Download or read book Richard Wagner written by Martin Geck and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-18 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] intriguing exploration of the composer’s life and thought as exemplified by his music. An excellent biography.” —Library Journal Best known for the 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. 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. A landmark study of one of music’s most important figures “People who would like to know more about Wagner, and people who have loved his music for years . . . will find a great deal in this book to enjoy and to admire.” —Tablet “Geck describes a Wagner who is grounded, focused and even cautious, a savvy realist and ironist rather than a flamboyant, flailing ideologue . . . Suffused with his readings of contemporary productions of the operas, Geck’s musical analyses are succinct and superb” —New York Times “As an editor of Wagner’s Complete Works, Geck brings a deep familiarity with the composer to his task.” —Weekly Standard “A thoroughly approachable yet consistently provocative study.” —Thomas S. Grey, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Wagner

Download or read book The Life of Richard Wagner written by Ernest Newman and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Richard Wagner His Life His Work His Century written by Martin Gregor-Dellin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1983 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt written by and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt: Dramaturgical Leaves: Richard Wagner completes the second half of Liszt’s writings about stage works, its composers, and music drama. In this volume, Liszt focuses on the works of his most controversial devotee and son-in-law, Richard Wagner, whose music dramas Liszt championed as conductor during his tenure in Weimar. Here, we see Liszt prove his skill and expertise as a music critic, as well. He offers a critical analysis of the aesthetic and musical principles that underlie Wagner’s operas, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and The Flying Dutchman, including a thorough discussion of Wagner’s Leitmotif system of composition. Additionally, his findings are substantiated with a plethora of music examples, which will satisfy those who wanted greater musical substance from his writings. He also foretells the magnitude of Wagner’s influence on prosperity in his pamphlet-length essay, The Rhine’s Gold. Finally, the editor and translator of this volume, Janita Hall-Swadley, provides a unique perspective on these same principles, which is based on Wagner’s own mysterious diagram of “The Philosopher’s Stone,” which was supposed to be included in the original 1863 edition of the composer’s important writing, Opera and Drama, but never made it to publication.

Download or read book Life of R Wagner Vol 3 written by Ernest Newman and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vast literature on Richard Wagner, Ernest Newman's classic four-volume Life remains unsurpassed. Volume III covers the years 1859-66 including the Tannhäuser debacle in Paris, the crisis with Minna, the first production of Tristan und Isolde and the flight from Munich.

Download or read book My Life with Wagner written by Christian Thielemann and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Idiosyncratic, humorous, enlightening and written by one of the finest conductors alive ... This is the book to buy if you are going to see Wagner or listen to him at home' LITERARY REVIEW Over a distinguished career conducting some of the world's finest orchestras, Christian Thielemann has earned a reputation as the leading modern interpreter of Richard Wagner. MY LIFE WITH WAGNER chronicles his ardent personal and professional engagement with the composer whose work has shaped his thinking and feeling from early childhood. Thielemann retraces his journey with Wagner - from Berlin to Bayreuth via Venice, Hamburg and Chicago. Next he takes each opera in turn, his appraisal illuminated by a deep affinity for the music, an intimate knowledge of the scores and the inside perspective of an outstanding practitioner. And yet for all the adulation Wagner's art inspires in him, Thielemann does not shy away from unpalatable truths about the man himself, explaining why today he is venerated and reviled in equal measure. The result is a richly rewarding read for admirers of a composer who continues to fascinate long after his death.

Download or read book Richard Wagner My Life written by Richard Wagner and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1987-09-24 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reprint of the first English paperback edition of Richard Wagner's autobiography.

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 Richard Wagner written by Robert W. Gutman and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging far beyond the bounds of conventional biography and music history, this book examines the cultural background of Wagner’s art, including the nether regions of nationalism and racism. New Introduction by the Author. Index; photographs.

Download or read book Richard Wagner and the Jews written by Milton E. Brener and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is well known that Richard Wagner, the renowned and controversial 19th century composer, exhibited intense anti-Semitism. The evidence is everywhere in his writings as well as in conversations his second wife recorded in her diaries. In his infamous essay "Judaism in Music," Wagner forever cemented his unpleasant reputation with his assertion that Jews were incapable of either creating or appreciating great art. Wagner's close ties with many talented Jews, then, are surprising. Most writers have dismissed these connections as cynical manipulations and rank hypocrisy. Examination of the original sources, however, reveals something different: unmistakeable, undeniable empathy and friendship between Wagner and the Jews in his life. Indeed, the composer had warm relationships with numerous individual Jews. Two of them resided frequently over extended periods in his home. One of these, the rabbi's son Hermann Levi, conducted Wagner's final opera--Parsifal, based on Christian legend--at Wagner's request; no one, Wagner declared, understood his work so well. Even in death his Jewish friends were by his side; two were among his twelve pallbearers. The contradictions between Wagner's antipathy toward the amorphous entity "The Jews" and his genuine friendships with individual Jews are the subject of this book. Drawing on extensive sources in both German and English, including Wagner's autobiography and diary and the diaries of his second wife, this comprehensive treatment of Wagner's anti-Semitism is the first to place it in perspective with his life and work. Included in the text are portions of unpublished letters exchanged between Wagner and Hermann Levi. Altogether, the book reveals astonishing complexities in a man long known as much for his prejudice as for his epic contributions to opera.

Download or read book Richard Wagner written by Derek Watson and published by Schirmer Trade Books. This book was released on 1981 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the events and people, successes and failures, of Wagner's life. Draws on primary sources from the Wagner family archives to show a man of great personal charm--and of overbearing egoism, selfishness and cruelty. His support for the revolutions of 1848 forced him into exile, but he easily won the fervent support of kings and emperors.

Download or read book Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas written by William James Henderson and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Being Wagner The Triumph of the Will written by Simon Callow and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect introduction to the Master.

Download or read book Wagner written by Ernest Newman and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Adventures of Richard Wagner written by Opal Wheeler and published by . This book was released on 2011-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the age of four, Wilhelm Richard Wagner made his first impression on the theatrical world when he pounded on a bass drum and stopped the performance at the Dresden Playhouse-right in the midst of his stepfather's lines. This ill-fated incident put a temporary stop to Richard's nights backstage, and the punishment was almost more than exuberant little "Dicker" could bear. No more trunks to explore, no more wigs to try on, no more lights and music and dancing. He had so loved being a part of his adored stepfather's professional life. But there were golden and impressionable years ahead for young Richard. He came under the haunting spell of Weber's opera, Der Freischutz, and copied the entire score on his own music sheets to memorize. He avidly read Shakespeare's plays and vowed he would write even greater tragedies. He staged puppet shows, wrote poetry, and dreamed fantastic dreams. One of the most profound influences on Richard's youth was a Beethoven symphony, heard for the first time in Leipzig. The mighty music thundered in his mind as he walked from the concert hall, and it was characteristic of him that he determined, then and there, to become a great composer. Always headstrong and impatient with guidance from others, Richard struggled daily with the rules of harmony and counterpoint, while his instructors discouraged his dream. Throwing traditional methods aside, the future composer of Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde went directly to the great masters' works and copied their music, note by note, until it became a part of him. More than anything else he wanted to write operas-his own stories set to music, sung and acted. As Opal Wheeler's light-hearted and lively biography reveals, Richard Wagner is an amazing example in music history-one of the few composers of stature who learned his art from the untutored study of the masterpieces of his day.

Download or read book Richard Wagner s Prose Works written by Richard Wagner and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Social Life of Water written by John R. Wagner and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.