Wagner's Ghost

I'm passionate about classical music and it's this passion that I hope to share with my Little Musicians. Even if they end up not being huge classical music fans they will know what it is to feel a strong, maybe even unearthly, connection with music.

I will admit it. I was a serious romantic on my recent honeymoon to Germany. Of course, one is expected to be romantic on a honeymoon but I mean romantic in the lake poets kind of way. I loved the sublime scenery of castles in the alps and I was entirely overcome with emotion (the hairs on my arms actually stood upright) when we visited the room where Wagner played for King Ludwig II. 

I guess I didn't actually expect Wagner's ghost to walk in and start playing his old piano but the silence seemed discordant and I expected to hear notes from "Fantasie" at any moment fill the room. My guy seemed to have only a kind of grudging appreciation of the magnitude of what we were experiencing. He was bemused by my sense of wonder at being in this space. This space where the king would have listened to Wagner composing new works and banging out pieces. Did the king dance half naked around the dressing room? Did he gaze out the window and imagine building another fairy tale castle in the distant hills (the soon to be constructed Neuschwanstein)? Did he whisper sweet nothings into Wagner's ear?

It was all I could do not to shake the other visitors who were striding around the room looking at all the wrong gilded and glitzy things and completely ignoring the piano keys that once rang out with the music of a most incredible composer. Do you hear it? Listen...

If and when they travel to new places, I hope my Little Musicians will take moments to appreciate the musical culture that wordlessly tells so much about the people who live there. I hope they will listen for music in spaces that are now herding through tourists but that were once filled with song, life and ... yes... even a little bit of romance.