Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #890178 in Books
• Published on: 1988-03-21
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 447 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)

Customer Reviews

WAGNER IN HIS OWN WORDS
A prolific writer of both opera and prose, Wagner has always been engulfed in controversy. Over the past century and a half, a great deal has been written about him; the book stores are full of such works. After a while, one gets tired of constantly reading what other people think of Wagner. In this book, you can read his own words.

His collected prose extends to 8 volumes of densely packed type. Wading through them is a daunting task. This book is a carefully chosen selection of those writings where Wagner specifically talks about music, opera, or drama. If you are more interested in Wagner the musician than Wagner the political polemicist, this book is for you.

This is a reprint of the 1964 edition by Dutton. It contains the following sections: Cultural Decadence of the Nineteenth Century; The Greek Ideal; The Origins of Modern Opera, Drama, and Music; The Artwork of the Future; Wagner's Development; Bayreuth; Politics. You will find gems such as the original plot for The Ring, and an interesting essay where Wagner describes how he "fixed" some of Beethoven's symphonies.

Is Wagner a brilliant, far-reaching visionary who changed the course of art and philosophy for the next century, or a superficial, self-centered despot with a mercurial thought process? Now, you can decide for yourself.

a tangled thicket
A selection of useful writings by the prolific Richard Wagner is poorly presented in this volume, which features atrocious translations and dubious editing.

Wagner was not a great prose stylist, to put it mildly, but there is scarcely a sentence in this book that does not cause the brain to seize up in confusion. I've read Heidegger's Being and Time, and still struggled to parse tangled clauses or match subjects with distant verbs. I know from other translations of Wagner that one can do much better.

The book is a potpourri of interesting excerpts drawn from hither and yon in Wagner's writing, presented end-to-end in a topical sequence with little indication if we're reading from a letter, an anonymous pamphlet, or a book published under Wagner's name. Nor do we know, without referring to a list of sources buried at the back of the book, when each excerpt was written, arranged as they are willy-nilly throughout with little regard to chronology.

It is hardly controversial to suggest that Wagner changed his mind over his career about a great many things, and why the editors would make it so difficult to understand the development of his ideas over time by this arrangement is a complete mystery to me.

There is useful material in this book, but it is hard-won by the fortitudinous reader for the reasons mentioned.