wagner rules
I’m working on an arrangement of the Siegfried-Idyll by Richard Wagner, a work I don’t know as well as I probably should, but has me mesmerised, in much the same way as the sort of book you can’t help but read from beginning to end in a day. The introduction has an almost continually unfolding harmonic progression, like a kaleidoscope, which I keep expecting to fall on a suitably stable resting point allowing me to go to bed. However I’m compelled to keep working. It’s a bit like the Prelude to his opera Tristan und Isolde in that respect - a lecturer of mine once remarked, half-seriously, that Tristan is essentially a chord that takes 4½ hours to resolve.
Anyway, a quick cup of tea and back to it. I’m going to Lucerne on Sunday, where the Siegfried-Idyll was first performed, so I’ll have to dump it onto my laptop and take it with me to see if I can imbue it with the same Swiss inspiration Wagner had.
