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As a bored pre-teen with nothing to do in the hot summer months between school, I picked up a piston valve, brass B-flat tuba one day and started to blow. The local youth orchestra loaned instruments and offered morning classes taught by classically trained volunteers, all at no charge. Before long, powerful bass tones belted out by my tuba pierced the thick, sweltering air inside the high school gymnasium where we rehearsed. A prodigy euphonium player and member of the United States Army Band stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia, befriended me and I was invited to workshops, rehearsals and concerts. I became a protege of "Pershing's own" United States Army Band and "the President's own" Marine Corps Band. I became one of the best amateur tuba players in the country before I was legally old enough to drive and then got my very own horn: an affordable B&S rotary valve C tuba handcrafted, ironically, in East Germany. Convinced that the Army Band was my future, I practiced and performed regularly, and within a few years, learned the bass line to the score of hundreds of military marches, symphonic tone poems, overtures and symphonies. Works like the Planets by Gustav Holst, the Procession of the Sardar, John Philip Sousa's the Washington Post March and the Rakutsky March from the Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. These were the tunes that filled my ears and and my favorite composers were those who had written prolifically for my instrument: Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Sousa. At the age of fifteen, I bought a five-dollar, obstructed view ticket to see the National Symphony Orchestra matinee performance of Das Rheingold, Wagner's four hour introduction to the Ring Cycle. I was unfamiliar with Wagner's operas and the German mythology and history surrounding them. With a few exceptions such as the Prelude to Act Three of Lohingrin, which I had performed, his works were too long, expensive and complicated for all except the most determined orchestra companies. Students and amateurs didn't even attempt them. In the RingCycle, Das Rheingold is followed by Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). These four operas make up the epic fifteen-hour Ring of the Nibelung, intended to be performed over four days. When composers wanted to speak loudly and deliver a forceful message, they chose my instrument to express themselves. Instead of counting hundreds of rest bars while sweet violins serenaded the listener, I was kept busy projecting baselines and even melodies. Certain composers repeatedly call on the tuba to deliver their message. Stars and Stripes Forever, Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, Slavianka's Farewell and the incomparable Preobrazhensky
March stir powerful emotions in an audience. The Preobrazhensky March, first performed on Red Square for Peter the Great, was the last music Generalissimo Stalin's troops heard on the night of November 7, 1941, before they were sent to meet their doom against Hitler's invincible Wehrmacht. They smashed it to bits on the outskirts of Moscow. Then one day it hit me: the more nationalistic the composer, the more active my part. Claude Debussy didn't write for tuba, but Brahms sure did. So did Mahler. Wagner even designed a new tuba for the sole purpose of playing his operas. As unlikely as it may be, the tuba taught me about nationalism, militarism and geopolitics. Now, viewing Wagner's opera as a non-musician and member of the audience, it speaks to me about the leitmotif of financial crisis. Twilight of the Gods starts in the watery realm of the Rhine. The Rheinsmaidens guard a hoard of gold and make fun of the ugly gnome, Alberich, who steals their gold and condemns himself to a loveless life. With the loot, he builds a slave empire and acquirestwo marvelous things: a ring of gold that brings infinite power and a tarnhelm (magic cap) that can make the wearer invisible. He is enabled to commit great evil with impunity. When he loses everything to the mighty Wotan, he places a curse on him and all those who would possess the ring. Thus begins the cycle of insatiable greed and cold killing in the pursuit of power and wealth. Wotan buys a palace he can't afford and Fafner the giant dies depressed that happiness has eluded him in spite of his great wealth. George Bernard Shaw interpreted the Ring Cycle as an attack on the selfish barons of Gilded-Age capitalism. The magic hat, he wrote in "The Perfect Wagnerite," "is a very common article in our streets, where it generally takes the form of a tall hat. It makes a man invisible as a shareholder and changes him into various shapes, such as a pious Christian, a subscriber to hospitals, a benefactor of the poor, a model husband and father, a shrewd, practical independent Englishman, and what not, when he is really a pitiful parasite on the commonwealth." A 21st century incarnation of Fafner could be the overpaid executive of AIG or Merrill Lynch who demands millions in bonuses after losing shocking amounts of money for his firm, which is now kept afloat by taxpayer bailouts. Fafner just happens to dwell in a cave, having morphed from a giant into a dragon to better sit on his glittering pile of gold. Today's gigantic misers reside in Greenwich and the Hamptons and bemoan the loss of their illusory paper wealth. Wagner's message, delivered by the pit orchestra and entire stage cast, is that all the wealth of the world matters little if love is absent. Wotan learns it too late after paying for Valhalla with gold that didn't belong to him, breaking his word and defaulting on binding contracts that ruin his family and leave him broke. He is homeless when the three Norns arrive to study the rope of time for clues to the future. Now is the time to look for the sublime message of Wagner's tuba and weave a happier future for tomorrow. DANIEL BRUNO SANZ
Daniel Bruno Sanz writes about financial and political affairs. His areas of expertise include currencies, stock markets, Latin America, Japan and Russia. In early 2007, he predicted that Obama would win the Democratic primary when polls showed him 20 points behind Senator Clinton. He also forecast Obama would win 52% of the popular vote and beat the Republican nominee in the general election. Today he forecasts an Obama victory in 2012. His 2007 book and other writings are available at [http://www.DanielBrunoSanz.com]. He is a native of New York City.
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==== ==== Greetins, o Child of Wotan! RU fed up with bein treated like a 2nd-class citizen in your own land? Find out what the ancient sources prescribe for our victory! CLICK NOW: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0065QN8KW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=4faskidstorem20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0065QN8KW ==== ====