Download or read book Wagnerism written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics—an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil. In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.
Download or read book On the Future of Wagnerism written by Lawrence D. Mass and published by Sentinel Voices. This book was released on 2021-10-22 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative of consciousness and experience in the author's life as a gay Jewish man, as a physician, and as a writer.
Download or read book Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite written by Lawrence D Mass and published by Jewish Wagnerism. This book was released on 2022-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1981, Lawrence Mass was a 35-year-old physician, writer, and gay activist living in New York City. On his living room wall, among other opera memorabilia, there were five pictures of Richard Wagner, one of them a drawing by Mass himself. While researching what would become the first feature article on the epidemic that later became known as AIDS, the author had the first confrontation of his adult life with overt anti-Semitism, an incident he was completely unprepared to deal with psychologically. As AIDS spread, and every sexually active gay man was forced to confront his own mortality, the need to understand the even greater depths of fear touched by the incident became urgent, and Mass began to face the reality that his life had been dominated by internalized anti-Semitism, even as he came to grips with his gay identity. A series of self-contained autobiographical essays, CONFESSIONS examines a vast panorama of events, issues, and personalities in the worlds of identity politics, AIDS, and the arts. As it probes the interconnectedness of gay, Jewish, and musical cultures in post-World War II America, against a backdrop of resurgent anti-Semitism, it reveals one human being's quest for personal and spiritual identity. From his adolescent infatuation with Wagner to his friendship with the great-grandson of the composer and his life-partnership with a fellow gay activist and Jewish-American writer, CONFESSIONS OF A JEWISH WAGNERITE is the story of that voyage of discovery.
Download or read book The Rest Is Noise written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
Download or read book Remaking One Nation written by Nick Timothy and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these divided and divisive times, what is the future course for our politics? In this ground-breaking book, Nick Timothy, one of Britain’s leading conservative thinkers and commentators, explores the powerful forces driving great changes in our economy, society and democracy. Drawing on his experience at the top of government, Timothy traces the crisis of Western democracy back to both the mistaken assumptions of philosophical liberalism and the rise of ideological ultra-liberalism on left, right and centre. Sparing no sacred cows, he proposes a new kind of conservatism that respects personal freedom but also demands solidarity. He argues that only by rediscovering a unifying sense of the common good and restoring a mutual web of responsibilities between all citizens and institutions can we reject the extremes of economic and cultural liberalism, overcome our divisions, and remake one nation. He goes on to outline an ambitious practical plan for change, covering issues ranging from immigration to the regulation of Big Tech. Nick Timothy’s original, forensic and thought-provoking analysis is a must-read for anybody tired by the old dogmas of the liberal left, right and centre. It is a major contribution to the debate on the future of conservatism as it grapples with geopolitical shifts, cultural change, and economic uncertainty.
Download or read book Wagner written by Barry Millington and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1992-11-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wagner is one of the most controversial of composers, and much that has been written about him--including his autobiography--is misleading. Barry Millington draws on the best previous scholarship and his own original research to set the record straight. The first part of this book is devoted to biography; the second, to a detailed study of the operas. Millington offers a historical review of the critical interpretation of each opera, including a discussion of recent methods of formal analysis. In this revised edition, two chapters, those on Tannhauser and Die Meistersinger, include significant new material. The bibliography has also been updated.
Download or read book The Aesthetic State written by Josef Chytry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century a number of thinkers from the German-speaking lands began to create a paradigm drawn from their impressions of a distant historical reality, ancient Athens; added to it a new mode of thought, modern dialectics; and at times even paid homage to the ancient Greek deity Dionysos, to materialize their longing for an ideal. The influence of these forces came to permeate modern German consciousness, deifying the concept and activity of art, reviving the Platonic (and Sanskrit) vision of the cosmos as play and aesthetic creation, and projecting a way of life and labor that would honor not the commodity but the aesthetic product. With rigorous commitment to primary sources and an unflagging critical engagement with the ideas and concrete situations they raise, Josef Chytry provides a comprehensive and extensive study of this central motif in German thought from Winckelmann to Marcuse. Chytry takes "aesthetic state" to signify the concentrated modern intellectual movement to revitalize the radical Hellenic tradition of the polis as the site of a beautiful or good life. The movement begins with the classicism of Winckelmann, Wiemar aesthetic humanism (Wieland, Herder, Goethe), and Schiller's formal theory of the aesthetic state and continues through the idealism of the Swabian dialecticians Holderlin, Hegel, and Schelling and the realism of Marx, Wagner, and Nietzsche. It culminates in the postrealism of Heiddegger, Marcuse, and the aesthetic modernist artist Walter Spies, who initiated a dialogue with the non-Western "theatre state" of the isle of Bali. Josef Chytry concludes that the future speculation on the ideal of an aesthetic state must come to terms with the postrealist themes of ontological anarchy, aesthetic ethos, and theatre state. In a bold effort to stimulate such speculation, Chytry indicates how proponents of the aesthetic state might join forces with Rawlsian political theory to promote further the organon of persuasion that, in his view, serves as the common fount for the ancient, dialectical, and contractarian quests for the polis. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.
Download or read book Listen to This written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2010-09-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history—from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin—through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us how to listen more closely.
Download or read book The Perfect Wagnerite a Commentary on the Niblung s Ring written by Bernard Shaw and published by Namaskar Books. This book was released on with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mr Beethoven written by Paul Griffiths and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize Based on the German composer's own correspondence, this inventive, counterfactual work of historical fiction imagines Beethoven traveling to America to write an oratorio based on the Book of Job. It is a matter of historical record that in 1823 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (active to this day) sought to commission Beethoven to write an oratorio. The premise of Paul Griffiths’s ingenious novel is that Beethoven accepted the commission and traveled to the United States to oversee its first performance. Griffiths grants the composer a few extra years of life and, starting with his voyage across the Atlantic and entry into Boston Harbor, chronicles his adventures and misadventures in a new world in which, great man though he is, he finds himself a new man. Relying entirely on historically attested possibilities to develop the plot, Griffiths shows Beethoven learning a form of sign language, struggling to rein in the uncertain inspiration of Reverend Ballou (his designated librettist), and finding a kindred spirit in the widowed Mrs. Hill, all the while keeping his hosts guessing as to whether he will come through with his promised composition. (And just what, the reader also wonders, will this new piece by Beethoven turn out to be?) The book that emerges is an improvisation, as virtuosic as it is delicate, on a historical theme.
Download or read book Godsent written by Richard Burton and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virgin Kate Skylar gives birth to Ethan, who she believes is the Son of God, but the Catholic Church is convinced her child is the Antichrist and will stop at nothing kill him, going so far as to use an artificial intelligence to locate him.
Download or read book The Sorcerer of Bayreuth written by Barry Millington and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of Wagner's music to enchant, to cast a spell, to transport the listener to states of hedonistic delight, has often been remarked - sometimes appreciatively and sometimes not. Indeed, no other composer arouses such fiercely divergent responses as Richard Wagner. For Baudelaire,Wagner's music induced a feeling of being engulfed, intoxicated. For Nietzsche, Wagner was like a disease: "Everything he touches falls sick."In The Sorcerer of Bayreuth, Barry Millington, a leading authority on Wagner, presents an engaging, accessibly written overview of the life and works one of the world's most influential and controversial composers. This richly illustrated book considers a wide range of themes, including Wagner'soriginal sources of inspiration; his compositional process; his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; his perplexing ideology; the anti-Semitism that is undeniably present in the operas; their proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of theBayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself.Millington illuminates these issues in a series of chapters, each exploring a theme through text, illustrations, and documents in elegantly designed spreads, thus avoiding the conventional formats of illustrated biography and documentary study. The results are often surprising. Drawing on the verylatest biographical and musicological scholarship - much of it undertaken by the author himself - Millington reassesses received notions about both Wagner's life and his music, demolishing tired cliches and ill-informed opinion in favor of proper critical understanding.Marking the bicentenary of the birth of Richard Wagner, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth offers readers a fascinating reappraisal of this most provocative of composers and the incomparable music he made.
Download or read book We Must Love One Another Or Die written by Lawrence Mass and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original collection which includes a complete biography as well as essays ranging from political to historical, twenty-three authors join to celebrate the life of a pioneer AIDS activist and acclaimed writer. Reprint.
Download or read book Hailee written by Penny Zeller and published by Whitaker House. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At twenty years of age, Nathaniel Maxwell Adams Jr., better known as Nate, fulfills a prophecy he made eleven years prior by moving to Pine Haven. What he hadn’t planned in his youth, though, was to become a pastor, especially since his parents adamantly oppose the idea. So, as he shepherds a flock in the growing Montana town, he feels called to another smaller yet no less significant mission field: his mother and father. For years, orphan Hailee Annigan was just a ragamuffin, roaming the Cincinnati streets trying to keep food in the mouths of her two younger brothers and herself. This often meant thieving, which landed her in the Sanctuary of Hope, a home for delinquent youngsters. There, her life changed, thanks to her patient, loving teachers. Now, at eighteen, she pursues a dream to become a teacher herself and bravely accepts a position in Montana. She still has faith that she’ll find her brothers again someday, but for now, she’s ready to put the past behind her. When Nate and Hailee's paths converge in Pine Haven, their lives begin to overlap in ways they can’t ignore. And they must discover if God intends for their destinies to converge, as well.
Download or read book Art Politics and the Pamphleteer written by Jane Tormey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer brings together a collection of text-based and visual essays, commissioned artworks and graphics. This richly illustrated book responds to the concept, aesthetics and function of the political pamphlet. It is diverse in content, interpreting the 'pamphlet' in the broadest terms, and encompassing a number of case studies that offer historical or specific examples of contemporary pamphleteering practice that can be seen to perform 'a clear political implication' or protest. Besides exploring the radical history and diverse cultures of the pamphlet, it also celebrates the rich visual rhetoric, typography and contemporary relevance of the format for both artists and activists. Contributions include an historical overview and essays by: Andy Abbott, Angeliki Avgitidu, Aziz Choudry and Désirée Rochat, David Murrieta Flores, Michelle Kempson, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Rachel Schreiber, Jane Tormey, Gillian Whiteley; visual contributions by Gary Anderson and Steven Shakespeare, Ruth Beale, Ami Clarke, Common Culture, Jeremy Deller, Freee, Patrick Goddard, Gavin Grindon, Ferenc Grof, Marc Herbst, Joanne Lee, Josh MacPhee, Manual Labours, Mark McGowan, Minute Works, Chris Morton, radicalreThink, Hester Reeve, Oliver Ressler, Greg Sholette & Christopher Darling, Laura Wild, Andrew Wilson. As the book was conceived as predominantly visual from the outset, the book concept has been a collaboration with The Little Riot Press (Phil Eastwood and Chris Dunne). Overall, an aesthetic of protest and propaganda was considered integral to the design to reiterate the generally handmade, analogue techniques found in political pamphlets. The Little Riot Press have thus approached the illustration and overall visual cohesion from the perspective of the radical artist pamphleteer. www.thelittleriotpress.com
Download or read book Saving Leonardo written by Nancy Pearcey and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is secularism a positive force in the modern world? Or does it lead to fragmentation and disintegration? In Saving Leonardo, best-selling award-winning author Nancy Pearcey (Total Truth, coauthor How Now Shall We Live?) makes a compelling case that secularism is destructive and dehumanizing. Pearcey depicts the revolutionary thinkers and artists, the ideas and events, leading step by step to the unleashing of secular worldviews that undermine human dignity and liberty. She crafts a fresh approach that exposes the real-world impact of ideas in philosophy, science, art, literature, and film--voices that surround us in the classroom, in the movie theater, and in our living rooms. A former agnostic, Pearcey offers a persuasive case for historic Christianity as a holistic and humane alternative. She equips readers to counter the life-denying worldviews that are radically restructuring society and pervading our daily lives. Whether you are a devoted Christian, determined secularist, or don't know quite where you stand, reading Saving Leonardo will unsettle established views and topple ideological idols. Includes more than 100 art reproductions and illustrations that bring the book's themes to life. Praise for Saving Leonardo: "A feast for the mind and for the eye. Nancy Pearcey not only is a trustworthy guide for a nuanced discussion on the relationship between culture and the gospel, but she is a gifted teacher as well . . . Saving Leonardo is a rare, precious gift to the churches and universities alike." Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture "Nancy Pearcey has done it again and better than ever. She has taken the complex sophistication of the best cultural analysis and laid it out for any person to grasp, enjoy and use to live out their daily lives honoring Christ. An astounding accomplishment!" James W. Sire, author of The Universe Next Door "G. K. Chesterton said 'the danger when Men stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing; but that they will believe in anything.' Nancy Pearcey understands where believing in anything leads and in this book she reveals where a secular philosophy is taking us. A balanced, fair, and impacting work!" Cal Thomas, syndicated and USA Today columnist "Nancy Pearcey helps a new generation of evangelicals to understand the worldview challenges we now face and to develop an intelligent and articulate Christian understanding . . . Saving Leonardo should be put in the hands of all those who should always be ready to give an answer--and that means all of us." R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary "Nancy Pearcey is an intellectual prophet in our day and one of Evangelicalism's foremost cultural observers. Saving Leonardo is a tour de force. In it, Pearcey provides a penetrating analysis of the nature of contemporary secularism, a helpful exposition of how we got to the present situation, and a well-crafted strategy for changing the situation. This is her best effort yet . . . a must read." J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of Philosophy, Biola University and author of The God Question "Nancy Pearcey is unsurpassed in the current generation of Christian thinkers . . . The magic continues with this book. Pearcey's virtues as a writer and thinker are once again fully evident in the range of material that she has mastered, the encyclopedic collection of data that she presents, and the analytic rigor with which she separates truth from error in worldviews. She is a prophetic voice for contemporary Christians." Leland Ryken, Clyde S. Kilby professor of English, Wheaton College "Brilliant . . . The book brings complex, abstract ideas down-to-earth -- or rather, down-to-life. . . . Saving Leonardo bridges the gaps between the arts and the sciences, the theoretical and the practical. The book not only argues for the unity of Christian truth but exemplifies that unity and shows it in action." Gene Edward Veith, provost, Patrick Henry College
Download or read book French Opera at the Fin de Si cle written by Steven Huebner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-02 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study of the rich operatic repertory written and performed in France during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Steven Huebner gives an accessible and colorful account of such operatic favorites as Manon and Werther by Massenet, Louise by Charpentier, and lesser-known gems such as Chabrier's Le Roi malgré lui and Chausson's Le Roi Arthus.
