| Sounds in the night |
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August 2005 I am not a great lover of Wagner's operas, but there are many who are. On Monday evening however there was a broadcast of a Prom concert consisting of four hours of Die Walkure. I had the radio on in the background and heard a great roar of approval from the audience. It was at the end of the first act and so even before the well-known tunes appear. Such, however, is the enthusiasm of the Wagner fanatics, the more so when local boy Bryn Terfel is playing the god Wotan and the great Placido Domingo is playing the hero Seigfreid. In fact their reaction was more reminiscent of the performance by Queen at Live Aid or by Kylie now. I just hope, when they got to the really exciting parts, that there were enough paramedics to take care of the heart attacks amongst the middle-aged and elderly in the audience. So Opera lives despite its strange plots and the creation by Wagner of a story line one can think of as the predecessor to the Lord of the Rings. And what was Wagner saying to us when he had an opera house built for the performance of his works? Had he been taken over by his legends so that he felt the need to create a temple for them to live in or was it a PR exercise worthy of Max Clifford? I'm afraid that I still think of the afficianados as having private parties at which they dress up as the Gods or as Rhine-maidens. Just like Dr Who fans really. But we do know that music is fundamental to animals. Other animals may not be able to form words, but they produce sounds which convey meaning. And variable pitch - the basis of music - is used in that communication. It now appears to be thought that although the Neanderthals may or may not have used words or a language, their vocal tracts were the same as ours and so they were able to make music in the widest sense for communication of their emotions as we still do. Of course music can cause considerable annoyance to the neighbours when it is too loud and at an inappropriate time. Indeed, it is precisely because of such an event that I decided to write this piece. Having been woken up by a deafening noise at just after 4 am, I thought of what I could write until the noise abated about half an hour later and I was finally able to go back to sleep. Those birds really have no consideration for people sleeping with their windows open. |