Aspects of Wagner / Edition 2

by Bryan Magee

Overview

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

ISBN-13:	9780192840127
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/10/1988
Series:	Oxford Paperbacks Series
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	7.76(w) x 5.14(h) x 0.33(d)

About the Author

Bryan Magee is a writer, critic, and broadcaster and author of Men of Ideas and The Great Philosophers.

Table of Contents

1	Wagner's Theory of Opera	1
2	Jews--Not Least in Music	17
3	Wagnerolatry	29
4	The Influence of Wagner	45
5	Wagner in Performance	57
6	Wagner as Music	73
	Index	93