Latest Articles by Sarah Canice Funke
"Never bore people with ugly music merely because it is the work of some famous composer, and do not let the piece you perform before people not professedly scientific be too long." Harper's Magazine, September 1858
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." Igor Stravinsky
A good enough reason not to listen to Wagner...even if people are making films that bear the same name as his operas and slaughtering the German in the process: It's Is-old-uh...not Is-old...
Or maybe Is-old is the original Arthurian pronunciation. Perhaps I should do a little research on this.
Anyway....
"For me Wagner is impossible... he talks without ever stopping. One can't just talk all the time." -- Robert Schumann, quoted in H Gall, Johannes Brahms (1961)
"Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour."
-- Gioacchino Rossini, 1867
"I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
-- Mark Twain, Autobiography (1924)