Richard Wagner

Author : Martin Geck
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226924629
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner written by Martin Geck and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-18 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] intriguing exploration of the composer’s life and thought as exemplified by his music. An excellent biography.” —Library Journal Best known for the four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner (1813–83) was a conductor, librettist, theater director, and essayist, in addition to being the composer of some of the most enduring operatic works in history. Though his influence on the development of European music is indisputable, Wagner was also quite outspoken on the politics and culture of his time. His ideas traveled beyond musical circles into philosophy, literature, theater staging, and the visual arts. To befit such a dynamic figure, acclaimed biographer Martin Geck offers here a Wagner biography unlike any other, one that strikes a unique balance between the technical musical aspects of Wagner’s compositions and his overarching understanding of aesthetics. A landmark study of one of music’s most important figures “People who would like to know more about Wagner, and people who have loved his music for years . . . will find a great deal in this book to enjoy and to admire.” —Tablet “Geck describes a Wagner who is grounded, focused and even cautious, a savvy realist and ironist rather than a flamboyant, flailing ideologue . . . Suffused with his readings of contemporary productions of the operas, Geck’s musical analyses are succinct and superb” —New York Times “As an editor of Wagner’s Complete Works, Geck brings a deep familiarity with the composer to his task.” —Weekly Standard “A thoroughly approachable yet consistently provocative study.” —Thomas S. Grey, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Wagner

Author : Thomas S. Grey
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400831784
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner and His World written by Thomas S. Grey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a "total work of art" combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. Equally celebrated and vilified in his own time, Wagner continues to provoke debate today regarding his political legacy as well as his music and aesthetic theories. Wagner and His World examines his works in their intellectual and cultural contexts. Seven original essays investigate such topics as music drama in light of rituals of naming in the composer's works and the politics of genre; the role of leitmotif in Wagner's reception; the urge for extinction in Tristan und Isolde as psychology and symbol; Wagner as his own stage director; his conflicted relationship with pianist-composer Franz Liszt; the anti-French satire Eine Kapitulation in the context of the Franco-Prussian War; and responses of Jewish writers and musicians to Wagner's anti-Semitism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Karol Berger, Leon Botstein, Lydia Goehr, Kenneth Hamilton, Katherine Syer, and Christian Thorau. This book also includes translations of essays, reviews, and memoirs by champions and detractors of Wagner; glimpses into his domestic sphere in Tribschen and Bayreuth; and all of Wagner's program notes to his own works. Introductions and annotations are provided by the editor and David Breckbill, Mary A. Cicora, James Deaville, Annegret Fauser, Steven Huebner, David Trippett, and Nicholas Vazsonyi.

Author : Jacob Katz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781584652403
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Darker Side of Genius written by Jacob Katz and published by . This book was released on 2002-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism considered in the context of his time, place, and aspirations rather than in relation to his later appropriation by the Nazis.

Author : Milton E. Brener
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786491388
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner and the Jews written by Milton E. Brener and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is well known that Richard Wagner, the renowned and controversial 19th century composer, exhibited intense anti–Semitism. The evidence is everywhere in his writings as well as in conversations his second wife recorded in her diaries. In his infamous essay “Judaism in Music,” Wagner forever cemented his unpleasant reputation with his assertion that Jews were incapable of either creating or appreciating great art. Wagner’s close ties with many talented Jews, then, are surprising. Most writers have dismissed these connections as cynical manipulations and rank hypocrisy. Examination of the original sources, however, reveals something different: unmistakeable, undeniable empathy and friendship between Wagner and the Jews in his life. Indeed, the composer had warm relationships with numerous individual Jews. Two of them resided frequently over extended periods in his home. One of these, the rabbi’s son Hermann Levi, conducted Wagner’s final opera—Parsifal, based on Christian legend—at Wagner’s request; no one, Wagner declared, understood his work so well. Even in death his Jewish friends were by his side; two were among his twelve pallbearers. The contradictions between Wagner’s antipathy toward the amorphous entity “The Jews” and his genuine friendships with individual Jews are the subject of this book. Drawing on extensive sources in both German and English, including Wagner’s autobiography and diary and the diaries of his second wife, this comprehensive treatment of Wagner’s anti–Semitism is the first to place it in perspective with his life and work. Included in the text are portions of unpublished letters exchanged between Wagner and Hermann Levi. Altogether, the book reveals astonishing complexities in a man long known as much for his prejudice as for his epic contributions to opera.

Author : Alex Ross
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429944544
Total Pages : 784 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wagnerism written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics—an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil. In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.

Author : Dieter Borchmeyer
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691114972
Total Pages : 430 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Drama and the World of Richard Wagner written by Dieter Borchmeyer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Wagner continues to be the most controversial artist in history, a perpetually troubling figure in our cultural consciousness. The unceasing debate over his works and their impact--for and against--is one reason why there has been no genuinely comprehensive modern account of his musical dramas until now. Dieter Borchmeyer's book is the first to present an overall picture of these musical dramas from the standpoint of literary and theatrical history. It extends from the composer's early works--still largely ignored--to the Ring Cycle and Parsifal, and includes Wagner's unfinished works and operas he never set to music. Through lively prose, we come to see Wagner as a librettist--and as a man of letters--rather than primarily as musical composer. Borchmeyer uncovers a vast field of cultural and historical cross-references in Wagner's works. In the first part of the book, he sets out in search of the various archetypal scenes, opening up the composer's dramatic workshop to the reader. He covers all of Wagner's operas, from early juvenilia to the canonical later works. The second part examines Wagner in relation to political figures including King Ludwig II and Bismarck, and, importantly, in light of critical reactions by literary giants--Thomas Mann, whom Borchmeyer calls "a guiding light in this exploration of the fields that Wagner tilled," and Nietzsche, whose appeal to "philology" is a key source of inspiration in attempts to grapple with Wagner's works. For more than twenty years, Borchmeyer has placed his scholarship at the service of the famed Bayreuth Festival. With this volume, he gives us a summation of decades of engagement with the phenomenon of Wagner and, at the same time, the result of an abiding critical passion for his works.

Author : Urs App
Publisher : UniversityMedia
ISBN 13 : 3906000001
Total Pages : 104 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner and Buddhism written by Urs App and published by UniversityMedia. This book was released on 2011 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is little known that Richard Wagner was among the very first Westerners to appreciate Buddhism and that he was the first major European artist to be inspired by this religion. In 1856, in the prime of his creativity, the 33-year-old artist read his first book about Buddhism. Madly in love with Mathilde Wesendonck, a beautiful but happily married woman, he conceived two deeply connected opera projects: Tristan und Isolde which he went on to compose and stage, and Die Sieger (The Victors), an opera scenario based on an Indian Buddha legend translated from Sanskrit. These two projects mirrored Wagner's burning desire for the consummation of his love and the necessity of renunciation. This Buddhist opera project occupied Wagner's mind for decades until his death in 1883. Indeed, the composer's last words were about the Buddha figure of his scenario and his relationship with women. Urs App, the author of The Birth of Orientalism (University of Pennsylvania Press) and the world's foremost authority on the early Western reception of Buddhism, tells the story of Richard Wagner's creative encounter with Buddhism and explains the composer's last words.

Author : Martin Gregor-Dellin
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 606 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner, His Life, His Work, His Century written by Martin Gregor-Dellin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1983 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Derek Watson
Publisher : Schirmer Trade Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner written by Derek Watson and published by Schirmer Trade Books. This book was released on 1981 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the events and people, successes and failures, of Wagner's life. Draws on primary sources from the Wagner family archives to show a man of great personal charm--and of overbearing egoism, selfishness and cruelty. His support for the revolutions of 1848 forced him into exile, but he easily won the fervent support of kings and emperors.

Author : Michael Saffle
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135839522
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Richard Wagner written by Michael Saffle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Wagner: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer and performer.