/lit/ - Literature

>>23330534
Read Wagner's Beethoven essay for a continuation of Hoffmann's reception of Beethoven.

>>23265486
Wagner is the greatest writer on music. Not only because of his analytical genius, but also because he belonged to this tradition of music as a composer, and perhaps the most influential composer to ever live at that. He is the inheritor of the entire German aesthetics of music, the continuer of E.T.A Hoffmann and Schopenhauer, the founding father of modern conducting, and an enormous influence in much else of intellectual relevance to classical music. As Richard Strauss said, everything we know about Beethoven's Ninth comes from Wagner. The entirety of Schenkerian analysis was forerun by Wagner's analysis of Beethoven's symphonies. Except Wagner as a composer, as someone who feels the musical tradition as intrinsic to himself, holds a superior position to the merely academic commentator. He understood both the esoteric and exoteric nature of reality, and is a willing initiator to all students who desire to really FEEL and UNDERSTAND the significance of Western music.

If someone's only interested in Wagner's musical ideas, as opposed to his more general ideas on art, I would recommend: The Music of the Future, A Music-School for Munich, On Conducting, Beethoven, The Destiny of Opera, On Performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, On Poetry and Composition, On Operatic Poetry and Composition in Particular, On the Application of the Music to the Drama. There's a lot more, but they stray into weirder territory.

>>23268501
Wagner created Western Vajrayana independently of any knowledge of it, a groundbreaking achievement, at a time when Schopenhauer did not know anything more than Theravada. In his proposed drama on a Buddhist legend, Die Sieger, he even unknowingly added a Mahayanistic idea, which was was scarcely known in Europe, to Buddhism itself: namely, that the way to redemption must take, not a direct path, through perfect denial of sensual love, but rather an indirect path, first through the affirmation of sensual love, in order to arrive at the ultimate overcoming of it. But the full development of his Vajrayana philosophy appears in the drama Tristan und Isolde (1859), and its most important theoretical exposition being in his essay Beethoven (1870). During the creation of Tristan und Isolde in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck he wrote the following:

>For it is a matter of demonstrating a path of salvation recognised by none of the philosophers, particularly not by Sch., the pathway to complete pacification of the Will through love, and that no abstract love of mankind, but the love which actually blossoms from the soil of sexual love, i.e. from the affection between man and woman. It is conclusive, that I am able to use for this (as philosopher, not as poet, since as such I have my own) the terminology which Sch. himself supplies me. The exposition leads very deep and far, for it embraces a preciser explanation of the state in which we become able to apprehend Ideas, as also of that of Genius (Genialitaf), which I no longer conceive as a state of disengagement of the intellect from the will, but rather as an enhancement of the intellect of the individual to a cognitive organ of the race itself (Erkenntnissorgan der Gattung), thus of the Will as Thing-in-itself; whence alone, moreover, is to be explained that strange enthusiastic joyfulness and rapture in the supreme moments of genial cognition which Sch. seems hardly to know, as he can find it [i.e. that mode of cognition] only in repose and in the silencing of the individual passions. Quite analogously to this conception, I then arrive with greatest certainty at proving in Love a possibility of attaining to that exaltation above the instinct of the individual will where, after complete subjection of this latter, the racial will comes to full consciousness of itself; which upon this height is necessarily tantamount to complete pacification. All this will be made clear even to the inexperienced, if my statement succeeds; whilst the result cannot but be very significant, and entirely and satisfactorily fill the gaps in Schopenhauer's system.

>>23254563
Wagner said the same thing in pic related.

>>23184176
Wagner said something very similar:

>R. says, half in fun and half in earnest: “Just wait—when I write my treatise on the philosophy of music [Beethoven], church and state will be abolished. Religion has assumed flesh and blood in a way quite different from these dogmatic forms—music, that is the direct product of Christianity, as is the saint, like Saint Francis of Assisi, who compensates for the whole church as well as for the whole world.”

>>23157812
Wagner created Western Vajrayana independently of any knowledge of it, and when his understanding of Buddhism was dominated by the Theravada of Schopenhauer. In his proposed drama on a Buddhist legend, Die Sieger, he even unknowingly added a Mahayanistic idea, which in his days was scarcely known in Europe, to Buddhism itself: namely, that the way to redemption must take, not a direct path, through perfect denial of sensual love, but rather an indirect path, first through the affirmation of sensual love, in order to arrive at the ultimate overcoming of it. But the full development of his Vajrayana philosophy appears in the drama Tristan und Isolde (1859), and its most important theoretical exposition being in his essay Beethoven (1870). During the creation of Tristan und Isolde in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck he wrote the following:

>For it is a matter of demonstrating a path of salvation recognised by none of the philosophers, particularly not by Sch., the pathway to complete pacification of the Will through love, and that no abstract love of mankind, but the love which actually blossoms from the soil of sexual love, i.e. from the affection between man and woman. It is conclusive, that I am able to use for this (as philosopher, not as poet, since as such I have my own) the terminology which Sch. himself supplies me. The exposition leads very deep and far, for it embraces a preciser explanation of the state in which we become able to apprehend Ideas, as also of that of Genius (Genialitaf), which I no longer conceive as a state of disengagement of the intellect from the will, but rather as an enhancement of the intellect of the individual to a cognitive organ of the race itself (Erkenntnissorgan der Gattung), thus of the Will as Thing-in-itself; whence alone, moreover, is to be explained that strange enthusiastic joyfulness and rapture in the supreme moments of genial cognition which Sch. seems hardly to know, as he can find it [i.e. that mode of cognition] only in repose and in the silencing of the individual passions. Quite analogously to this conception, I then arrive with greatest certainty at proving in Love a possibility of attaining to that exaltation above the instinct of the individual will where, after complete subjection of this latter, the racial will comes to full consciousness of itself; which upon this height is necessarily tantamount to complete pacification. All this will be made clear even to the inexperienced, if my statement succeeds; whilst the result cannot but be very significant, and entirely and satisfactorily fill the gaps in Schopenhauer's system.

>>23155451
Check out Wagner for the only authentic continuation of Schopenhauer. Start with pic related.

>>23127997
Wagner understood Schopenhauer better than anyone else, was one of his most devoted disciples, and he gives his philosophy an even hopeful appearance. Read pic related. The aim is to distinguish the good from the appearances of the world. Everything in Schopenhauer tends to the inner life, the subject. If you remain despondent towards the world after reading him then you never understood him.

>In the evening a letter from Prof. Nietzsche, which pleases us, for his mood had given us cause for concern. Regarding this, R. says he fears that Schopenhauer’s philosophy might in the long run be a bad influence on young people of this sort, because they apply his pessimism, which is a form of thinking, contemplation, to life itself, and derive from it an active form of hopelessness.

>Later in the evening talk about the war brought us back once more to the misery of life. "And yet," says R., "I enter this room and look at the Goethe portrait in its fine frame, presented to me in love, and I feel happy and believe in happiness here on earth." As I smile, he just continues: "I assure you that such feelings make me a complete skeptic toward pessimism, since I tell myself that such delight would not have been possible without great suffering. Genuine love is as rare in this life as genius. The best way is to regard life as a task, a piece of work; anything in it that delights us comes from somewhere else."

>"Everything depends on facing the truth, even if it is unpleasant. What about myself in relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy—when I was completely Greek, an optimist? But I made the difficult admission, and from this act of resignation emerged ten times stronger."

>>23031034
Wagner's prose works. Beethoven was the foundation for most of the ideas in TBOT, and The Destiny of Opera, Actors and Singers and On Poetry and Composition later comment on and make use of Nietzsche's ideas. As Nietzsche progressed away from TBOT, Wagner's commentary turned into a criticism and outright rejection in the works Public and Popularity, Shall We Hope?, Against Vivisection, Religion and Art, What Boots this Knowledge? and Hero-dom and Christendom. This is especially interesting as the only genuine intellectual dialogue in Nietzsche's life. Of all the grand historical figures Nietzsche discusses, Wagner was the only one alive to respond.

>>22970710
Pic related. Wagner's wrote it for the 100th birthday of Beethoven. Perhaps the greatest treatise on music, as well as explication of Beethoven's life and music, ever written. As Richard Strauss said, everything we know about Beethoven's 9th we learnt from Wagner.

>>22901239
Wagner Complete Works. He established the 'religion of music', the idea in which classical music becomes conscious of itself, and thereby attains a moral imperative, in the final stage of its dialectical evolution. He is the culmination of German music, German aesthetics of music and the German Romantic literary reception of music. He is the heir to E.T.A Hoffmann and Schopenhauer. See, of especial relevance, the following works:

The Music of the Future
Beethoven
The Destiny of Opera
On Conducting
On Poetry and Composition
On Operatic Poetry and Composition
On the Application of Music to the Drama
Religion and Art

"Wagner's treatise [Beethoven] must be pronounced the first really scientific exposition of the doctrine that music has an immortal soul."

>>22823068
Start with Wagner. Art and Revolution and Beethoven at the bare minimum. Most of the ideas in TBOT come from Wagner, the title is a quotation from the Beethoven essay. Otherwise you wont know where Nietzsche is coming from or the historical context of his art and ideas. There's a reason Nietzsche discusses Wagner in almost all of his works.

>With this book I have stepped into a new Ring
>Finally, if I am not completely mistaken about my future, it is through me that the best part of the Wagnerian enterprise will live on—and that’s what is almost droll about the affair.
>I am better now and I even believe that Wagner's death was the most substantial relief that could have been given me just now. It was hard for six years to have to be the opponent of the man one had most reverenced on earth, and my constitution is not sufficiently coarse for such a position. After all it was Wagner grown senile whom I was forced to resist; as to the genuine Wagner, I shall yet attempt to become in a great measure his heir (as I have often assured Fräulein Malvida, though she would not believe it).
>It's already beginning, what I prophesied for a long time, that in many pieces I will be R.W.'s heir.—
- Nietzsche while writing Zarathustra

>>22814654
Wagner's prose works.

The Music of the Future
Beethoven
The Destiny of Opera
On Conducting
On Poetry and Composition
On Operatic Poetry and Composition
On the Application of Music to the Drama

>>22798877
Wagner is a good introduction. Read pic related.

>>22786203
Just fleecing Wagner like most fin-de-siecle intellectuals. Unmistakeably there is the shared philosophical heritage of Schopenhauer in these thinkers, but Wagner was the first to open up Schopenhauer's aesthetics of music into psychological and historical domains. Wagner, by conflating Schopenhauer's philosophy and Beethoven's music, takes Schopenhauer infinitely further. The nexus of grounded reality and inner subjectivity in Schopenhauer is the starting point. And this is what Wittgenstein is making use of.

>Beethoven’s symphonies had already stirred in the depths what our thinkers and our poets had only dimly discerned: they understood, just as we do, the new religion, the world-redeeming proclamation of sublime innocence.
- Wagner in his Beethoven essay, 1870

>“It is like being taken into the workshop of the Will, one sees everything moving and stirring as if in the bowels of the earth.” — “Anyone who could translate this into words would have the key to the enigma of the world.” — “Cries of passion to which the workshop opens its doors.” — “Not even Shakespeare can be compared to it, for what he has created is too closely connected with the world’s misery.” — “In the symphony Beeth. lets others play, here he himself is playing.” “And all that in the form of a sonata—what a sonata!”
- Wagner on the Hammerklavier, 1881

Then there is also the influence of the Meistersinger libretto, with its detailed analysis of rules in society and art, on Wittgenstein.

https://estetikajournal.org/articles/10.33134/eeja.28
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/SEMI.2008.091/pdf

>He used to say that while there he had heard Die Meistersinger thirty times. The number must be an exaggeration, but the concentration on one great work is characteristic and reminds us again of the constant putting back of the gramophone needle to a crucial passage. Wittgenstein's reaction was not: 'Die Meistersinger is a great work, I must hear more of Wagner' (or 'I must study his development', as a scholar might say) but 'Die Meistersinger is a great work, I must hear more of it.' As a matter of fact he would later sometimes avoid a concert or part of a concert in which passages from Tristan or Parsifal were played. It was a treatment of problems of music and life at the same time—and its solution lay in the need for rules that can be discovered even within spontaneity but only when a note of reverence has been introduced.
- Wittgenstein, a Life: Young Ludwig, 1889-1921

>>22760476
Wagner understood Schopenhauer better than anyone else, was one of his most devoted disciples, and he gives his philosophy an even optimistic appearance. Read pic related. The aim is to distinguish the good from the appearances of the world. Everything in Schopenhauer tends to the inner life, the subject.

>In the evening a letter from Prof. Nietzsche, which pleases us, for his mood had given us cause for concern. Regarding this, R. says he fears that Schopenhauer’s philosophy might in the long run be a bad influence on young people of this sort, because they apply his pessimism, which is a form of thinking, contemplation, to life itself, and derive from it an active form of hopelessness.

>Later in the evening talk about the war brought us back once more to the misery of life. "And yet," says R., "I enter this room and look at the Goethe portrait in its fine frame, presented to me in love, and I feel happy and believe in happiness here on earth." As I smile, he just continues: "I assure you that such feelings make me a complete skeptic toward pessimism, since I tell myself that such delight would not have been possible without great suffering. Genuine love is as rare in this life as genius. The best way is to regard life as a task, a piece of work; anything in it that delights us comes from somewhere else."

>"Everything depends on facing the truth, even if it is unpleasant. What about myself in relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy—when I was completely Greek, an optimist? But I made the difficult admission, and from this act of resignation emerged ten times stronger."

>>22752543
With Wagner. In pic related he summarises and improves upon Schopenhauer's aesthetics.

>>22715632
Equating Mill and Schopenhauer in worth is the most stereotypical pseud thing imaginable. It's a lack of basic cultural knowledge combined with the pretentious super-importance of one's own logical connections. How many people before you, who similarly haven't Schopenhauer, do you think held opinions like 'Mill and Schopenhauer are the same', 'Schopenhauer's aesthetics were ripped off from romanticism', 'I don't like Schopenhauer's philosophy but his pessimism is correct' or anything else just as insignificant? The will is all 'experience', and, despite your meagre philosophical scruples, it is the most determinate and first great expression of an entire era of Western thought, awed by that which had never even entered Kant's intellectual sphere. Schopenhauer's assumptions about life, for example his notions of biology, can hardly be challenged on the basis of Kant, though they can, if one would like to remain a pure Kantian, be entirely secluded from the area of Kant's study.

>>22715716
>What book is this from?
From Wagner's Know Thyself, however I would recommend you start with his Beethoven essay instead, pic related.

I used to be a Hegelian until I read Wagner. Now I realise Schopenhauer was the greatest thinker of the 19th century. Wagner burrows deep into his system and exposes its very essence, articulated beyond all misunderstanding. It has nothing to do with any kind of active hopelessness, but is a profound view of life and a genuine optimism.

And so, to consecrate this thread, listen to Beethoven's Ninth. The following recording was conducted by Furtwangler in 1951 to mark the reopening of the Bayreuth festival, and the significance of the religion of music, after the ravages of the war, just as it was by Wagner 75 years earlier to mark the opening of the Bayreuth festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHDXdbSWu0E

>>22564662
Wagner in pic related.

>R. says, half in fun and half in earnest: “Just wait—when I write my treatise on the philosophy of music, church and state will be abolished. Religion has assumed flesh and blood in a way quite different from these dogmatic forms—music, that is the direct product of Christianity, as is the saint, like Saint Francis of Assisi, who compensates for the whole church as well as for the whole world.”

>>22514056
>If you could recommend me one book which one would it be.
Beethoven.

>>22432426
Wagner's Beethoven essay. The greatest philosophical (and rhetorical) investigation into the nature of music ever written. While ostensibly based on Schopenhauer's system, it alters and improves so much that it would be unrecognisable to Schopenhauer. Chiefly it introduces psychological and historical dimensions into Schopenhauer's ridiculously simplistic aesthetics of music.

>It is a question here of explications such as I alone can give, since there never was another man who was poet and musician at once, in my sense, and therefore to whom an insight into inner processes has become possible such as could be expected of no other.

>R. says, half in fun and half in earnest: “Just wait—when I write my treatise on the philosophy of music [Beethoven], church and state will be abolished. Religion has assumed flesh and blood in a way quite different from these dogmatic forms—music, that is the direct product of Christianity, as is the saint, like Saint Francis of Assisi, who compensates for the whole church as well as for the whole world.”

>>22433801
TBOT ripped off pic related. Its title is literally a quotation of it.

>>22291645

>R. says, half in fun and half in earnest: “Just wait—when I write my treatise on the philosophy of music, church and state will be abolished. Religion has assumed flesh and blood in a way quite different from these dogmatic forms—music, that is the direct product of Christianity, as is the saint, like Saint Francis of Assisi, who compensates for the whole church as well as for the whole world.”

You WILL convert to Wagner's religion of music.