Of course, he wouldn't finish all the music until 1874, so you get some idea of quite how mammoth an undertaking this all was. In their finished form, they take a full four nights to perform, a full fifteen hours of opera. If you ever happen to walk past an opera house and see people entering in full dickie-bows and DJs at 3.30 in the afternoon, you can probably bet that either (a) they are students, on their way home, lost and pissed from the night before's May Ball, or (b) The Ring is on.
The Ring is definitely an acquired taste, but nevertheless it is one which can be as hugely rewarding to the inspiration as it is challenging to the bladder. Lots of it is utterly GORGEOUS music, music you can quite honestly get lost in. That having been said, not everyone agrees. It's known that Rossini wasn't a fan. Neither was Friedrich Nietzsche.
'Is Wagner a human being at all?' he wrote. 'Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner's art is diseased.' Don't hold back, Fred.
Let me move on now, not even one year, but to just January and March of 1853.1 only mention it because it will help focus on the two dominant styles prevailing in music, and indeed opera, around this time.
JANUARY 19TH AND MARCH 6TH 1853
T
he dates are, in fact, the first days on which the opera-going publics of Rome and Venice, respectively, were to hear the new works by Verdi - Trov and Trav. Or II Trovatore and La Traviata, to be more precise. And why is this important, apart from the fact that they are both stonking operas, still performed every five minutes, today? Well, it's important because when you put these two operas up against the two operas that we were discussing above -Gotterddmmerung (Twilight of the Gods) and Siegfried - then you have the basic gist of the two big schools of romantic music going on at this time: Italian and German. In the bold corner, there's Wagner, obviously, who, despite his unique, one-off individualism, is straight from the German tradition: his operas are logical extensions - well, logical in Wagner's brain, at least - of the legacy of Beethoven and Weber and the current legacy of Meyerbeer. In the italic corner, there's Verdi. He's directly continuing the line of Bellini and Donizet ti, and all their 'bel canto' Italianate characteristics. Wagner wants to advance his art form. Verdi is, ostensibly, a crowd pleaser. Wagner wants the heights. Verdi wants the hits. Wagner deals with Gods on horseback. Verdi deals in bums on seats. Together, they are romantic opera in 1853. But guess who is said to be about to put in an appearance, some twenty-six years after he'd died? If you guessed Beethoven, then award yourself ten points and a pair of glasses.
BRAHMS AND 'THE MAN'
r-r-\ he year I'm talking about, when the late Ludwig is said to have put in an appearance, is 1858, just some five years after Trov and Trav. To be fair, the person I'm on about is not Loud Wig, back from the dead. This guy is a whole different kettle of fish, altogether -different hang-ups, different style - later on, certainly - and different notes, generally. The man in question was said, in his youth, to have played piano in pubs and brothels to earn a living, and didn't actually start composing until pretty late on in life. He also kept a bronze bust of Chancellor Bismarck in the room where he did all his writing, as a constant reminder of his belief in a dominant Germany. And who was this rather corpulent composer, rarely seen without a cigar in his mouth, who had a full-on white beard and was said by many to have written 'Beethoven's Tenth'? Step forward Johannes Brahms, spinster of this parish.
But before the connection from Brahms to Van 'The Man' - Herr Beethoven, that is - let me bring us up to date a little.
There is - obviously: goes without saying - war a-plenty. Always is. The Anglo-Chinese is just coming to an end, but the Indian Mutiny has just started and the Taiping Rebellion has been put down (all that fuss over a brooch). Garibaldi has founded the Italian National Association, just last year, in Italy, while, in Britain, Lord Derby is now PM. On a more diurnal level, shall we say, the Daily Telegraph has been founded and Florence Nightingale has had her fifteen minutes of fame in the Crimea. Further afield, Livingstone comes across a simply breathtaking set of falls, on his exploration of the Zambezi river. It's in some of the most unspoilt and raw country you could imagine: it's exciting, it's breathtaking, it's deafening in its ferocity and… well, apparently, for Livingstone, it brings to mind a thirty-nine-year-old dame-like, stern-faced monarch with a bit of a Mona Lisa smile. So. He calls it Victoria Falls. Not Amazing Falls, or Ferocious Falls, or 'Jeepers, will you look at that' Falls. No. He calls it Victoria Falls. Doesn't seem right, somehow, does it?
Elsewhere, in the world of books, while Livingstone has been away, the past few years have seen some very fine additions to the local libraries: Flaubert's Madame Bovary, a couple of years ago, Baudelaire's scandalous LesFleursduMal- 'The Flowers of Evil' - and Trollope's Barchester Towers. There are exciting developments in other areas, too: the world of art had just gained La Source, a painting by Ingres; the world of naughty substances has just witnessed the first extraction of pure cocaine; and, finally, the world of 'people named after bells' gained its first, and possibly only, member - the then Director of Public Works in London, one Sir Benjamin Hall. It will eventually sit up in St Stephen's Tower, and be known as Big Ben. Very cute way to go down in history, isn't it? As a bell. Not as 'the one who led thousands of people to their deaths' or 'the guy who first contracted that rather nasty skin disease'. But 'the man who gave his name to the bong you hear on News at Ten and at New Year'. So remember to drop it in, if you ever find yourself wading through tourists outside the Houses of Parliament and the clock bongs the hour: something like 'Ah, good old Sir Benjamin Hall, striking away in St Stephen's Tower.' Funny to think that this was all going on around die same time as a shy, fourteen-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary in the southern French town of Lourdes. Big Ben and Lourdes, you see. Never knew they were connected, did you?
Back to Brahms, though, and well, to put it diplomatically, I think you could say he is another of the what's termed 'late developers' in the world of composing. The proper form for a composer, as you probably know, is to have your best work done in your teens, then it's syphilis at twenty and dead by twenty-seven, thank you very much. Well, it wasn't to be the way for Brahms.
Brahms is, how shall I put it, well… scared, really. He's quite a big fan of Beethoven, you see, and, for a long time, he feels very much in 'The Man's' shadow. In fact, on a bad day, he couldn't quite see the point of trying, almost, after what Beethoven had achieved. As a result, he's staving off writing his first symphony - not a bad idea, to be fair, considering the critics were always going to call it Beethoven's Tenth - and generally, well, filibustering. In 1858, though, he overcomes his nerves in order to produce his first piano concerto, in D minor. And, to be fair, he needn't have worried. It is still, today, seen as one of the chief weapons in the concert pianist's armoury - along with surprise, fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope (sorry, best not get into that) - although, admittedly, at its premiere it did not go down too well. In fact, come to think of it, the PC No 1 wasn't regarded very highly in his lifetime, at all. And now that I think of it, it only came into the mainstream concert pianist repertoire during the twentieth century. So, to be fair, he did really have something to worry about. So, sorry, Brahms. You were right to fret. Still. I like it.
Anyhow, Brahms's PC No 1 comes out around the same time as the latest surge of creative juices from Mad Hector's house. Sorry, let me rephrase that. Berlioz writes another masterpiece in the same year. Yes, he's still around, still bonkers, and still knocking 'em asleep with his EPic stuff. (That's EPic with a capital EP.)