Bayreuth Discourse

Symposium

Richard Wagner’s work has long been a subject of public debate. The “case of Wagner” occupies academics, philosophers and artists, alongside the constant reinterpretation of his pioneering works. Bayreuth Discourse sets the stage for a discussion about Wagner: one that may be controversial, lead to dispute, or even just to an exchange of ideas about the complex forms, meanings and impact of the man and his work. The questions are aimed at the present day: is it even still relevant to discuss Wagner as a visionary of the modern era? Which of his strategies continue to play a role in contemporary arts? What significance does the debate about legends, myths and stories have for our present? Is the global media appropriation of our time somehow connected with the tendencies towards universality present in Wagner’s work?

Bayreuth Discourse is planned to be an annual series of events. Artists, academics, musicians and theatre professionals from different disciplines will meet in one-on-one discussions. “Wagner and National Socialism” is the theme of the first symposium, and this will also address the appropriation of Wagner for crimes against humanity, and the existential caesura of the catastrophe. A look at the time around 1945 deals with the issue of the before and after, and the consequences for art, politics and our present.

Concerts

Four concerts will form a substantial element of the Discourse. Here, too, reference is made to 1945. In the first concert, Schönberg’s expressive Violin Fantasy and Messiaen’s Music for the End of Time come into conflict in a ghostly harmony with a tonally similar work by Pfitzner. Daniel Behle provides an expressive focus with Brecht songs arranged by Adorno and Eisler from their exile in America, and two pieces by Krenek. The piano evening with Jürgen Kruse juxtaposes works of the 1920s with Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s confessional music of 1945 and Pierre Boulez’s counterpoint of the avant-garde. Music of those who were outlawed, persecuted, murdered, victims and opponents of the regime that idolised Richard Wagner is also sonorously represented: Gustav Mahler, Gideon Klein, Erwin Schulhoff, Theodor W. Adorno, Hanns Eisler, Ernst Krenek, Arnold Schönberg and others. The music will be performed by musicians of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. The series of concerts culminates in a rallying cry: Schönberg’s “Ode to Napoleon”, denouncing tyrants of past and present.