Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
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The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.
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If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
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Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist.... We need works that are stron...
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The prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the Italian painting of the martyr whose intestines are slowly being unwound from his body on a reel.
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The prelude to Tristan and Isolde sounded as if a bomb had fallen into a large music factory and had thrown all the notes into confusion.
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