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I don't understand the technicalities of music, for example: its pattern of notes, the theory of rhythm and even these symbols
.
However, I have a few exceptions: Mähler's Quartet in A minor, Chopin's Spring Waltz, and Erik Satie's Gnossiennes.
But I understand songs, music coupled with words. In my native language we have real songs in the sense that my people, when I make them hear Tom Waits or Eminem, say that they are not singing, they are simply reading. But let's not digress, and allow me to focus on myself. The apperception (in the sense of its dictionary meaning, and not in its Kantian use) of songs is quite distinct and forms a clear idea in mind, or are more open to interpretation. For instance, when I first heard Phil Colin's Another Day in Paradise, I could only got these lines in ears
two people were in love with each other. Due to some circumstances, most probably family pressure or equally possible: woman's instinct for a secured life, the woman had to leave the man. The life of the man became like a dilapidated house, no wants to enter in, no one wants to repair. After years, one night he was walking at some place and the woman, without recognizing who he really was, calls out for help (maybe she had been living a bad life since then) and the man at once recognizes her voice and turns to see her, almost dead by her wounded condition. Now, he a got split of consciousness (again, this is for literary purpose and not in Psychological sense), which says "Another day in Paradise", he and his beloved. But he got to think twice, she was the source of his ruin.
After a few weeks, like a calming and tasteless carbon monoxide, a friend told me the song is about ''homeless people", I could do nothing but the whole song really makes a rational sense in that "homeless people" context only. Anyways, I carry both interpretation in my Stream when that music and words couple.
I do understand a few of opera songs, without seeing/reading the full opera, but German artists, between 1700 and 1900, write/work on those topics which I don't seem to understand much. For example, Von Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther is quite easy to understand (I mean, the plot) because it is about a life which we might be living ourselves or seeing around us or can think of by a little effort in carrying our Stream downwards, but his Faust involves some mythological aspects which I'm ignorant of. Faust also gets difficult because, I think, it covers the conscience of people of a short duration (the transition from aristocracy to republicanism, from religion to enlightenment, from social mindset to individualism). The case of Von Schiller is nearly the same.
Coming to Mr. Wagner now. Do I need to know some prerequisite for understanding the plot of Parsifal? I tried listening to the music of Parsifal, without any act or plot, yet it didn't sneak in clandestinely and touched the innermost chambers of my soul. The purpose of writing this thread is to have a guidance on comprehending Wagner's Parsifal, both the plot and its music, and to understand why is it called a work of genius, thereby giving in my mind a separate room to Mr. Wagner and no longer keeping him just as a friend, which Parsifal severed, of Mr. Nietzsche!
However, I have a few exceptions: Mähler's Quartet in A minor, Chopin's Spring Waltz, and Erik Satie's Gnossiennes.
But I understand songs, music coupled with words. In my native language we have real songs in the sense that my people, when I make them hear Tom Waits or Eminem, say that they are not singing, they are simply reading. But let's not digress, and allow me to focus on myself. The apperception (in the sense of its dictionary meaning, and not in its Kantian use) of songs is quite distinct and forms a clear idea in mind, or are more open to interpretation. For instance, when I first heard Phil Colin's Another Day in Paradise, I could only got these lines in ears
and, as Kant's differentiation in Subjective and Objective Unity of Consciousness, my mind unified those lines with something other, and here it is:
two people were in love with each other. Due to some circumstances, most probably family pressure or equally possible: woman's instinct for a secured life, the woman had to leave the man. The life of the man became like a dilapidated house, no wants to enter in, no one wants to repair. After years, one night he was walking at some place and the woman, without recognizing who he really was, calls out for help (maybe she had been living a bad life since then) and the man at once recognizes her voice and turns to see her, almost dead by her wounded condition. Now, he a got split of consciousness (again, this is for literary purpose and not in Psychological sense), which says "Another day in Paradise", he and his beloved. But he got to think twice, she was the source of his ruin.
After a few weeks, like a calming and tasteless carbon monoxide, a friend told me the song is about ''homeless people", I could do nothing but the whole song really makes a rational sense in that "homeless people" context only. Anyways, I carry both interpretation in my Stream when that music and words couple.
I do understand a few of opera songs, without seeing/reading the full opera, but German artists, between 1700 and 1900, write/work on those topics which I don't seem to understand much. For example, Von Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther is quite easy to understand (I mean, the plot) because it is about a life which we might be living ourselves or seeing around us or can think of by a little effort in carrying our Stream downwards, but his Faust involves some mythological aspects which I'm ignorant of. Faust also gets difficult because, I think, it covers the conscience of people of a short duration (the transition from aristocracy to republicanism, from religion to enlightenment, from social mindset to individualism). The case of Von Schiller is nearly the same.
Coming to Mr. Wagner now. Do I need to know some prerequisite for understanding the plot of Parsifal? I tried listening to the music of Parsifal, without any act or plot, yet it didn't sneak in clandestinely and touched the innermost chambers of my soul. The purpose of writing this thread is to have a guidance on comprehending Wagner's Parsifal, both the plot and its music, and to understand why is it called a work of genius, thereby giving in my mind a separate room to Mr. Wagner and no longer keeping him just as a friend, which Parsifal severed, of Mr. Nietzsche!