Note: I made this video before I knew much German, so my pronunciation is ... a bit off.

I'm a music student over at the University of Massachusetts, and I always SUPER appreciate your videos. Incredibly informative and fun!

I love the direction this video takes with respect to Wagner. I feel that it’s important to understand his anti-Semitic tendencies because history is very important in understanding a composer, but I also think people often get so wrapped up in his bigotry that they forget to separate the music from the person a bit. I love how he touches on Wagner’s controversial ideology while also acknowledging that his works *are* great despite the convroversy surrounding his very name!

Thank you for informing me about Wagner's Beethoven fanfic. It was an amusing read!

that was a great sneeze!

I laughed so many times! Strangely, learning about a ‘horrible person,’ that being Wagner, proved highly enjoyable.

Wagner is my favorite composer and this video is great, thanks for that!

Really appreciate your work. Lot of content in a short time.

This helped me write my essay thanks

So fascinating!! Thank you for sharing!

I also want to add that as you state in your above 'notes' that this stuff is for educational purposes... you do such a nice job that I would also use the word 'entertainment'. Thanks for your stuff, your time, your effort, your light approach - and for slowing down! :-)

Dear Nerd - - I really like your stuff! I just recently found them and I've seen only about 6 so far, but they are well done and interesting. For example, I've known about the Tristan Chord for decades, but I never knew what differentiated it from any other dissonant chord, until you explained it well! OK, gotta go and watch some more Classical Nerd videos.

Great video! interesting, informative and hilarious

Thomas, I love your whimsy and your ability to turn a pithy and apt phrase. And if teaching a subject to others is the best way to learn it yourself then you're going to be a Titan of music history and musicology. Wonderful videos! -Don C., D.M.A.

ok this channel is amazing and if I hadnt had a test in school about Wagner, I wouldve never found it. Really some top level music content that just for some reason isnt more popular on youtube

Your videos are amazing. I believe Wagner has a very rich history, and would love if you could ever make a sequel more about his actual pieces, and an analysis of them.

Very good. Also see "Wagner and Me" with Stephen Fry.

Outstanding! Prof. Dr. Dr. H. James Birx, New York

Finally! Thank you!

Touchy subject. Well done.

Awesome vidd!

Excellent explanation.

Lol I’ve heard a couple things about him but never knew how ridiculous and outlandish his story is.. wow

Good one!

I was wondering if you could perhaps do a video on Heinrich Marschner in the future. His operas were very important for Wagner's music.

The greatest composer ever.

Great video. I appreciate the note near the end that not every influential person from history was necessarily a good person. It seems to be a common theme that men that made progress in the arts, politics, and business weren't particularly kind or thoughtful to their families and could hold views that are appalling by modern standards. Some were philanderers. If they weren't completely absent from the lives of their kids, they could be plain old assholes to them. They could be raging anti-semites but ignore your jewishness if they thought they could use your connections, money, and influence to get ahead. Being artistically sensitive doesn't always translate into being sensitive to other people's feelings or feeling any sort of empathy. Wagner is a good example of that.

“Wagner was the last of the Romantics, bringing Romanticism to its final flowering. To remain a Romantic after Wagner was to imitate him, and many composers did that helplessly of hopefully. Those who wanted to retain their individuality, had to rebel against him.” --Milton Cross and David Ewen Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music. Vol. Ii

The German philosopher F. Nietzsche - who also had some obscure piano compositions - had some thoughts on Wagner as well; did you look into that?

Although you've been already doing a great job in pronouncing the German names, I'd just like to point out that the German CH behind "frontal vowels" or "flat vowels" like "i" and "e" are pronounced as IPA /ç/, which is just a frontal variant of /x/, produced when the middle (instead of the middle-back) of the tongue is touching the hard instead of the soft palate, and this point of contact is just a little bit behind that of the Spanish eñe. Linguistics aside, I'm interested in getting to know some polyphonic symphonies or more generally, composers after Baroque who have systematically applied polyphony to their work (not just in fugato or in the form of polyrythms like in Chopin's work). Could you suggest some names?

5:26 You said it

Ernest Newman put it very well when he said we don't have anything to complain: we only live with the good in Wagner (his works) and not with the bad (his person). Regardless of whether Alberich and Mime are caricatures of Jews (of course they are), and Siegfried is a horrible insufferable brat from the way he treats Mime, whom he has no reason to hate, the Ring music is a marvelous achievent and Alberich's curse on love is still one of the most amazing pieces of evil music ever written. And Klingsor just took the chastity thing a bit TOO literally...

Thought this was about his harmonic language more in depth. Instead, I got a lecture about "nationalistic music". Alright.

Where is the video about Verdi, haven't seen it yet. Hope it is at least 20 mins.

The bass clarinet in A did exist. Mahler scored it numerous times, if that wasn't evidence enough in itself, he even scored for it when the part would have been easier on the Bb, clearly doing so for its distinct tone colour, the Bb and A basses purportedly being more distinct from each other in sound than the Bb and A sopranos. For some unfortunate reason this instrument has simply been lost to history.

This is a really good video, but I feel like it lacks quite a bit of Liszt in there. Liszt was one of the most important figures in Wagner's life. He helped him so much financially, conducted his works when he was in exile, and even musically speaking Wagner recongnized he "borrowed" a lot from Liszt. I have to say their friendship still strikes me as odd. Liszt was everything Wagner wasn't: extremely pious, generous, respectul and helpful of all artists (even his so called enemies like Clara Schuman), he liked to live modestly (at least towards the last third of his life)... by contrast Wagner was egocentric, atheist (not that it's a bad thing at all, simply different from Liszt), petty, lived well over his means, and basically hated everyone who didn't enjoy or worship his music. What a weird pair. Anyway, I hope you'll make a video on Liszt someday, he's too often disregarded as a mere virtuso for whom women went crazy, but he was soooooo much more.

I didn't know about the "fan fiction."

The greatest composer who ever lived. Lohengrin and Parsifal are inspired by Ethereal forces.

That guy was such a “player “!!! (Wagner not our beloved “classical nerd”). That’s ok I still love his music. Who’s perfect, right? 😉

Please discuss about Meyerbeer, please. The most staged composer during the 19th century and the mysterious disappearance from the standard repertoire 😊

My god, I didn't know how many composers got around! Also, I have to be honest, as much as a despicable person Wagner was, Ride of the Valkyries has always been one of my favorite classical pieces.

Do you do separate video's for kids?

Hey, great video. I would just disagree with the whole "We need to seperate art from artist" arguement. The real unconfortable thing about Wagner is, that the man who - out of an inferiorty complex - wanted to seperate the influence of jewish musicians on his music and became a fanatical antisemite is the same guy who made music, that really moves and is above borders and nations. Wagner acknowledged this even himself that his music has no boundaries. And there is question whether his operas (especially his later ones) are antisemitic themselves (I would say yes) and are - at least - partially used as vessels for transporting Wagners ideology.

based

I always hear "anti-semantic composer". XD

You didn't mention his book on music-drama which sets out his thesis and why his music dramas ( not operas) are not like other operas. He wrote the text first, the text was the basis of the work, not the music. He then wrote the music. The drama works like a play and unlike opera it has no redundancy at all. His anti Semitisim was odious but quite typical of the era, and less dogmatic than Cosima's. The first performance of Parsifal was conducted Hermann Levi, a Jewish conductor because he was the best.

Wagner is still alive.

Wagner would hardly have much in common with the Nazi party in the way you suggest when you say he would have been a Nazi if he lived in the 30s. Wagner was Anti-Semitic and a German Nationalist, but to suggest he would condone a totalitarian government that censored " degenerate art", drove out the existing musicians (save Strauss), completely annihilated German culture as a result of their defeat in the war, and killed millions of it's own people is frankly baseless. Furthermore, Wagner was (at least in his earlier years) a left-wing socialist that believed in the greater Germany as a democratic and socialist utopia. Frankly, he was much more akin to Marx or Feurbach in his political beliefs.

2:00

Know this already years

It's important to realise that same words can mean different thing. In Wagner's times being what we call "antisemitic" today was not something as sinister as it is today. It was a popular sport, not unlike today's black Americans complaining about "Asians owning all the corner liquor stores" over a domino game or whatever other group complaining about yet another one. To us it all appears incredibly abhorrent because of Auschwitz but one cannot judge anyone in the 19th century by this lens. It's anachronistic. Having said all that, Wagner was quite a pain in the neck in real life but most highly driven men are like this.

that's like saying "even though hitler was a terrible man, he was a vegetarian."

The cause of Wagner's heart attack was the result of an abscessed tooth.

Sure is nice that I don't figure into my musical pie the composer's personal beliefs. I would have to actually throw out most of them because we all have personal beliefs that would probably disqualify us from daily life. But then, the information about the private lives that you are including is 'more than interesting - although I don' t really know what that phrase actually means... I mean, 'more than interesting' could mean anything. At any rate, with school being out for the 'summer' - yay - that is 'more than exciting' - I will be putting together / compiling / 'more than just considering' your videos into a 'package deal' for my students for next school year. So, while I am now on 'vacation' from the little urchins, I will be 'more than just listening' to your stuff over the summer... I will be prepping your videos to fit into the junior high brain design, which, I am sure you understand is 'more than just a human brain' at that age. However, I am also not sure what their brains are at this time in their lives- but no matter, I will be turning to your materials much more often next year because they are short enough for them to 'discover', employ and hopefully maintain their listening comprehension skills... which, if that actually happens, will be 'more than a miracle!'

I'm glad Wagner was miserable. His anti semitism is one thing but his rampant adultery leading to outside forces aligned against him which he probably blamed on Jews, is what really irks me.

Remember, when it comes to Wagner’s adultery, his first wife was the first to start the chain of infidelity, plus he had Daddy issues. And as far as people who seem only too eager to passively lay the blame for the Holocaust at Wagner’s feet, know these are small men with unconscious gag reflexes and a constitution of jello and there isn’t one among the lot of them that could’ve written Die Mastersinger. Not saying this guy is one of those guys, but he is repeating the same tired talking points. You don’t have to like Wagner, but no one has the right to slander him. Blame Hitler, Blame Canada

Read Cosima Wagner’s fascinating and voluminous diaries. She sadistically abused their son Siegfried; was more anti-Semitic than Wagner, and expressed her bigotry, racism, and Nazism openly until her death in 1930; and was the original despicable Wagnerian fanatic. She even abandoned her father Frantz Liszt in his prolonged death agony to fuss over Bayreuth.

A little too harsh on Wagner. I would not be so confident that he would have been a Nazi if he lived on , in spite oh his anti-semitism . He continued to collaborate with Jews throughout his life & his politics were by no means reactionary. Even Karl Marx was anti-semitic, even though he had Jewish roots.The association of Bayreuth with Hitler is primarily due to Winifred Wagner , a Welsh woman who married the homosexual son of Richard Wagner.Wagner was too great & complex a figure to be reduced to being a potential Nazi. It is difficult to believe a crude nobody as Hitler to be able to impress the cultured Wagner (who held Shakespeare above any German author).

After a lifetime of studying, reading, thinking about it, I'm sure of a few things. Here's a trivial one-Mime is Meyerbeer. There is some reason to believe Beckmesser (Hans Lick, at first), and Beckmesser's music is Jewish. But it's hardly as simple as that. Nope, the Tristan "chord" resolves to a French sixth in a minor, a perfectly functional chord. Could a "horrible person" write the Good Friday Music? Is it really that simple? Don't think so. Wagner scared of Cosima? Hahaha, don't think so either. You cannot honestly remove the anti-semitism from the Ring, Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Or the Merchant of Venice, hahaha. I think you got way too hot under the collar this around, CN. There's a lot of great music to talk about, and you ended up basically talking about character.

I do absolve Wagner from his anti-antisemitism, but not from his naive idiocy. As Stephen Fry very well put it, it's not that he wanted Jews excluded from Germany and Art, it's actually that he wanted all the world to be German and make German Art. Jewishness in Music is such a drivel that it's hard to take seriously. The assumptions of the relationship between "art", the "folk" and "music" and how Jews could not create art because they didn't have a (literally) land they belonged to - hence the notion they didn't speak a "true language" because Wagner believed the language comes from the land you live in is... well... (though the Palestine conflict will show Jews did not actually disagree with Wagner there, at least not when it comes to the importance of a piece of land) is ludicrous to say the least, and of course is liable to raise questions to Wagner's sanity...

No Wagner was not a horrible person. I find this statement to be without understanding and close minded

A clever B honor role boy. Wagner, kid, is a mountain, you are a door stop. Alas, Wagner is doomed, Or is it that there are enough nasty people around to keep him going? And who the hell sponsors this worn out post war anti Wagner crap? Woody Allen?

Oh no not a hrcking anti semitism

Kanye also hates Jews but his music is not as good as Wagner. So if people listen to Kanye I will listen to Wagner.

Throw away your Wagner library, folks, the whole National Scandal true version of the Donald Trump of composers is before you. The only thing missing is the toilet paper.. Alas, I'll change my life. And no, you have not done justice in this video. Have a beer and go back to your frat house, brat.