The Meaningfulness Hasn't Been Drained Out of a Warrior

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

i wouldn't say that the meaningfulness has been drained out of wagner' singing. You mean, you have some tremendous singers right now. I think it's incredible potential to become possibly a singer almost at the level of nilson and trimsef. We've had this great run of performances from rene papnd. There are younger singers in that category who i think could easily carry that on. And people are always saying that all the great wagner singers are the past. This bemooning of the lost golden age is very familiara sindrome in the conversation about opera....

To Alex Ross, good music critics must be well-rounded and have command of neighboring cultural areas. “When you're writing about opera, you're writing about literature as well as music, you're writing about staging, theater ideas, as well as music,” says the veteran music journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker. His most recent book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, explores the complicated legacy of Wagner, as well as how music shapes and is shaped by its cultural context.

Alex joined Tyler to discuss the book, what gets lost in the training of modern opera singers, the effect of recording technology on orchestras, why he doesn’t have “guilty pleasures,” how we should approach Wagner today, the irony behind most uses of “Ride of the Valkyries” in cinema, his favorite Orson Welles film, his predictions for concert attendance after COVID-19, why artistic life in Europe will likely recover faster than in America, Rothko’s influence on composer Morton Feldman, his contender for the greatest pop album ever made, how his Harvard dissertation on James Joyce prepared him for a career writing about music, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded August 20th, 2020 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.