Wagnerism

Alex Ross is music critic for the New Yorker. His previous books, which I have read with pleasure, are about music. I assumed this book, with Wagner in its title, would also be about music specifically, about the music of Richard Wagner and its influence on composers who flourished after him. For example, there is a considerable literature on Wagners influence on Puccini and Debussy. In this book, Puccini is just mentioned a couple of times and Debussy is allotted one paragraph noting the relationship between his Pelleas and Tristan. Chapter after chapter, however, is devoted to Wagner and anti-Semitism, Wagner and Jews (Gustav Mahler conducted his operas, Theodore Herzl attended every performance of them he could), and of course Wagner and Hitler. There is in fact much more about Hitler in this book than there is about any of the composers who came after Wagner. In fact, there is very little about music in this book, it is mostly a political tract a political tract written by a music critic.

There are two reasons I would not have bought this book had I known what its subject really was: (1) I am fully aware that Wagner was an anti-Semite and dont need any further evidence in that regard, and (2) I separate the man and his personal views, from his music. I greatly enjoy his Wesendonck Lieder and his Siegfried Idyll. I have sung in a chorus performing Die Meistersinger and love the third act. (I am aware of the charges that Beckmesser is an anti-Jewish stereotype, but I have never seen it played that way, and I have attended performances in the US, England, and Germany.) For the rest, I am not enamored of his operas. But it has nothing to do with his anti-Semitism, I would not like them any better were he the latest in a long line of rabbis. I also listen with pleasure to Chopin and play some of his easier pieces, though I know he was a really vulgar anti-Semite from the time he was a teenager; and I have sung Bach with great pleasure, though there is more anti-Semitism in his St Johns Passion than, I am sure, in all of Wagners operas combined. In fact, I dont even know the attitude towards Jews of most composers as it isnt the sort of thing I like to research. Of course there are limits. I wouldnt hang a painting by Hitler on my wall. But in general I judge a composer by his music, a painter by his paintings, and so forth.

As for the physical presentation of this book, there are many photographs, but many of them are washed out or overexposed. For example, on p. 573 there is a photo with the caption Marlene Dietrich in The Scarlet Empress. Well, I suppose it could be. But it could be of anyone else, for all that is visible are images, totally blacked out, of horses and riders; no features on any of them are perceivable.

Alex Ross’s work is usually deeply informed and deeply thoughtful. This is much less so. The treatment of the music (including superficial plot summaries) consists largely of quote after quote after quote after quote from contemporaneous writers, sometimes of later ones as well. As a result, the book is mostly context and not much original thought on Ross’s part. If you want to read an excellent review, try Jed Perl’s “The Cults of Wagner” in the October 8, 2020, issue of the New York Review of Books, pp. 17-19. He really nails it. I’m normally a huge fan of Alex Ross, and I’m sure he has an extraordinary book about Wagner somewhere in his mind and heart, but this ain’t it.

The Tristan chord sounds and the life and legacy of the genius Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is made manifest. Alex Ross the brilliant music critic of the New Yorker magazine has produced a magnus opus on Wagnerism. The author begins with the death in Venice of Wagner and a brief summary of several of his works including the Ring Cycle, Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, , Der Meistersinger, The Flying Dutchman and other works. We travel to France where Wagner became a favorite of the Symbolist movement and to England which loved Wagner’s tribute to the Holy Grail legend in Parsifal (based on Arthurian myths)and America. We see how Hitler and the Nazis used Wagner’s music as the marching anthem of their horrible movement. We see Wagner’s influence in the works of such literary artists as Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Willa Cather, George Eliot, Paul Valery, Thomas and Heinrich Mann and many others. Wagner was a bigot and notorious anti-Jewish essayist though he did have Jewish friends and associates. Wagner is one of the most important opera composers and figures in all of music. He has good and bad aspects in his life and work. This is a monumental work of scholarship which is very well illustrated with photos and art work making it a beautiful volume for your bookshelf. The book is cogent and well argued and is a festschrift for those interested in modern culture and how Wagner has influenced our modern world. This book is destined to become a classic!

Alex Ross, one of the most celebrated writers on music nowadays, has delivered an enthralling tome, several hundred pages long, on the subject of Wagnerism. Not on Wagner’s music, although there’s plenty of detail on that too, or the composers who were touched by his influence, but rather on how the idea of Wagner seeped into everything else, from politics to prognostications of destiny, from high literature to the trashiest erotica, becoming a beacon of inspiration for just about everybody, on all sides, for all purposes. Not so much the empty signifier as the protean signifier. Wagnerism just kept on (keeps on) morphing to find new converts and uses. Ross has dug up evidence of it from a simply dizzying array of sources and contexts, and if there’s anything he’s neglected to mention then I don’t need to know. The book is already heavy enough, but not too heavy or specialised to read.

Importantly, Ross doesn’t neglect to remind us that just about everybody found a reflection of themselves and of their own biases and prejudices in the Wagner phenomenon, and as such he and his creations cannot be authoritatively claimed, tied, tarred or feathered, by any faction or persuasion. He was a modern man, transformative and contradictory in his actions and views, or as Benedict had it in Much Ado, a ‘giddy thing’. In short, Wagner belongs only to himself, but his music can fire the spirits of everyone.

I have one criticism. There are End Notes in profusion, but no intext references to alert you to where a follow-up end note can be expected. You just have to keep flipping back to see if there is further comment. It’s a bizarre omission.

One of the best examinations of Wagner and his influence I have read. It mainly della with Wagner’s influence on literature and the visual arts, discussing in detail the works of Thomas Mann, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather…..the list is endless. He also discusses Wagner’s influence on cinema. He investigates in great detail the disastrous association of Wagner with Hitler, and how his grandsons, Wieland and Wolfgang, tried to repair the reputation of Bayreuth when the Festival re-opened in 1951. I especially liked tge discussion of Regietheater productions, starting with Patrice Chereau’s Centenary RING in 1976. Highly recommened.

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