With so many movie soundtracks being unconscious hackjobs and rearrangements of modernist "sound poem" music...

With so many movie soundtracks being unconscious hackjobs and rearrangements of modernist "sound poem" music, easily appropriated and reverse-engineered for merely dramatic effect and emotional manipulation, can Wagner be considered the beginning of the death and massification of Western music?

Was Nietzsche completely right about Wagner, that he turned the most sublime art, music, into a sporting event for plebs?

Adorno wanted us to ascend to new heights of appreciation and criticism by shedding the old romantic formalism. But didn't the slicing up of symphonic music into emotion-provoking soundbites, and music's incorporation as a background effect in dramatic theater and eventually cinema, only fuel the culture industry? Jazz was predictably degenerate, as Adorno saw, and it's the same underlying phenomenon.

I'm confused by Adorno's prescriptions, and I don't know who else to read to make sense of all this.

Wagner is opera music has a distinct function in opera "emotion-provoking" etc. And Nietzsche was mostly triggerd by Parzival since "muh christianity"
If anything Wagner is the highest point of Opera, but after reaching the top you can only go down

Adorno IIRC praised Schoenbergs atonal and later 12-tone music, which was imo more 'destructive' to symphonic music than jazz could ever be, so he can suck a dick

>Adorno IIRC praised Schoenbergs atonal and later 12-tone music,

Yeah, but because he (mistakenly) thought it would lead to new and vital musical forms.

Nietzsche was upset at the subject of Parsifal, not the music itself. He called it sublime, if I remember correctly.

>he reduces the entirety of Jazz to 'degenerate'
It's possibly the only great thing blacks did.

You should read Adorno's book on Wagner. It sounds like you already agree with him.

>Adorno wanted us to ascend to new heights of appreciation and criticism by shedding the old romantic formalism.
Uh ... no, he didn't. And who is "us"? Are you jewish?

>I'm confused by Adorno's prescriptions, and I don't know who else to read to make sense of all this.
Finding clarity to this issue hinges on the above question. If you are white and taking what Adorno is saying at face value, well, you will remain confused, because there are esoteric and genetic components you aren't taking into consideration.

Wagner himself was a great composer, but what came after is disgusting. I haven't heard a sincerely good Western movie soundtrack from a film made past the 60s, maybe the 70s. Then, there seems to be a proper balance between the soundtrack and general volume. Now, soundtrack is obscured, unless the track itself is a trendy pop song (an advertisement), then that is the focus. Yes, I am speaking largely of popular movies. However, when I talk of popular movies, note that westerns and all sorts of similar action/drama films were at the height of popularity at the time. Even movies following in their footsteps have a preferable soundtrack to the pop advert soundtrack of popular film. Look at the Great Gatsby movie that came out a few years ago. I can't tell pop sluts apart, but I think the face of the Black Eyed Peas (since when are they still relevant?) and Beyonce or one of those other mulattos that are only popular as sex objects did the soundtrack. I don't see how this fits the idea of the novel at all. Perhaps if they urbanized it, then it would fit the parties. No sense of the whole, just adverts. This is far from Wagner's vision, so I fail to see how he deserves the blame.

I'm very much of the "lovely moments but dreadful quarter-hours" view towards Wagner. His overtures are condensed "reader's digest" samplers of his operas, and I don't think it's an coincidence that those are by far his most played music. When it comes to the actual music, I often feel like he takes ages to hem and haw and setup a motif, the "dreadful quarter-hours", whereas Beethoven or Mozart could do it in a fraction of the time. So much of his time is just spent on harmonic progression. His music played to and played in a rising tide of Germanic nationalism and I don't think that can be ignored...it's just that when I listen to it simply as music, the long form doesn't grab me nearly as much as say, Brahms' works do.

And I've listened to all kinds of classical for 20 years. But the last time I tried to get through Furtwangler's Ring cycle, I just wanted to end the cacophony...my loss, I suppose.

>can Wagner be considered the beginning of the death and massification of Western music?
Why Wagner and not Handel or Liszt, who were far more famous than Wagner (although Wagner had the best radical enthusiasts)? Why not Mozart and Beethoven who are both way more accessible than Wagner?

Also keep in mind that Nietzsche was criticizing Wagner's extended rhytms and melodies (Nietzsche personally wanted music to resemble dance, in Ecce Homo he even says that to him good music is what makes him tap on the ground with your feet while listening), and, more importantly, even if it is a extra-musical consideration, his choice of subjects in the second part of his career, and the role he had in public society (being linked to all those movements and intellectuals Nietzsche could not stand). Yet, he never has any doubt about his musical qualitiez, and who could after having heard the perfect harmonies, melodies, counterpoints and dramatic arcs of Die Meistersinger?

>I'm confused by Adorno's prescriptions, and I don't know who else to read to make sense of all this.
As a dialectician, most of his opinions were rooted in the world he was living in, and that world is gone. Generally his prescription fails because they refer to a type of radicalism that is now considered conservativism (to modern composers and theorists it's almost funny that for people like Schoenberg what was more important about a sound was its pitch: that's considered naive today, mere formalism), ending up representing just 20 to 30 years of serial music. Read Adorno only for historical purposes, and more importantly, aplly more skepticism to narratives on Art. they tend to be incidental, and loads artist and pieces of art with meanings and implications that are simply not there.