Promiscuous Art

I went to the symphony last night to check out our new music director. I knew the main event was La Mer (no, not that one) but did not otherwise look at the program when buying my ticket. Upon arrival I learned that there would also be Wagner. Specifically the prelude and Liebestod from Tristan. This gives me opportunity to deploy one my (many) favorite Huysmans quotes from Against Nature, translated by Robert Baldick. Then again, secular music is a promiscuous art in that you cannot enjoy it at home, by yourself, as you can a book; to savour it he would have had to join the mob of inveterate theatre-goers that fills the Cirque d’Hiver, where under a broiling sun and in a stifling atmosphere you can see a hulking brute of a man waving his arms about and massacring disconnected snatches of Wagner to the huge delight of an ignorant crowd. He had never had the courage to plunge into this mob-bath to listen to Berlioz, even though he admired some fragments of his work for their passionate…