Wagner’s music, so they say, is not as bad as it sounds. I suppose the tunes aren’t too awful if you don’t mind being shouted at. But what makes me queasy is the overwhelming moral effect, the way it makes you limp and inert like a rabbit trapped in headlights.
Other composers in the light and tuneful category make you want to do something. Gilbert and Sullivan tickle you into singing along; the Strauss waltzes (Johann’s, not Richard’s) offer an invitation to trip the light fantastic toe; a Sousa march is meant to make you, well, march. Even the deafening stuff enjoyed by my teenage daughter (somewhere between a Hard Rock and a hard place) makes one apparently want to crowd-surf—which sounds like a lot of fun.
But hearing Wagner (one can hardly call it listening) merely makes you swoon. It is a passive activity, as squared-eyed as goggling at a television. Slot the CD into the brain, switch off the critical faculty, and let the waves of emotion submerge the pleasure centers, no matter if the torrid tide carries you ineluctably toward a Liebestod. This is consumer music.
Am I being unfair? I expect so. But being on the receiving end of Wagner reminds me of a bean-counter university official I met years ago who wanted the professors to refer to their students as “customers.” Apparently, in the retail chain where he had been previously employed, there was no term of greater respect.
But there is a difference between teaching and hawking burgers (yes, I have done both). In retail, the customer gets what you sell him. In education you can never be sure that those who are listening are hearing the same things that the professor says. Nor should they be. A lecturer looking out at ten dozen eyes sees at least ten dozen things going on dialectically behind them—“one deep calling to another,” Augustine thought as he gazed out at his congregation. It may be necessary for the pyre to be built in one place so that the fire from heaven can come down on another. Possibly, virtue can be taught, but it is an oblique business, requiring contributions from all those sitting on the log.
Wine works the same way. Of course one can drink to induce oblivion. But aside from the legendary potion opened in error by Tristan and Isolde, which allegedly smote them with their inescapable love (infatuation, more like it), I can think of no beverage that automatically induces any interesting or enduring state of mind. Enjoying wine involves an active response on the part of the drinker. The counterpoint of great claret may not require as much digital dexterity as a Bach fugue, but it calls for every bit as much sensual attention.
The wine I have found for this month lacks the complexity of the great reds of Bordeaux, but it certainly bears the message répondez s’il vous plaît, even if the response is only copious salivation. It is the 2003 vintage of a white wine called Txakoli, made at a bodega called Txomin Etxaniz, which is near the town of Guetaria on the south shore of the Bay of Biscay in northern Spain’s Basque country.
You can get it locally for around $18, and once you know the “tx” is pronounced approximately like the English “ch,” you will have no problem asking for it. The name is, naturally, Basque, and Basque is the oldest living language in Europe, quite distinct in structure from the Indo-European languages of the rest of the continent, and dating back to the millennia before hordes made their way west from the steppes of Central Asia, speaking the languages that were the ancestors of Hittite, Persian, Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Welsh, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh, and all. The grapes are also peculiar to the Basque country, mostly Hondarribi zuri (white) with some Hondarribi beltza (black).
Pull the cork from the tall green bottle, pour out the clear pale contents, and taste. There is a tiny tingle on the tongue, as if you had sand in your sandwich, though without the annoyance that would arouse. Then a refreshing flavor and a slight smokiness, followed by a taste, accumulating on the palate the more one sips, of Granny Smith apples. This is pleasantly sharp. Plenty of the natural malic acid (from “malum,” Latin for apple) remains, as it has not all been transformed into the blander, buttery-tasting lactic acid.
Should you wish to orchestrate Txakoli with food, you might try the things that go with apples—pork, for instance, and cheese (in Yorkshire they eat cheddar cheese with apple pie, most un-American). For music, try Messiaen: bright dissonance, energy, and acid. May it give you joie et clarté.
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