HOW TO IMPROVE PARSIFAL

I suppose that my frequent and many complaints about what is wrong with the state of classical music today can be reduced to the basic objection that classical music is no fun.

It is no fun because classical music insists on being extremely serious, and many people involved in the business would be scandalized by the very notion that "great aht" could somehow be considered fun. Their attitude is consistent with the triumph of the Wagner-Mahler-Schoenberg-Webern line of composers over the Schubert-Brahms-Hindemith-Vaughan Williams lineage, because the attitude of the Wagner-Mahler-Schoenberg-Webern tradition of composition is unreservedly serious. Whereas the composers who took after Brahms often wrote music with genuine emotion in it—even including pathos—they are generally not considered as profound as those of the other school who typically went beyond mere emotion to music that would solve the world's problems—or at least psychoanalyze them and provide answers that mere mortals could then act upon. And if the serialists wrote completely abstract music, it was seen as being on a higher and more intellectual plane than the work of composers who indulged in mere melody and harmony.

From the late nineteenth century until World War I, there were numerous Wagner societies in which affluent but neglected housewives studied the works of Wagner hoping to discover the delitescent deep inner meaning contained therein. In New York, such seminars were conducted by Wagner's protégé, Anton Seidl (1850-1898), and the neglected housewives who found a vicarious release in Sieglinde's forbidden love and Isolde's orgasmic death all wore the letter "S" on their dresses. Similarly, the serialists—Schoenberg and his disciples who were the musical descendants of Wagner—had in Vienna a Society for Private Music Performance, and owing to the profoundly serious nature of their meetings, critics were excluded, no program was announced in advance, and applause was forbidden. To my knowledge, no such societies devoted to the music of the opposing school existed during this same period when the American composer and critic Philip Hale proposed inscribing "Exit in case of Brahms" over the doors of Boston's Symphony Hall.

The division of classical music into two opposing schools—serious and not so serious—may seem artificial and inaccurate, because all composers try to be serious at one time or another—even Arthur Sullivan wrote sacred music and a symphony. But some composers and their votaries certainly did become obsessed with being grave. Listening to Mahler's second symphony does not give one the feeling of a Resurrection but rather a Crucifixion (which takes longer). It took music 66 years to go from Schumann's ebullient "Scenes of Childhood" to Mahler's "Dead Child Songs." Mahler was also one of the first conductors to quell any enthusiasm the audience might evince by applauding between movements.

I do not maintain that serious music is bad. I merely suggest that the finest music seems to flourish when a healthy balance between playfulness and seriousness is reached. Many composers were ruined by attempting to be serious. Leonard Bernstein would have been better off had he stuck to imitating (as in Candide) Arthur Sullivan or George Gershwin, for when he tried to be the new Gustav Mahler, the results were dreadful. The three minutes of the "Wrong Note Rag" (from Wonderful Town) are worth more than the whole of his Mass.

The composers whose music I delight in most all had a playful streak. Franz Schubert often wrote music that was downright silly (e.g., his Impromptu No.2 in E-flat which is phrased like one long run-on sentence). Old Hans Brahms was a joker who included student drinking songs in his Academic Festival Overture, and in doing so scandalized the professors in Breslau who were to award him an honorary degree.

Mozart wrote "Ein musikalischer Spass" (K.522), and the Mozart of the twentieth century, Paul Hindemith, wrote, "The Overture to the Flying Dutchman as Played on Sight by a Second-Rate Orchestra at the Village Well at 7 O'Clock Sunday Morning," which is hilariously full of bad entrances and wrong notes.

Gustav Holst had a sense of humor which often crept into his music. His opera "The Perfect Fool" is a broad parody on "Parsifal," and during one section, the score instructs the orchestra to drown out the singers. Later a tenor makes an entrance singing a parody of Verdi. Rather than more of the lugubrious German sacred music, the world instead needs a revival of Holst's The Hymn of Jesus with its rockin' syncopation and celebration of dance as a form of worship.

But why are there no parodies and musical jokes in today's music? The redeeming factor of the late John Cage was that his music was like a practical joke on the musical establishment, but where are his heirs and assigns? The fact that much of the classical music establishment in the Americas is cloistered in academia has certainly helped drain it of any vitality, but even worse has been the decline of music education in primary schools. As the entertainment industry forces its tawdry product on the public, most youths are simply unaware of the pleasures of formal and traditional music, and the classics are now strictly the province of grumpy old people.

This explains why classical music is now such a morbidly serious business, but it doesn't explain why, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Wagner and his followers became so obsessed with being weighty and esoteric. No one can honestly deny that Wagner was one of the most brilliant composers who ever lived, but neither has anyone satisfactorily explained why he wrote such abominable operas. The fact that they grew progressively more appalling with each opus is obvious to all (except, of course, to the aforementioned Wagner masochists—all gluttons for punishment), and the situation was best summed-up by wily old Gioacchino Rossini who is reputed to have said, "Wagner has many beautiful moments in his music...but oh! those half-hours!" (And if Rossini didn't actually say that, he certainly should have.)

Over the years, the early deaths of Schubert and Mozart and Bizet have often been lamented, but I am of the opinion that a far greater tragedy and a greater loss to music was Wagner's megalomania. Musicologists, critics and archbishops often refer to Tannhäuser as "Wagner's operetta," but there is more music in it than in Tristan and Die Walküre combined—not more storytelling, not more stultifying monologues on a barren stage, but actual music. If only Wagner had not been the beneficiary of royal largesse, he might have been starved into writing another "operetta" or three, but alas, government welfare had its usual effect, and so he was free to write whatever he pleased.

Actually, Wagner did write another "operetta." The reason Die Meistersinger is so satisfying and is the exception to his later work is that in it, Wagner makes less of an attempt to be serious than he does in subsequent operas. As in Tannhäuser, there is a grand march and a song contest, and Wagner provides a rare glimpse of humor (although generally at the expense of Eduard Hanslick). Sitting through one of Wagner's other later-period operas is like watching stagnant water in a clogged drain hoping that it'll go down soon. Remove the Liebestod fromTristan und Isolde, and the remainder is reminiscent of NPR on a slow news day; of the plays of Samuel Beckett performed in Esperanto; of an endless series of initiation pledges; a badly-warped LP recording of whale bellowings; the neighbor's car alarm going off in the middle of the night again; a long speech being read by a minor politician of a fringe party; they're now serving number 3 and your number is 85; a large bowl of stale bean soup.

My lament is that, alas, if only Wagner had maintained an equilibrium between seriousness and fun, between lightness and dark, yin and yang, if he had not violated the balance of the active and passive principles of the universe, we might have had less ghastly half-hours of declamation, of a character singing his story in twice the time that's necessary, fewer lines such as Mein Herzen wird mit erstaunlicher Liebe gefüllt! ("That bratwurst keeps coming up on me"), less absurd plots and more reasonable lengths, and we might not have had to endure the endless number of repetitions of the descending scale that forms Wotan's leitmotif.

In my younger days, I was always very circumspect in admitting that I found attending a Wagner opera a tedious experience, and I'd only complain lightly that Wagner was not a great dramatist (talk about understatement), and that the glacial pace of the action on stage merely detracted from the glory of the music. Lies. Youth, after all, is a time when we are all self-conscious, and I certainly didn't want to be thought of as a philistine. But over the years, as I gained confidence, I became quite forthright in advocating that what was needed was a modern overhauling of Wagner's operas, and that cuts of fifty percent of the original material were in order.

By the time I became employed as a classical expert at a local record shop, I was in open revolt against Wagner and all the other hyper-serious composers, and I missed no opportunity to mock them and their interminable masterpieces. One day, my boss, the classical maestro, was ordering stock, and I couldn't restrain myself when I noticed that he was about to order a three-CD set of Parsifal.

"Wheugh! Parsifal!" I said with a shudder.

My boss looked up and asked defensively, "What? Something wrong with Parsifal?"

"Something wrong with it? Hah! Y'know what Parsifal needs? Needs a march in it. No, wait! Even better, a grand dance sequence in the middle to break the monotony. It turns out the swan's not dead after all, and it gets up and does a little dance...then everyone does the swan dance...at which point the swan's costume is removed to reveal a beautiful woman...and the dance ends with this sort of Broadway choreography where they form two rows and pass her hand to hand toward the front, and then replace that tedious Dresden cadence with a drum solo and..."

But by this point my immediate superior had left the room, more than likely to go ask the owner to have me replaced. I was unconcerned, as by that time I had proved my worth to the business. I was the only employee who could talk with the audiophiles in their argot, and almost every female customer was charmed into purchasing whatever CD I was pushing that week. (What can I say? I make no apologies for being handsome.)

In fact, the store never did order that copy of Parsifal. Instead, the buyer took my advice and ordered a stack of my favorite CD of American circus music, every one of which was sold to customers who left the store with a smile on their lips and a merry tune in their hearts.

And you, dear reader, should follow the lead of these customers. If you've been reading Freud, Hal Lindsey or the novels of James Redfield, if you've been listening to a steady diet of Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner (who I don't consider to be a real composer), Schoenberg, Webern or Boulez, give yourself a break and take the cure. It takes 30 days to get through Detox, and 30 days of listening to other music will have the same salubrious effect.

Yes, friends, throw away all your Mahler; throw away that Prozac; throw out the Paxil, the Valium and the Viagra too. Get yerself an album of circus music or the Preludes of Debussy and let your reptile brain take back the controls. Aren't you overdue for a mid-life crisis? Why put it off any longer! Haven't you been trying too hard to be serious and staid and "respectable"? The problem is with the music you've been listening to! Start your musical makeover today; you'll be glad you did.