Letters | 25 July 2009

Wagner wallows

Sir: Michael Henderson states (Arts, 18 July) that Wagner’s music reveals the aspects of the human personality that we try hardest to suppress. Certainly many deep ideas and emotions are revealed. But instead of purging the emotions with pity and fear, and achieving a catharsis, Wagner wallows in them, exalting primitive values, ignoring or despising detachment and reason. A genius of the first rank, but highly undesirable.

David Damant
London WC2

Long echoes

Sir: My old friend Peter Phillips (Arts, 18 July) observes that ‘St Paul’s Cathedral in London has such a long echo that a composer might want to build in extra rests for the sound to clear’, but uncharacteristically errs when he goes on to say: ‘I can’t think of a single piece that obviously takes this into account.’

There is just such a piece, by the 18th-century composer, cuckold and drunk Jonathan Battishill, who had been a boy chorister at St Paul’s.