewish national
revival. No less intriguing is the dialectical relationship between Wagner and early Israeli
composers of art music who ruminated about Semitism in music.
Golan Gur completed his doctoral studies in musicology at the Humboldt University of
Berlin. Born in Israel, he attended Tel Aviv University where he earned his B.A. (2004) and
M.A. (2007) degrees. Between 2003 and 2006, he was a teaching and research assistant in
the Department of Musicology at the same institution. Between 2007 and 2008, he
pursued further graduate studies at LMU Munich. His research has been supported by
fellowships and grants from the Minerva Foundation (Max Planck Society), the German
National Academic Foundation, the Paul Sacher Stiftung and more. He taught at Tel Aviv
University, the Humboldt University of Berlin and, as of year 2013, at Berlin University of
Arts. His work has been published in collections of essays and peer-reviewed journals. His
research interests include aesthetics and cultural history of music, second Viennese School,
Jewish/Israeli ethnomusicology, Critical Theory and Marxist aesthetics, and historical
theory and methodology.
Dr. Yaël Hêche
Commemorating Richard Wagner for Children: “Siegfried-Idyll” dramatized
How can Richard Wagner, a composer known for symphonic operas lasting several hours,
be introduced to children by a chamber orchestra? Siegfried-Idyll is an answer: the score is
one of the few that can be played by such an orchestra and one of the shortest. It is also
directly linked to Der Ring des Nibelungen and has a “fairytale” component as Wagner
composed it in secret as a gift for his wife Cosima. Therefore the chamber orchestra of
Lausanne (OCL) organized a concert for a young audience around Siegfried-Idyll in
November 2012. Wagner's score was played and a comedian performed a text written by
the author of this paper. In the form of a narration, the concert presented some facts about
the composer, Siegfried-Idyll and the background of its composition, doing links with the
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hero Siegfried through thematic examples. The children were also actively involved, as they
had learned and sang with the orchestra the lullaby “Schlaf, Kindchen, schlafe” composed
in 1868 and used as a secondary theme in the Idyll. This paper will present in detail this
way of dramatizing Siegfried-Idyll. The result, with his successful but also more
problematical aspects, will allow a reflexion and discussion about the way of presenting the
composer to young listeners.
Yaël Hêche studied musicology with Professors Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger in Geneva and
Anselm Gerhard in Bern. His dissertation “Französische und italienische Anklänge zu
vermeiden gab ich mir nicht die geringste Mühe.” Entre opéra-comique et tragédie
lyrique: Richard Wagner et ses modèles français (Südwestdeutscher Verlag für
Hochschulschriften, 2010) studies the dramatic and musical influences of Gaspare
Spontini and French comic opera on Richard Wagner. Yaël Hêche is contributor to the
Dictionnaire encyclopédique Wagner (Actes Sud, 2010) and was during several years
professor for history of music at the “Institut de Ribaupierre” in Lausanne. He is lecturer
as well as redactor for the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne (OCL) and for other musical
institutions and festivals. In 2013, he presented a paper at the international conferences
“Wagner et la France” in Paris and “The staging of Verdi and Wagner Operas” in Pistoia
(Italy).
PD Dr. Gregor Herzfeld
Is it a Men’s World? The Construction of Masculinities in Wagner
Although Masculinity Studies have boomed to a degree which makes it difficult to keep
track, historical musicology very slowly enters this domain of academic research. This is
astonishing considering the richness of results that Women’s and Gender Studies have
brought to the discipline; and it is especially surprising with regard to the works of Richard
Wagner, whose thoughts circled around the images of gender, in his writings – ranging
from the Zürich essays to the late fragment Über das Männliche u. Weibliche in Kultur u.
Kunst – as well as in his musical dramas. Aside from Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s path breaking
Wagner Androgyne, in scholarly research relatively little attention has been paid to his
construction of masculinities. This is a desideratum, not only because – as Wagner himself
and the latest gender-oriented studies understand it – the gender discourse is as much an
issue of women as of men, and above all of their mutual relation. Masculinity cannot be
considered as “natural”, but as an acquired cultural practice. As a consequence, the male
characters in Wagner’s operas should be interpreted as representations of very different
roles or masks of masculinity. Another central question of this paper will be, if, having
Wagner’s idea of “Aufhebung” of the gender difference in mind, his view on masculinity
was subversive as it opposed the concept of male hegemony, and preceded and prepared
the “crisis of masculinity” in the culture of fin-de-siècle.
Gregor Herzfeld studied musicology and philosophy in Heidelberg and Cremona. He
graduated with a master’s thesis on the shaping of time in works by Morton Feldman and
Elliott Carter. His doctoral dissertation from 2006 deals with time as process and epiphany
in American experimental music, and was completed after an academic year as Visiting
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Assistant in Research at Yale University. Since 2007 he is research assistant at the
Department of Musicology of Freie Universität Berlin and copy editor (Schriftleiter) of the
Archiv für Musikwissenschaft. In 2012 he qualified for a professorship (Habilitation) with
a study of Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on music history. During the winter semester
2012/13 he was visiting professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität’s Department of
Musicology in Munich. His latest publications include the book Poe in der Musik. Eine
versatile Allianz (Münster et. al 2013) and the essays Carter, le quatuor à cordes et la
notion de caractère musical (in: Hommage à Elliott Carter. Textes réunis, traduits et
introduits par Max Noubel, Paris 2013 [= Collection Pensée Musicale], 29-38),
Atmospheres at Play: Aesthetical Considerations of Game Music (in: Peter Moormann
[ed.], Music and Game, Wiesbaden 2013, 147-157), and Verführung – Vereinnahmung –
Verderben. Musik bei Søren Kierkegaard, Richard Wagner und Thomas Mann (in: Musik
& Ästhetik 59, 2011, 79-96).
Prof. Dr. Julie Hubbert
Not So “Loathsome Deutschtum”: Wagner, Propaganda and American Documentary
Films of the 1930s and 40s
The appropriation of Wagner’s music in contemporary media in the last century has been
profuse. No composer’s music has been quoted more than Wagner’s. While scholars have
analyzed these appropriations, particularly in Hollywood film scores and particularly in
connection with films about Nazis or a general “loathsome Deutschtum,” as Carolyn
Abbate describes it, little attention has been paid to the use of Wagner’s music in films
outside of Hollywood. Within the much greater world of non-narrative filmmaking in the
U.S. — newsreels, documentaries, industrial and educational films, the appropriation of
Wagner, even in the 1930s, was often neither Germanic nor loathsome. The critically-
acclaimed, feature-length documentary film sponsored by the American car company
Chevrolet, Master Hands (1936) is a good example. While aspects of the film’s visual
depiction of the American automobile industry borrows heavily from Riefenstahl’s
Triumph of the Will, the film’s score, a compilation full of Wagner excerpts, arranged by
composer Samuel Benavie and performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, is equally
propagandistic. By considering the music for this neglected documentary film, this paper
will not only reexamine the reception of Wagner in the U.S. between the World Wars, it
will examine the use of his music in the creation of American films of persuasion. It will
explore the appropriation of Wagner by U.S. filmmakers as an audible signifier not for
Nazi ideology but for American democracy, industry and capitalism.
Julie Hubbert is an Associate Professor in both the Film and Media Studies Department
and the School of Music at the University of South Carolina. She has written numerous
articles on a variety of film music and media topics. Her book, Celluloid Symphonies: Text
and Contexts in Music History was published in 2011 by the University of California Press.
She is currently working on a book on compilation scoring practices in post-classical and
post-modern film.
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Dr. Joachim Junker
Luigi Nono’s Analytical Remarks on “Tristan und Isolde” and the Manifestation of Nature
in Wagner’s Music
Luigi Nono's analytical remarks on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde have often been
interpreted as an explanation for his own way of thinking and composing music in the
1980s. However, it has rarely been discussed if his thoughts can be seen as a contribution
to a new comprehension of Wagner's music. In his remarks Nono develops three analytical
categories of particular interest. Firstly he speaks about the relationship of sound and
silence in nature and in Wagner's music. Secondly he creates an analogy between the non-
identical, slightly varied perception of musical repetitions and natural processes. Thirdly
he focuses on new sounds in Wagner's opera. His observations are influenced by the idea
of the “Naturlaut” in Gustav Mahler's First symphony and are related to sounds with
particular timbres and to chords whose structure is close to the overtone row. In their
natural appearance these chords convey the impression to have always existed and can
therefore be perceived as fragments of a hidden totality. In the lecture these key aspects of
Nono's composing in the last decade of his life (especially important for his “Tragedia
dell'ascolto” Prometeo from 1984/85) shall be transferred to Wagner's music. At the
beginning Nono's analytical categories shall be introduced. Thereafter their relevance for
Wagner's music shall be reflected in an exemplary analysis of a selected passage of the
third act of Tristan und Isolde. In this context it will be of particular interest to discuss the
relationship of music and nature. To summarize: Based on Nono's remarks on Tristan und
Isolde the lecture aims at showing a new approach to Wagner's way of understanding and
composing nature.
Joachim Junker finished his studies in Saarbrücken (at the University and the University
of Music) with the “Erstes Staatsexamen” and a diplom in music theory. In Bonn he
passed the “Zweites Staatsexamen” and at the University of Cologne he obtained his
doctorate with a thesis about Luigi Nono's string quartet Fragmente – Stille, An Diotima.
Currently he teaches music and German literature at the Hohenstaufen-Gymnasium in
Kaiserslautern. He has published several studies on music of the 17th and 20th century
and performs regularly piano music composed after 1945.
Ann-Christine Karcher
Die Marke “Richard Wagner“ im Jubiläumsjahr 2013
Brands provide unique added value to products and serve to guide customers through
widespread and highly differentiated markets. Therefore, it is important to create and
maintain strong brands to realize profits. This study assumes that the brand “Richard
Wagner” expresses values which can be used economically by labelling products with the
composer’s name. The analysis of the commercial production related to Wagner in the
anniversary year 2013 shows characteristic traits of the brand identity. Since that
production is not confined to marketing of music itself (e.g. phonograms, performances,
scores), the brand’s role for extramusical products (e.g. tourism, merchandise) is also
investigated. Central questions are: Who uses the brand “Richard Wagner”, in which
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manner, and with which purpose? The historical dimension of the brand still plays an
important role in its image today. Against this background, the study points out the
historical aspects of the brand Wagner which are particularly highlighted or concealed in
its identity in 2013. In the Web 2.0 age, there are many new opportunities for innovative
Wagner experiences. Therefore, the tension between tradition and innovation is another
important analysis aspect.
Born in 1988, Ann-Christine Karcher studied musicology and economy at the Johannes
Gutenberg-University in Mainz and the University of Palermo (2008/09). In 2013, she
graduated in Mainz with an interdisciplinary Master’s thesis on Richard Wagner as a brand
in the anniversary year 2013. Since July 2013, Karcher has been working with the
publisher Schott Music in the Concert Opera Media Division, where scores and
performance rights of mostly contemporary music are supervised.
Dr. des. Melanie Kleinschmidt
Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism as Misconstrued Nationalism
Noticing the fact that it has become widely common to connect Wagner's own attitude with
modern nationalism will hardly surprise anybody. Due to this circumstance the attempt to
disentangle the variety of threads, which finally lead to something that is today more or
less reduced to a “nationalistic anti-Semitism” of Wagner, still plays a minor role. Neither
should nor may there be an approach to justify Wagner's invectives as less influential or –
considering the composer's historical environment – as “normal” but it is still necessary to
take a closer look at something that established as the connection of Wagner's anti-
Semitism and modern nationalism. It is a well known fact that Wagner's anti-Semitism
impresses with inconsistency. But also the alleged closeness of this attitude to nationalism
is even more unstable if all sources are regarded thoroughly. Wagner's rejection of
cosmopolitism must not be misinterpreted as nationalism, on the contrary: Analogous to
his longing for the perfect “Weib” there has always been a great desire for “Heimat” which
ranks verifiably beyond any nationality and does not touch the question of anti-Semitism
at all. Processing this illumination of Wagner's anti-Semitism one will soon find that it are
his hostile attitude to capitalism and his socialistic ideals and not any nationalistic
tendencies that provide the composer's anti-Semitism with arguments (at least from his
point of view). It must also be kept in mind that Wagner's infamous essay would probably
never have been written without the encouragement of Theodor Uhlig, who is rarely
mentioned in this context. If Wagner's anti-Semitism is today too thoughtlessly mixed with
modern nationalism one must oppose this theory with documentary material. I would like
to illustrate the correlation between Wagner's anti-Semitism and his (supposed)
nationalism, his philosophical view of the world and his critique of capitalism – which are
finally and paradoxically only parts of Wagner's agonizing search for “Eigentlichkeit”.
Melanie Kleinschmidt, Studium der Schulmusik, Stimmbildung und Musikwissenschaften
an der HfM Weimar “Franz Liszt”, 2012 Abschluss des Promotionsverfahrens (Titel der
Dissertation: “Der hebräische Kunstgeschmack. Zur Entwicklung des
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Authentizitätsproblems in der deutsch-jüdischen Musikkultur”), Publikationsschwerpunkt
auf musikästhetischen/musikphilosophischen Fragestellungen.
Dr. Wendy Ligon Smith
Wagner and Fortuny: Designs for the Bayreuth Theatre
Working in Venice, one of Wagner’s beloved cities, the Spanish-born artist Mariano
Fortuny y Madrazo was a lifelong Wagnerite. After seeing Wagner’s operas performed at
the Bayreuth Theatre in 1891, many of Fortuny’s paintings, drawings, and costume designs
were devoted to these works. But the most profound result of this visit was how it
provoked Fortuny to invent a system of indirect lighting that could be used for theatre.
The atmospheric lighting and colouring effects produced by his new electric system were a
radical change that he felt necessary to express the metaphysical aspects of Wagner’s work.
Echoing the line from Parsifal that “time changes here to space”, Fortuny claimed that
now “[…] theatrical scenery will be able to transform itself in tune with music, within the
latter’s domain, that is to say in ‘time’, whereas hitherto it has only been able to develop in
‘space.’ This […] is of supreme importance for the staging of the works of Richard Wagner.”
In 1903 Fortuny constructed a model of the Bayreuth Theatre that utilizes his
revolutionary system for stage design. I will argue that Fortuny’s model uses new
technology to match vision and sound, more fully embracing Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk.
As part of my paper I propose, in conjunction with Museo Fortuny, producing and
presenting original film footage of the model that demonstrates the colour changes and
special effects of its refurbished electrical lighting system. Fortuny’s Bayreuth model is an
important and captivating object in the history of Wagner performances.
Wendy Ligon Smith is in the final year of writing her PhD thesis titled, “Reviving Fortuny’s
Phantasmagorias”, supervised by Dr. Carol Mavor in Art History and Visual Studies at The
University of Manchester, England. Her thesis examines the themes of revivalism,
memory, light, shadows, magic, and secrecy that run throughout Mariano Fortuny’s (1871-
1949) wide-ranging oeuvre. For this thesis Wendy has undertaken original archival
research in Venice, London, and Manchester. In Manchester Wendy has taught
undergraduate courses in the history of art interpretation, museum display and collecting,
and on Marcel Proust. Last spring she co-organised a museum event with live musical
performances and a guided tour at the Manchester Art Gallery to honour the centennial
anniversary of the publication of Proust's Swann's Way. Wendy also designed and
convened an international, interdisciplinary academic conference on the study of
fashion/dress, Roland Barthes, and Walter Benjamin at The University of Manchester
(June 2013). Wendy has presented papers at the Courtauld Institute, Oxford University,
and for the Renaissance Society of America and the Art History and Visual Studies
Research Seminar Series at The University of Manchester. She has also written two essays
on Fortuny and his work that will be published in edited volumes in 2014.
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Dr. Brooke McCorkle
Twilight of an Empire: Staging Wagner in Wartime Tokyo
Adolf Hitler’s fondness for Richard Wagner’s music is legendary. Yet the Nazi ethos echoed
elsewhere in the world, and nowhere more profoundly than in Germany’s WWII ally,
Japan. Did the Japanese, who also listened to Wagner, listen in the same way? By 1942, the
war was going badly in Japan-bombers had appeared over Tokyo. And Wagner’s music was
mustered to enhearten the populace. Lohengrin premiered on the Tokyo stage in
November of that year. Conductor Manfred Gurlitt, a German expatriate and
Reichsmusikkammer member collaborated with the Japanese tenor Fujiwara Yoshie in
staging the production. This paper will center on this mélange of German and Japanese
aesthetics, recreating the performance and how it was heard as far as possible from
contemporary documents. But more than this, it interrogates the cultural work the
performance accomplished in wartime Japan. For that work must have been deemed
important: Given Wagnerian opera’s prohibitive costs, the impetus that drove the
producers and their backers to stage Lohengrin during times of disastrous scarcity must
have served a purpose beyond mere profit. I argue that the opera served as an ideological
state apparatus that was understood by the Japanese as expressing their aspirations and
assuaging their anxieties.
A Benjamin Franklin Fellow, Brooke McCorkle is an accomplished double bassist,
Japanologist, and music historian. She earned undergraduate degrees from the University
of Oklahoma in International Relations in East Asia (2004) and Double Bass Performance
(2008). At the University of Pennsylvania, she acquired a Master's Degree in East Asian
Languages and Civilizations in 2012 while working on her PhD in Musicology. Brooke is
currently completing her dissertation, Searching for Wagner in Japan, under the
guidance of Carolyn Abbate. In her dissertation, Brooke composes a cultural history that
examines the heretofore unexplored relationship between modernity, national ideology,
and Wagner reception in Japan from 1868 to 1952. In addition to opera, Brooke also has a
strong interest in film music, as exemplified by her articles on Japanese and Hong Kong
cinema sound. In the future, she looks forward to working on several projects that have
grown out of her current work, including a history of Japanese film music, an
interpretation of Wagner's Parsifal via the writings of Jean-luc Nancy, and an analysis of
Robert Black's upcoming multi-media piece, Possessed.
Barry Millington
Wagner 200 – Image, Reception, Legacy
The paper will examine the extent to which stereotypical ideas about Wagner have been
framed by contemporary assessments, how far by political and ideological developments
since his death, and how far by our own psychosocial needs. It will reappraise received
ideas about Wagner and his works and offer reflections on the extent to which the
bicentenary year has either challenged or reinforced those ideas.
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Barry Millington is Chief Music Critic for the London Evening Standard and
founder/editor of The Wagner Journal. He is the author and editor or co-editor of eight
books on Wagner, including Wagner, The Wagner Compendium, The Ring of the
Nibelung: A Companion and Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, and also contributed the
articles on Wagner and his operas to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. His latest Wagner book, The Sorcerer of
Bayreuth, was published by Thames & Hudson/OUP in 2012. He was the founder and
artistic director of the Hampstead & Highgate Festival (1999–2003), has acted as
dramaturgical adviser at international opera houses, and recently co-founded the ensemble
Counterpoise. He is co-director of Wagner 200, a wide-ranging series of events celebrating
the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth in 2013, and is known also as a broadcaster and lecturer.
Prof. Dr. Barbara Mittler
Wagner Goes East (and Back Again): Operatic Performance between Europe and China
In drawing on evidence from some 150 years of operatic exchanges between China and
Europe, this paper will trace how the performance of European opera has been introduced
to China, what its function was and how it was understood over time. I will argue that the
performance of European opera in China was never innocent. Political and commercial
motivations inevitably played into it. In trying to understand the complexities and many
different levels of European opera’s reception in China, i.e. in trying to understand how the
“Other” receives European opera, we have to always bear in mind our own reception of that
very “Other”, its culture, its politics, and, last but not least, its music. The presentation thus
also deliberates the transcultural qualities of music and music-making between China and
Europe in the long 20th century.
Barbara Mittler holds a Chair in Chinese Studies at the Institute of Chinese Studies,
University of Heidelberg and is Director of the Cluster of Excellence at the University of
Heidelberg “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” She began her studies of Sinology at the
University of Oxford (MA Oxon 1990), and has spent research periods in Taiwan, the
People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and at Harvard University. Her PhD (1994) and
her habilitation (post-doctoral thesis, 1998) are both from Heidelberg. In 2000 she
received the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-Prize for young and outstanding scholars by the
German Research Foundation and the German Ministry of Culture. Between 2002-2004
she was a recipient of a Heisenberg Fellowship awarded by the German Research
Foundation. In 2008 she was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
LEOPOLDINA and, more recently, in 2013, the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. In 2009
she won the Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities, American Philosophical Society,
and most recently, in 2013, her book-length study of the Chinese Cultural Revolution has
won the Fairbank Prize by the American Historical Association.
Her research focuses on cultural production in (greater) China covering a wide range of
topics from music to (visual) and (historical) print media in China's long modernity. She
has published numerous research papers and three book-length studies: Dangerous
Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of
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China since 1949, Harrassowitz 1997; A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and
Change in China’s News-Media, 1872-1912, Harvard University Press, 2004; A Continuous
Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture, Harvard University Press,
2012.
Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen
Wagner, Nürnberg, and “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”
How is Wagner present in the City of Nürnberg in 2013? What are the traces of his work
and biography to be found here today? The idea of cultural topography may be applied to
the Wagner topic to understand an urban space as constructed through its cultural events
and heritage. The first section of the paper takes into account historical aspects of
Wagner’s relationship with Nürnberg in the 19th century: the place as a romantic space
and the city with its tradition of festival culture. The second part is looking at 20th
reception history. It will investigate the city as a place where Wagner’s opera “Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg” is situated and has its presence within performances. The
media of opera and festival gain the quality of a mirror, where the self representation
becomes intrinsic to the construction of identity, propaganda and power. Especially the
time of Hitler’s Nürnberg will be taken into consideration looking at the function of
“Meistersinger”-performances within Nürnberg.
Anno Mungen is Full Professor of music theater studies and director of the Institute for
Music Theater Studies (Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater), Schloss Thurnau, at the
University of Bayreuth. Prior to this appointment in october 2006 he was Professor of
musicology at Bonn University. From 1995 until 2002 he was affiliated with the music
department of Mainz University, where he completed his post-doctoral thesis
(Habilitation) An ‚Archaeology‘ of Film Music. Panoramas, Dioramas, and Tableaux
Vivants in Multimedia Performances in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, which was
published in 2006 and involved a one year scholarship in the US (New York City, Boston,
Washington D.C.). Mungen received his doctorate in 1995 with a dissertation on Gaspare
Spontini and German opera of the 1820s (published in 1997) from Technische Universität,
Berlin, where he studied musicology with Carl Dahlhaus and others. He also has a degree
in flute from Folkwang Hochschule für Musik, Duisburg. Major publications are on opera
history, on the visual arts and music, film music, 1920-1950s German music history, as
well as music and gender studies. He is also the editor of ACT, an academic online journal
on music and performance. He initiated the project www2013: with its events in
Bayreuth/Germany, Bern/Switzerland, Shanghai/China and Columbia (SC)/USA. Also he
is spearheading a research project on Music – Voice – Gender at Thurnau.
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Prof. Dr. Paul Lawrence Rose
The Problem of Anti-Semitism in the Wagner Operas
Since Adorno’s pioneering essays of the late 1930’s, debates on the extent to which
Wagner’s operas are impregnated with expressions of the composer’s existential
antisemitism have been conducted on various levels. These levels have included the
encoding of antisemitism in the plots and allegories of the operas, the embedding of
antisemitism in their political and philosophical programs, the personification of
antisemitism in the characters (notably Alberich, Mime and Beckmesser), and so on.
Most recently the debate has moved to the level of how the antisemitism is expressed
musically, for example in Beckmesser’s high tessitura as a signifier of his “Jewish”
characteristics. This presentation develops the concept of a “musical antisemitism” and
illustrates some of the musical techniques which Wagner used to suggest the Jewishness of
such characters as Alberich, Mime, Hagen and Klingsor. These techniques were inspired by
Wagner’s notion of specifically Jewish modes and scales, as well by his desire to parody the
musical idiosyncrasies of such Jewish composers as Meyerbeer and Offenbach.
In a less crudely antisemitic way, Wagner’s desire to distance himself from “Jewish” music
could also inspire him to transform into an elevated expressiveness numerous lofty
musical and poetic themes which he felt Jewish composers – above all, Meyerbeer - and
writers (preeminently Heine) had trivialized or misunderstood.
Paul Lawrence Rose, born Glasgow, Scotland; BA, MA, Oxford; MA stat. Cambridge;
Doctorat en Histoire, Paris I-Sorbonne; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Member,
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Has taught in England, Australia, Israel, Canada
and the USA. Currently Mitrani Professor of European History and Jewish Studies at the
Pennsylvania State University and Adjunct Professor of the Graduate Institute of Liberal
Studies, Emory University, Atlanta USA. Books include: Wagner - Race and Revolution;
German Question/Jewish Question, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant
to Wagner; Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project - A Study in German Culture;
and other books on intellectual history and the history of antisemitism. His books on
Antisemitisms: Cultural, Emotional and National Histories of Antisemitism, and Wagner
- Antisemitism in Music are due to appear next year.
Dr. Anna Stoll Knecht
Beckmesser in a New Light: “Die Meistersinger” in Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
The Finale of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony clearly alludes to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg. While the fact has been widely acknowledged since the symphony’s
premiere in 1908, the function and broader implications of this connection have not been
explored in depth. I first suggest that references to Meistersinger may be heard at various
levels throughout the symphony, as well as in the sketches; and, second, that they
significantly crystallize around Beckmesser.
I highlight two moments from the beginning and the end of Meistersinger. In the first,
Beckmesser-the-Critic condemns Walther’s trial song as “meaningless” because it has “no
beginning nor end” (I, 3) while at the end, Beckmesser-the-Composer distorts Walther’s
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poem to such an extent that it sounds meaningless to his audience (III, 5). Mahler’s
Seventh echoes both of these, as introductory and concluding gestures borrowed from
Meistersinger undergo transformations challenging their traditional function. In a way,
Mahler and Beckmesser both “borrow” material from another composer and radically
transform its original meaning. The technique of musical allusion, considered as a general
characteristic of Mahler’s style, was cited by his detractors (often with strong anti-Semitic
undertones) to demonstrate his supposed lack of originality. I conclude that Mahler’s
treatment of Wagnerian material in the Seventh tells us something about his own
interpretation of the opera, and particularly about his perception of Beckmesser.
Anna Stoll Knecht, Ph.D. candidate in musicology at New York University, recently
defended her dissertation on Mahler's Seventh Symphony (“The Genesis of Mahler’s
Seventh Symphony,” adv. Michael Beckerman). She obtained her M.A. in musicology and
ancient Greek at the University of Geneva in 2006, and a Diploma of Music Theory at the
Conservatory of Music of Geneva (2005), where she was hired as a Professor of
counterpoint for four years. In 2007, she received a Fulbright scholarship that allowed her
to start her Ph.D. at New York University. She has given several pre-concert lectures on
twentieth-century music in Switzerland and in New York (at the Lincoln Center for a
performance of Mahler's Seventh under Valery Gergiev). Her publications include an
article on Mahler's Seventh Symphony and Wagner's Meistersinger (in Rethinking
Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham, Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and a study of the
variation process in Henri Dutilleux's Métaboles (Annales Suisses de Musicologie, 2006).
Her next research project will explore Mahler’s interpretation of Wagner both as a
conductor and as a composer.
Gero Tögl
The Bayreuth Enterprise as a 19th Century Network
The aesthetic and political discourse Wagner established from 1848 onwards, the
organizational structures established throughout the 1870s and 1880s, as well as the
economic, legal, and political dynamics that continuously reframed the conditions under
which the Bayreuth enterprise was operating before WWI, characterize the Richard
Wagner Festival as a project engaged in the re-mapping of society. Exemplary for many
similar modernizing artistic, scientific, and political movements, it engaged in processes of
international circulation, constructed a specific transnational public sphere, and
reconnected them to Wahnfried as its nodal point. My paper discusses how Wagner’s and
his fellows’ ideas materialized into chains of consumption, webs of entrepreneurial control,
and legal frameworks using the concept of ‘Networks’. It is the idea of re-constructing
transnational networks that allows subsuming these heterogeneous elements under the
umbrella ‘enterprise’, both unique and typical of 19th century companies, societies, or
institutions dedicated to social reform.
Gero Tögl graduated (2009) in Dramaturgy, Comparative Literature, Communication,
LMU Munich, after being Socrates/Erasmus Exchange Student at King’s College London,
UK in 2006/07. Recently (2012-2013) he was Research Fellow in the Theatre Studies
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Department, LMU Munich, as well as a Visiting Student Researcher at UC Berkeley,
California (October 2013). His current PhD-project focuses on “The Bayreuth Enterprise.
Social Construction, Artistic Expansionism, Modern Economy (1848-1914)” (Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Christopher Balme, LMU Munich).
Dr. David Trippett
Facing reality: on simulcast technology and the transfer of Wagner's music between
digital platforms
Wagner’s vaunted model of artistic synthesis persists in scholarly assessments of his work.
But at its centre, the composer argued the media of voice and orchestra do not mix: they
retain their identities as separate channels of sound that can neither duplicate nor
substitute for oneanother. Taking as a starting point Wagner’s claims for the non-
adaptability of media, this paper addresses the adaptation of Wagner’s music to the
modern digital technologies of HD cinema and video game. Drawing on a circle of writers,
from Baudrillard to second-generation media theorists, it interrogates the concept of
“reality” within live acoustic performance, both historically, as a discursive concept, and
technologically, via the sensory realism of digital simulcasting and telepresence. The
philosophical opposition of appearance and reality fails when reality is defined by the
intimate simulation of a sensory event as it is registered on the body. And by contrasting
the traditions of high fidelity in (classical) sound recording with that of rendering sound in
cinema, I suggest ways in which seemingly unmixable media appear to have an afterlife in
modern technologies. This raises questions—in a post-Benjamin, post-McLuhan context—
about our definition of “liveness,” the concept of authenticity within mediatized and
acoustic sounds, and our vulnerability to the technological effects of media.
David Trippett is lecturer in Music at Bristol University. His first book, Wagner’s Melodies
(Cambridge University Press, 2013) examines the intersecting discourses of German
melodic theory, Wagner’s shifting aesthetics, and the presence of the natural sciences
within public intellectual debate; this received the Donald Tovey Memorial Prize of the
University of Oxford.
His broader research on opera, German intellectual history, and the intersection of
European aesthetics with philosophies of technology has appeared in a range of books and
journals, including: Journal of History and Philosophy of Science, 19th-Century Music,
Journal of Musicology, Musical Quarterly, The Wagner Journal, and Musiktheorie. In
2009 Trippett’s research received the Alfred Einstein Award of the AMS, and in 2013, an
ASCAP Deems Taylor award. He is also editor and translator of Carl Stumpf, The Origins
of Music (OUP, 2012), which received the 2013 Bruno Nettl Prize of the Society for
Ethnomusicology. And in recent years he has served as guest-editor for the journals
Musiktheorie and The Wagner Journal.
Currently, he is embarking on a new research project on music and materialism; in fleeting
windows of time he also performs as a collaborative pianist.
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Elfi Vomberg
Wagnerianer heute
Imagine the scene: While the “Simili-Original-Partitur des Tristan feierlich zu
schwermutsvoll-ironischem Kult” is arranged in Thomas Manns study, the writer tries to
relax on his chaise lounge to the sounds of his beloved Wagner. This is for Mann the
perfect way to discover Leitmotifs – equiped with pencil and score. This was how a
Wagnerian experienced the music 85 years ago. But how is this group of Wagnerians
preceived today? Taking a look on media reports reflects also the privalent cliché on the
Wagnerian as an expert on Wagner and conservative adept. But is the prevailing image of
the Wagnerian true? Are they sitting in their winged chair prepared with pen and score on
the hunt for Leitmotifs while they are studying Wagner’s theoretical papers? How well do
they really know Wagner’s works? The lecture focusses on the literary discourse about the
phenomenon of Wagnerians. It also examines the group on sociocultural aspects and their
perception in public.
Elfi Vomberg, born in 1986, study of musicology, German studies, and sociology at the
University of Cologne, subsequently traineeship at the newspaper “Rheinische Post”.
Activity as culture-journalist for the Cologne Opera and the Gürzenich Orchestra. Radio
hostess, author, and press aide for the West German Broadcasting Corporation Cologne.
PhD student at the University of Bayreuth within the programme “Musik und
Performance”. Lectureship at the research institute for musical theatre in Bayreuth.
Lectures and publications on Richard Wagner and focused on Wagnerians and Wagner-
associations.
Frithwin Wagner-Lippok
#occupy wagner! – Performative Aesthetics, Wagner’s Postdramatic legacy?
Text, music, and artistic self-image of Richard Wagner refer less to the outside world than
to themselves; instead of an external reality, they bring themselves “into appearance”.
Wagner’s theatre art, from this perspective, is not representative but an “art of presence”:
It constitutes its own presence, converging herein with characteristics of “pre-” and “post-
dramatic” theatre. Wagner’s librettos, “Leitmotive”, and livestyle disclose recursive,
postmodern elements of self-reference which, besides of their own theatralicity, are hardly
linked to external references. Wagner also transforms myths ideosyncraticly and tightly
joint to his own œuvre. In spite of his early revolutionary period it’s not about actualization
of real life but about the theatrical event (Ereignis) itself in the very moment of its
appearance. Thus Wagner’s works have something remarkable in common with the
phenomena presence and emergence – leading concepts in theorization of “postdramatic”
theatre. Do these main features of “esthetics of performativity” as developped by theatre
studies in opposition to traditional “representative” theatre as well turn up as
characteristics in Wagner’s librettos, compositions, and artistic self-image? In what sense
can Wagner be regarded as early esthetical vanguard of post-dramatic theatre?
The lecture adventures to answer these questions calling up practical experiences from my
own work on performativity in theatre esthetics and from the preparation of a project
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#occupy wagner! – lectures2go between science and performance and wishing to enrich
hereby the connectivity between artistic and theoretical engagement with postdramatic
theatre and the phenomenon Wagner.
Frithwin Wagner-Lippok, theatre director, actor, translator and teacher in workshops and
projects combining theory and practice of postdramatic and performative theatre issues in
Berlin, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro. Master of biology, psychology, and philosophy. Theatre
education at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. Opera experiences in Valletta (Malta) and
Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Direction of more than fifteen plays in Germany and Spain.
Polylingual adaptations of German dramatists for Spanish/Catalan theatres and festivals.
Investigative creational projects on contemporanean theatre focussing the relationship
reality-fiction in society and on stage. In Barcelona, performatic theatrical internet
experiments on the poetic implications of theory and the theatricality of social events.
Collaboration in workshops and projects with postdramatic trendsetter groups like She She
Pop, Rimini Protokoll, andcompany&Co. and deufert&plischke creating and organizing
performative experiments such as the internet lecture series lecturas2go performáticas en
Berlín /Barcelona. Publications in Spanish or Brasilian theatre journals Estudis Escenics,
Pausa, O Perceveijo, GRAE I. International Congress.
Dr. Matthew Werley
Wagners Ästhetik von Stadt und Staat: “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” und das Erbe
des Historismus in der deutschen Oper
What are anniversary celebrations other than performed memorials? The call for critical
reflection during anniversary years provides scholars with occasions for contemplating the
past and its potential meaning for the future. Such historical reflection not only
characterises the academic engagement with Richard Wagner in 2013, it also parallels a
similar “double perspective” at the core of the composer’s only mature historical opera, Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868). In this work Wagner adopted a specific historical
setting and historicist compositional technique to construct an ideological vision of
German politics for a yet undefined nation-state. Whilst these aspects have long been
discussed (Groos 1992; Borchmeyer 2002), it is not clear what impact Die Meistersinger
had on subsequent composers who sought to engage constructively with historical subjects
on the operatic stage. This paper provides the first critical investigation of the legacy of
historicism in German opera after Die Meistersinger, focusing especially on the 1890s, a
decade when notions of statehood and empire developed in ways that proved decisive for
interest in Wagner’s opera. By examining historical operas by Schillings, Strauss and
others, one can trace Meistersinger’s influential reception and ultimately demonstrate how
some concepts in Wagner’s artistic and political projects remain insufficiently explained.
Matthew Werley studied theology and music in the United States (Philadelphia) before
undertaking postgraduate studies in musicology in the United Kingdom (Oxford) and
Germany (Garmisch-Partenkirchen). His research focuses on opera studies, with a special
interest in the emergence of historicism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. His
DAAD-funded doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford explored questions related
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to politics and historicism in the late operas of Richard Strauss. He is currently at work on
a new critical edition of the correspondence between Strauss and Stefan Zweig for a British
academic publisher. Other projects include a large-scale monograph on Strauss and the
rise of historicism in German opera after Wagner, and another on the musical
collaborations of the Viennese expressionist dancer Grete Wiesenthal. Matthew has
presented talks on a wide range of topics at conferences and universities throughout
Europe, North America and Australia. Upcoming engagements in Germany include a paper
on Strauss and the poet Josef Weinheber at the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
in June 2014. Matthew lectured in music history and theory at the University of East
Anglia (Norwich) from 2011 to 2012, and has tutored undergraduates in musicology at the
University of Cambridge since 2009.
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32
INHALT
Seite
Programm Konferenzeröffnung 3
Programm Verleihung des Thurnauer Preises 2013 5
Konferenzprogramm 7
Abstracts und Kurzbiographien der ReferentInnen 11
Interdisziplinärer Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreis für Musiktheater an der Universität Bayreuth
31
Inhaltsverzeichnis und Impressum 32
Impressum:
Book of Abstracts der Konferenz "WagnerWorldWide:Reflections" vom 12. bis
15. Dezember 2013 in Bayreuth, Thurnau und Nürnberg
Herausgeber: Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bayreuth
(Leiter: Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen)
Redaktion: Silvia Bier, Magda-Lena Grunert, Bernd Hobe, Anno Mungen
Gestaltung Titelseite: Renate Paulsen
Grafik Richard-Wagner-Arbeitskreis für Musiktheater (S. 31 und Rückseite): Nick Sternitzke
Redaktionsschluss: 6. Dezember 2013
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/www2013
http://www.youtube.com/WagnerWorldWide
http://annomungen.blogspot.de
http://www.fimt.uni-bayreuth.de
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