On Tuesday, Aug 29, 2006, at 15:31 America/Los_Angeles, Rob MacKillop wrote:
> 2. the character of Beckmesser is a personification of all things > Wagner > hated in music. Beckmesser is not a proffesional singer; he is an > amateur in > the worst sense of the word. Not only he thinks singing and music is > easy; > he thinks he is good at it himself. Beckmesser is in opposition to Hans > Sachs, a shoemaker, therefore technically an amateur singer too. But > Sach's > approach to the art is by all means proffessional. Beckmesser's one is > not, > and the opening passage of the lute becomes his Leitmotive, that > illustrates > his self consiousness of bourgeois dillettante. I recall seeing this before, and think it misses the point. There is no reason Wagner would be taking such heavy-handed potshots at musical amateurs, who never did him any harm. It would be merely mean-spirited. (Granted, Wagner was a mean-spirited, but he was usually mean-spirited in the service of a greater evil, as it were.) It was the professional musical establishment -- critics, music directors and professors -- who were his perceived enemies. Meistersinger is not about professionals versus amateurs, but about "modern" music versus the conservative resistance to it. The trouble with Beckmesser is not that he isn't a professional, but that he is so entrenched in the established rules of music that he has no notion of its substance. I should mention that some informed Wagnerologists believe Beckmesser is actually an antisemitic caricature, an interpretation that can never be dismissed out of hand with Wagner, who was one of the most outspoken racists of his age, and whose "Jewishness in Music" waxed with considerable zeal, if not much clarity about the ill effects wrought by Jews, including Mendelssohn. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
