The Vienese group Mnozil Brass were commissioned by the City of Bayreuth to write and perform a work to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth.

Leonhard Paul explains the process

Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday and Hojotoho Reflections by Mnozil Brass

He actually did it!  the man turned 200.  Two-hundred years!  And they all came, congratulating and delivering their best wishes.  Celebrating him with everything you’d normally say on such an occassion, like “you must keep well and fit, since health is most important….”, or “You have to drink a lot…… you never drink enough, you hear!” Things like that, you know.  The best sculptors carved his likeness in the most exquisite and rarest stones; the most expensive canvas was just adequate to imbibe his portrait, conserving it for a truly astonishing posterity.  All symphony and philharmonic orchestras of the entire globe, duly queuing up, did pass the mic to each other to celebrate HIM.

And we are right in the middle: those seven gentlemen of the group Mnozil Brass, representing the wildest offshoot of a special committee hastily summoned in the cause of Richard Wagner and his jubilee.  Well, there we were, mulling things over.  what is the appropriate gift handing over to a man who just turned 200?

Money, of course, that had always come in handy to him…  But that would look rather inappropriate.  Maybe a bottle of wine of his vintage?  Not available any more, unfortunately.  Or the inevitable elegant gift hamper with goose live pate beyond expiration together with a small bottle of eau-de-vie?  Not suited either, since he clearly has been cutting down on eating recently.  Or perhaps an opera ticket, hey why not an entire opera, in his case meaning an entire new ring, while we’re at it?  He had passed the word that there’d be no need for that, since he’d composed more than enough of that by himself anyway….  without giving an inch of leeway to any doubt in this respect.

So how do you face a giant such as Wagner (entre nous, we simply call him Uncle Richard)?  How to come to terms with a person who, to begin with, made himself imperative, unavoidable in the first place?  A person you may either perceive positively, negatively or with diplomatic reserve, but are unable not to perceive at all, there is no doubt about that.  A person easily crumbling any superlative, at the same time teaching you humbleness time and time again.

Wrong track here – we’d clearly get stuck.  The only possibility to encounter Richard Wagner was to meet him on equal footing.  to face him eye to eye, neither going down on our knees, lashing our back, nor approaching him with a pretentious attitude, treating him condescendingly or criticising him…..  No, you do not shift an old tree without it dying.
(Sick of reading? then listen to this  Wm Tell Overture)
So, no adaptation of the interlude of Lohengrin or perhaps even the entire overture to the Mastersingers (even abridged, if need be) for seven brass instruments.  That would rather sound like “the poor man’s Wagner”.  completely out of the question.  Thus we chose the hard way:

1. First, what we have here is the birthday boy Wagner, his entire work of art; and we have those past two-hundred years not being able to annihilate this oeuvre (despite some ferocious attempts).  Furthermore we have a downright endless abundance of characters, phantasms, worlds completely unknown to us as well as inexplicable phenomena, that all lie dormant deep within us.  So we start celebrating Wagner’s birth.
2. Wotan, a god, a wanderer between the worlds, a seeker too, not of ignoble attitude, but attached to violence.  He takes what he needs and likewise destroys out of the same reason.  He turns into a dictator due to deprivation of love or due to disappointment or both.  Every one of us is a Wotan – deep down within ourselves.  we celebrate the birth of our childhood, witness it subsequently veering off the right track and, finally, experience its end.
3. Siegfried, at first glance perhaps the character we all like most.  He’s not afraid of anything, because he knows that fear exists.  He rejoices and mourns without knowing joy and grief.  He’s constantly hungry, he does not understand but is far from being stupid, since this attribute is unknown to him as well.  We have a somehow sympathetic compassion for him.  He seems to be invincible, although, in default of any knowledge about winning and getting defeated, subsequently becomes the tragic victim of this same belief (and as to him, he does not believe anything).  In the process we discover a Siegfried in each of us, are happy for him and are suffering for him, can laugh about him and are equally appalled by this capability.
4. This part we call the “part of the green hill”, so to speak the place where everybody runs into each other: Wagner meets Wotan and even assists him; Siegfried is here too, but not much of a help.  Ludwig stops by briefly and of course Brunhilde, Venus, Elisabeth – simply everybody is showing up, leading to the inevitable single result: the showdown.  We realise the hopelessness, experience the end of Wagner provoked by hatred, the fall of Wotan evoking the end of our childhood, Ludwig’s death brought about by an unsuspecting Siegfried (completely unable to anticipate anything – maybe as an allegory of the destruction of the currently predominant global financial conduct). We perceive Siegfried’s death as the consequence of an impregnability yet to be defeated.  Wagner’s  last days in terms of music, we have to fall back on Puccini.  In this state of sheer hopelessness there seems to be only one possible salvation: jazz.

by Leonard Paul.  Member of Mnozil Brass.