Richard Wagner
A Life in Music
Translated by Stewart Spencer
416 pages
|
43 halftones, 37 line drawings
|
6 x 9
|
© 2013
Best known for the challenging 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, such as The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Tristan and Isolde. 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.
Wagner has always inspired passionate admirers as well as numerous detractors, with the result that he has achieved a mythical stature nearly equal to that of the Valkyries and Viking heroes he popularized. There are few, if any, scholars today who know more about Wagner and his legacy than Geck, who builds upon his extensive research and considerable knowledge as one of the editors of the Complete Works to offer a distinctive appraisal of the composer and the operas. Using a wide range of sources, from contemporary scholars to the composer’s own words, Geck explores key ideas in Wagner’s life and works, while always keeping the music in the foreground. Geck not only discusses all the major operas, but also several unfinished operas and even the composer’s early attempts at quasi-Shakespearean drama.
This year will mark the bicentennial of Wagner’s birth, and there is no better testament to the composer’s enduring influence than this fresh, vivid, and authoritative work. Richard Wagner: A Life in Music is a landmark study of one of music’s most important figures, offering something new to opera enthusiasts, Wagnerians, and anti-Wagnerians alike.
Laurence Dreyfus, author of Wagner and the Erotic Impulse
“Martin Geck’s major new study of Wagner’s oeuvre moves at a fast but engaging pace. In a remarkably fleet translation by Stewart Spencer, the book is studded with historical insights, not least because Geck capitalizes on little known diary entries, letters, and documentary evidence that imbue his readings with genuinely fresh perspectives. The author’s erudition is worn lightly, and his provocative forays into the so-called Jewish Question—by treating a succession of Jewish figures in the Wagnerian universe in separate ‘contrapuntal’ chapters—encourages a contextual view of the composer’s work at the same time that it grapples with what we might treasure in Wagner today.”
Thomas Grey, Stanford University
“Martin Geck’s new biography deftly weaves both familiar and unfamiliar facts about the composer to create a striking fresh portrait, or rather a tapestry, shot through with insightful remarks on musical matters as well. The contributions of language, harmony, leitmotif, voices, instrumentation, and stage production to the elusive goal of a ‘total artwork’ are illuminated from the perspective of Wagner’s own life and writings as well as that of many notable contemporaries. Geck engages the politics of Wagner’s legacy honestly and without polemics. A series of brief inter-chapters on key Jewish figures in the composer’s biography and in his reception offer a novel, constructive approach to the vexed theme of Wagner’s anti-Semitism. The scholarly frame of reference is truly international. Geck succeeds brilliantly in synthesizing the complex phenomenon of Wagner in a thoroughly approachable yet consistently provocative study.”
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
Google preview here
Music: General Music
Philosophy: Aesthetics
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.
