Product Description

Many music lovers find Wagner's operas inexpressibly beautiful and richly satisfying, while others find them revolting, dangerous, self-indulgent, and immoral. The man who W.H. Auden once called "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived" has inspired both greater adulation and
greater loathing than any other composer.
Bryan Magee presents a penetrating analysis of Wagner's work, concentrating on how his sensational and deeply erotic music uniquely expresses the repressed and highly charged contents of the psyche. He examines not only Wagner's music and detailed stage directions but also the prose works in
which he formulated his ideas, as well as shedding new light on his anti-semitism and the way in which the Nazis twisted his theories to suit their own purposes. Outlining the astonishing range and depth of Wagner's influence on our culture, Magee reveals how profoundly he continues to shock and
inspire musicians, poets, novelists, painters, philosophers, and politicians today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109741 in Books
• Published on: 1988-11-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review
`you can do no better than rush out and buy Aspects of Wagner, one of the most stimulating books on music and opera it has been my priviledge to read.' Classical Music

`this set of essays makes an ideal introduction to Bayreuth's favourite son' Washington Post

`the best short book on Richard Wagner in English' New Statesman and Society

`One of the best, most illuminating, and shortest, discussions of Wagner's work ever written...one of the most stimulating books on music and opera it has been my privilege to read' Classical Music

`This 20-year-old instant classic, pithy, thoughtful, illuminating, now gains a new chapter on - oddly enough - the least discussed side of Wagner, the music itself.' Christopher Grier, London Evening Standard

`the intensely readable style as well as the interest of the subject-matter holds the attention from beginning to end ...Magee's book remains one which no-one who ventures to give an opinion on Wagner should have failed to read.' S. A. Music Teacher

`Each of these essays offer much that is thought-provoking, examining not only the musical works but also the prose works in which Wagner formulated and set out his ideas on art literature, poetry and the theatre. It is good to have a new edition of this highly readable little volume, which was first published in 1968.'

`Altogether, among the millions of pages written about one of the most complex minds in European history, this little book makes a contribution both original and thought provoking, quite out of proportion to its size.' Sir Charles Mackerras

From reviews of the first edition...

`The revised edition of this brief but near-classic analysis of Wagner's work has not lost its most distinctive quality; usually for a book of this kind, it demands to be read at one sitting - or even, one admirer has insisted, in a single bathtime.' Independent

About the Author
Writer, critic, broadcaster, author of Men of Ideas (OPB) and The Great Philosophers, Bryan Magee is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the History of Ideas at King's College, London.

Customer Reviews

4 and 1/2 for Being TOO SHORT!
Magee ended up outdoing himself in his later work "The Tristan Chord". And this is worth overall 4.5 stars for the same reasons: balanced, eminently insightful writing and just enough quirkiness to keep the interest at a high level throughout.

I guess it says alot for this book that I knocked off a half star entirely for its brevity. You end up wanting MORE at the end. Maybe I should have just relented and given this one 5 huh?

Think outside the opera box
Even though this book is years old, the ideas remain fresh and challenging. Questions of pacing in performance (maybe the dreaded longueurs are not necessary), and origins of Wagner's antiSemitism (an interesting twist on the privilege of the cultural outsider).
An easy read, something to discuss at intermission.

Brilliantly
This may seem odd, but to those of you interested enough to read reviews of this short book of essays on Wagner written nearly 40 years ago, my first advice is to read (no, run!) to Byran McGee's "Tristan Chord," published only a couple years ago, which in my humble opinion is one of the two greatest analytical works of Wagner's operas published in the last century. (The other is Deryck Cooke's "I Saw the World End"--an analysis of the "Ring" first published in 1979.)

McGee in that longer book and in this shorter collection of brief essays exemplifies the finest qualities of the English in his Wagner criticism: common sense, plain language, brilliant argumentation. He is such a relief from scholars (sorry, particularly German scholars) who think that opaque or convoluted rhetoric suggests depth. That's a [...]. Mr. McGee by comparison is fresh air...and his brilliance is self-evident.

This is a short book, six essays, each well defined on various aspects of Wagner. Two are clearly the most interesting: first, McGee's analysis of why Wagner's music excites such passion (pro or con)--i.e., what makes that music so affecting, so transcendant, so "dangerous" to many of us. He explores our guilty pleasure in Wagner better than any author has ever done. And second, his book offers a very interesting essay on the reasons for the flowering of Jewish intellectuals who so dominated and contributed to late 19th and early 20th century culture after over a thousand years of Jewish irrelevance to wider Western culture.

Those two essays make the book definitely worth acquiring and reading. The other essays are fine, if less sparkling. But I cannot emphasize enough: if you have any interest in Wagner, you must acquire Mr. McGee's "Tristan Chord." It is the best overall key to understanding Wagner's operas in print today.