Friedrich Schorr as Hans Sachs
We're early in Act II of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The scene is a street with houses on the left and right, separated by a narrow alley that winds toward the back of the stage. The right-hand house, grand in style, is the goldsmith and mastersinger VEIT POGNER's; the left-hand house, simple in style, is the cobbler and mastersinger HANS SACHS's. In front of POGNER's house there is a lime tree; in front of SACHS's an elder. -- As the act began, not long before, it is a pleasant summer evening, and in the course of the action of the act night falls.
At this point SACHS is in his workshop, unable to get out of his head the audition "mastersong" presented to him and his fellow mastersingers this morning, breaking all the rules, and yet, and yet -- Now, having just said good night to his apprentice, DAVID, he arranges his work, sits on his stool at the door, and then, laying his tools down again, leans back, resting his arms on the closed lower half of the door.
HANS SACHS: How sweet the elder smells,
so mild, so strong and full! --
It relaxes my limbs gently,
wants me to say something. --
What is the good of anything I can say to you?
I'm but a poor, simple man.
If work is not to my taste,
you might, friend, rather release me;
I would do better to stretch leather
and give up all poetry. --
[He tries to work, with much noise, but leaves off, leans back once more, and reflects.]
And yet, it just won't go. --
I feel it, and cannot understand it --
I cannot hold on to it, nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly, I cannot measure it! --
But then, how should I grasp
what seemed to me immeasurable?
No rule seemed to fit it,
and yet there was no fault in it. --
It sounded so old, and yet was so new,
like birdsong in sweet May: --
whosoever hears it
and, carried away by madness,
were to sing it after the bird,
it would bring him derision and disgrace! --
Spring's command,
sweet necessity
placed it in his breast;
then he sang as he had to;
and as he had to, so he could --
I noticed that particularly.
The bird that sang today
had a finely formed beak;
if he made the Masters uneasy,
he certainly well pleased Hans Sachs!
-- English translation (mostly) by Peter Branscombe
Friedrich Schorr (b), Hans Sachs; London Symphony Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded May 10, 1930
Franz Crass (bs), Hans Sachs; Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Kurt Eichhorn, cond. EMI, recorded c1971
by Ken
Two weeks ago I set out to explore some of what I'm calling Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), offering as a sort of model, though a far from ideal one, Sir John Falstaff's massively self-pitying monologue at the start of Act III of Verdi and Boito's Falstaff, after dragging himself out of the Thames, decrying our "Thieving world! Villainous world! Wicked world!" (Eventually, believe it or not, this is going to tie up with our still-ongoing discussion of the underlying link between Schubert's "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's "Zueignung," and the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.)
Then last week I revealed ("Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days") that one of the OBDs I'm targeting takes place in a Wagner opera -- maybe Tannhäuser, maybe Tristan und Isolde, maybe Die Meistersinger, maybe Parsifal, or maybe even Lohengrin. In the process last week we heard a lot of music, and if you haven't taken it all in, it's still there.
I STILL FEEL BAD FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT LAST
WEEK'S PERFORMANCES, BUT I HAD MY REASONS
I was trying to get a lot of things done in last week's post, but I realized I passed up an opportunity to demonstrate how these scenes, these characters, these operas became part of my basic consciousness -- something I'm hoping to talk about more, because it goes to the heart of why at least some of us have given ourselves over to opera, and it has very little to do with most of what gets discussed on the subject.
I think Wagner, for example, would be quite pleased that I've developed the kind of relationship I have to his operas, but it's one he couldn't possibly have imagined. I mean, when it comes to The Ring, he has to have assumed that his audiences would make the pilgrimage to Bayreuth, see the whole thing, and "get" it. Which I know would never have happened for me. If my first experience of The Ring had been simply sitting through the whole blessed thing, I would have been bored out of my mind.
In a lot of Sunday Classics posts I've tried to share some of what my experience (I hate to dignify it with such a fancy word as "process") has been, and I want to do more of it. But part of my thinking as well is to set before the reader an assortment of performances that can just be listened to at will, picking and choosing, dibbing and dabbing, whether the reader-listener is experiencing or re-experiencing the music.
JUST 'CAUSE WE'VE HEARD ANOTHER MEISTERSINGER
EXCERPT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S OUR "OBD" WAGNER OPERA
It could just be that I thought hearing Hans Sachs's classic Fliedermonolog recording (for once a legendary recording that lives up to its legend!) would add something to the discussion. And one thing it should add, as I hope you've already heard, is some absolutely gorgeous singing. Friedrich Schorr's voicing of those opening lines is some of the most beautiful performing I've ever heard, and I've thrown in Franz Crass's operatic-recital-LP version (I don't know that he ever actually sang the role) because it too is sung so beautifully, and beautiful singing matters a lot to me in Wagner as much as Verdi. On the simplest level, the beauty of the singing tells us something about Hans Sachs, whose life after all is largely about the search for truth and creative expression in the poetry of song. (Could this have something to do with the things I didn't say about last week's performances? Hmm, interesting thought!)
So I think for now, beyond encouraging you to go back to the last two weeks' posts, I'm just going to throw out two more performances of the Fliedermonolog.
WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act II, Hans Sachs, "Was duftet doch der Flieder" (Fliedermonolog)
Hans Hotter (bs-b), Hans Sachs; Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, Heinrich Hollreiser, cond. BASF-Acanta, recorded 1944
George London (bs-b), Hans Sachs; Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Knappertsbusch, cond. Decca, recorded 1958
NEXT WEEK: I think we'll be investigating the Operatic Bad Day experienced by our Wagnerian protagonist (or protagonists)
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