tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post5482328831250725794..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Was Wagner a Sufi?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-4623311424097932362012-10-12T01:51:16.825+01:002012-10-12T01:51:16.825+01:00A very interesting post. Alas, doing something els...A very interesting post. Alas, doing something else at the moment but will come back and read fully later. However, having skim read I can say that Wagner was more than familiar with Sufi Mysticism and this has been researched and commented upon - for example he read and was very familiar with Hafez (who he called "the greatest poet of them all).<br /><br />Might I suggest the following sources for further reading?<br /><br />http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Richard_Wagner_s_religious_ideas.html?id=yoEIAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y<br /><br />http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wagner/selectedessays/pdf/NelsonWeiss.pdf<br /><br />It is also discussed - oddly enough - in <br /><br />http://www.universitymedia.org/RWE.html<br /><br />There are other discussions also - if you give me a day I will look them up<br /><br /><br /><br />The Wagnerianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12938047173826128983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-66508714992585675412012-10-11T12:37:49.764+01:002012-10-11T12:37:49.764+01:00Mighty interesting stuff as ever, Bob. Thank you. ...Mighty interesting stuff as ever, Bob. Thank you. May I just mention that synaesthesia is not classified as a medical condition, though it is to be found in medical texts; the reason for that is its occasional occurrence as the result of strokes or other types of brain injury. I am synaesthetic myself, though I'm in the minority who would prefer to do without it. For many years I couldn't listen to Debussy or Ravel, both of whose music I love dearly, for I would go into a near-panic. Most happily, I seem with age to have overcome that.<br /><br />Also, Schubert may be added to the list of composers to whom music came in sleep -- he kept a notebook by his bed to scribble down musical ideas the instant he awoke. I've long thought of this as an aspect of the nature of musical genius, an idea fixed in my mind by a page in Constanza Mozart's journals. She relates how throughout one night Mozart sat at a table composing The Magic Flute. As he wrote away, the ms no doubt as immaculate as always, he also slugged away at vessels of vino, and then, in the wee hours, asked Constanza to read to him as he wrote, for, he said, he was getting bored. I've used this often as the best example I know of the working of true genius, for I can't myself explain it except to think that the music is in some sense already in the mind, in some sense 'written down' rather than 'composed'. If so, it would follow that the process would not cease when sleep comes. This is, of course, an aspect of the process different from dreams or nocturnal visions such as Wagner's stimulating musical ideas that come later.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.com