Wagner, Richard Books

Wagner's Ring: Turning the Sky Round

M. Owen Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Superb introduction for the novice. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This little book is an excellent introduction for folks like myself who have tried for years to make sense of the cycle. The narration gives a plot synopsis followed by the author's view of the meaning behind the drama. I have always been fascinated by Wagner's Ring Cycle though I do not know German. I have been very intrigued by the music. Well this book gave me a tiny little bit to get me going.

Much of Father Owens' analysis may not meet with everyone's interpretation of the cycle but it does make one think.

There is a section at the end that contains written music. My knowledge of reading music is very scant so I just ignored that section. It is not germane to the narrative because one can get these examples by listening to the work. For good examples get An Introduction To Wagner's Der Ring Des Nebulungen by Deryck Cooke on CD. Mr. Cooke's CD gives audio examples that one can appreciate without knowing how to read music.

Editorial Review:

Commentary on and a concise, lucid interpretation of the opera world's most complex masterwork, expanded from the author's popular intermission talks during Met Opera broadcasts.

Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

The Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy yet again struck gold, enshrining history's greatest thinkers in pre-eminently handsome texts, robust and readable translations, and scholarly and timely commentary and introductory exegesis.

Despite Nietzsche's admonition greeting us in the very first prefatory page, this book belongs not to the few, but to all seeking meaning beyond society's regurgitated paradigms and ossified constrictions.

A philosopher-bibliophile's "must have"!

Editorial Review:

Nietzsche's late works are brilliant and uncompromising, and stand as monuments to his lucidity, rigor, and style. This volume combines, for the first time in English, five of these works: The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche contra Wagner, and The Case of Wagner. Nietzsche takes on some of his greatest adversaries in these works: traditional religion, contemporary culture, and above all, his one-time hero, Richard Wagner. His writing is simultaneously critical and creative, revealing his alternative philosophical vision, which, after more than a hundred years, still retains its audacious originality.

Wagner and the Wonder of Art: An Introduction to Die Meistersinger

M. Owen Lee

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Editorial Review:

Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger has always called forth superlatives from those who have fallen under its spell. Toscanini wanted to lay his baton down for the last time only after he had conducted a performance of it. Paderewski called it 'the greatest work of genius ever achieved by any artist in any field of human endeavour.' H.L. Mencken declared, 'It took more skill to plan and write it than it took to plan and write the whole canon of Shakespeare.'

And yet Wagner's many-splendoured comedy has come under severe criticism in recent years for what has been called its 'dark underside,' its 'fascist brutality,' and its 'ugly anti-Semitism.' In Wagner and the Wonder of Art, renowned opera expert M. Owen Lee addresses that criticism. He also provides an introduction to the opera and an analysis that will surprise even those veteran operagoers who may not have explored the work's intricate structure and the emotional drama at its centre. The book includes the on-air commentary that Father Lee gave during the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera after the events of 9/11. He thought it necessary, after attempting to refute the charges leveled against Wagner's opera, to say something about its truthfulness, its life-affirming music, its insight into the madness that can destroy human lives, and its witness to the importance of art for the survival of our civilizations.

Decoding Wagner: An Invitation to His World of Music Drama (includes 2 CDs)

Thomas May

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the voluminous Wagner bibliography, Thomas May's book occupies a special place. Concise but remarkably information-packed and accompanied by two CDs of excerpts, it is addressed to those who seek a deeper understanding of Wagner's operas. The controversies--artistic, human and moral--generated by Wagner's innovative ideas and reprehensible behavior frequently obscure the greatness of his achievements. May performs an extraordinary feat: although unflinchingly aware of Wagner's arrogance, self-aggrandizement, duplicity, faithlessness, hedonism, greed, political opportunism, chauvinism, and anti-Semitism, he communicates boundless admiration for the composer and passionate love for his works. Suggesting that the very schism between Wagner's flawed character and idealistic aspirations inspired "monumentally stirring meditations on the contradictory range of human experience," he correlates and reconciles his "monstrous ego" with his sublime genius. The evolution of Wagner's operas, from his early and incomplete attempts to the late, often extensively revised masterpieces, culminated in a lofty artistic vision: the "total artwork" which, combining all the arts, would result in heightened experience and spiritual elevation. Wagner wrote his own texts, considering poetry and music inseparable and himself equally master of both, an assessment not universally shared. May takes the librettos very seriously, following them from their historical or mythological origin to their final form with formidable but unobtrusive erudition. Among his references are the Buddha, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, and T.S. Eliot, and he must have read everything about Wagner as well as Wagner's own often repellent autobiographical, theoretical, and political writings (which make one wish he had written nothing but music). May's musical analyses are equally riveting and absorbing. He traces the operas' ever-increasing depth, breadth, and grandeur, the growing importance and masterful use of the unifying leitmotif and the "Wagnerian" orchestra, and the often hidden strands that connect them despite their individual uniqueness. Opera lovers spurred by May's book to hear these works performed could not wish for a more knowledgeable, illuminating, and inspiring guide. --Edith Eisler

Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art (General Interest)

M. Owen Lee

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

How is it possible for a seriously flawed human being to produce art that is good, true, and beautiful? Why is the art of Richard Wagner, a very imperfect man, important and even indispensable to us?

In this volume, Father Owen Lee ventures an answer to those questions by way of a figure in Sophocles - the hero Philoctetes. Gifted by his god with a bow that would always shoot true to the mark and indispensable to his fellow Greeks, he was marked by the same god with an odious wound that made him hateful and hated. Sophocles' powerful insight is that those blessed by the gods and indispensable to men are visited as well with great vulnerability and suffering.

Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art traces some of Wagner's extraordinary influence for good and ill on a century of art and politics - on Eliot and Proust as well as on Adolf Hitler - and discusses in detail Wagner's Tannhouser, the work in which the composer first dramatised the Faustian struggle of a creative artist in whom 'two souls dwell.' In the course of this penetrating study, Father Lee argues that Wagner's ambivalent art is indispensable to us, life-enhancing and ultimately healing.

Wagner Beyond Good and Evil

John Deathridge

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Editorial Review:

John Deathridge presents a different and critical view of Richard Wagner based on recent research that does not shy away from some unpalatable truths about this most controversial of composers in the canon of Western music. Deathridge writes authoritatively on what Wagner did, said, and wrote, drawing from abundant material already well known but also from less familiar sources, including hitherto seldom discussed letters and diaries and previously unpublished musical sketches. At the same time, Deathridge suggests that a true estimation of Wagner does not lie in an all too easy condemnation of his many provocative actions and ideas. Rather, it is to be found in the questions about the modern world and our place in it posed by the best of his stage works, among them Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Controversy about Wagner is unlikely to go away, but rather than taking the line of least resistance by regarding him blandly as a "classic" in the Western art tradition, Deathridge suggests that we need to confront the debates that have raged about him and reach beyond them, toward a fresh and engaging assessment of what he ultimately achieved.

Wagner Without Fear: Learning to Love--and Even Enjoy--Opera's Most Demanding Genius

William Berger

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Do you cringe when your opera-loving friends start raving about the latest production of Tristan? Do you feel faint just thinking about the six-hour performance of Parsifal you were given tickets to? Does your mate accuse you of having a Tannhäuser complex? If you're baffled by the behavior of Wagner worshipers, if you've longed to fathom the mysteries of Wagner's ever-increasing popularity, or if you just want to better understand and enjoy the performances you're attending, you'll find this delightful book indispensable.

William Berger is the most helpful guide one could hope to find for navigating the strange and beautiful world of the most controversial artist who ever lived. He tells you all you need to know to become a true Wagnerite--from story lines to historical background; from when to visit the rest room to how to sound smart during intermission; from the Jewish legend that possibly inspired Lohengrin to the tragic death of the first Tristan. Funny, informative, and always a pleasure to read, Wagner Without Fear proves that the art of Wagner can be accessible to everyone.

Includes:
- The strange life of Richard Wagner--German patriot (and exile), friend (and enemy) of Liszt and Nietzsche
- Essential opera lore and "lobby talk"
- A scene-by-scene analysis of each opera
- What to listen for to get the most from the music
- Recommended recordings, films, and sound tracks

I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Deryck Cooke

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Masterly Exegesis 5 out of 5 stars.
26 of 26 people found this review helpful.

This book is a model of thoughtful interpretation. Cooke begins by setting out why interpretation of the Ring cycle has been so difficult. This is seen as due partly to the enormous complexity of the work, partly due to the fact that prior major interpretations have been based on somewhat unrealistic preconceptions, for example, Bernard Shaw's social-political interpretation, and partly due to prior major interpretations bypassing close analysis of the music itself. Cooke develops a set of explicit criteria for an accurate interpretation of the Ring and applies them to prior major interpretative efforts. His critique of Robert Dornington's Jungian analysis, for example is moderate in tone but devastating in effect. Cooke defends Wagner against the charge that the plot and characters of the Ring are a shoddily assembled hodge-podge of myth. Cooke performs a careful analysis of Wagner's sources, using the same editions that Wagner drew from. Cooke demonstrates Wagner's careful and artful selection and modification of elements from German and Nordic mythology into a sophisticated and well integrated drama. Cooke's recurring term for Wagner's craft is masterly and he is correct. With this background, Cooke moves to a careful analysis of the plot and characters of the first 2 operas, Rheingold and Valkyrie. An essentially step by step analysis shows how Wagner used plot and character to advance his theme of the conflict of power versus love.
The only defect of this book is that it ends with the conclusion of Valkyrie. Though this book is over 350 pages long (in a small but not miniscule font), this would have been only the beginning of Cooke's projected opus on the Ring. Presumably, there would have been an equivalent amount of enlightening text on Siegfried and Gotterdamerung. Cooke then apparently planned a major work analyzing the development of musical aspects of the drama. Listeners who have heard Cooke's excellent introduction to the leitmotivs of the Ring will have had a taste of what Cooke planned. Its truly unfortunate that Cooke didn't live to complete this project.

Editorial Review:

Wagner's Ring is a great masterpiece. But because of the work's rich complexity it is difficult to think sensibly about its text and music. Deryck Cooke, author of The Language of Music and completer of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, displays his masterly common sense in this study of how and why The Ring took the shape it did. It is only a portion of the enormous book he had planned: his untimely death prevented his writing an analysis of the music. But it covers the first two operas of the cycle (Rheingold and The Valkyrie) and even as it stands gives a fresh understanding and appreciation to every lover of Wagner's music.

The Ring Disc: An Interactive Guide to Wagners Ring Cycle (Solti, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra)

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Richard Wagner's entire "Ring of the Nibelungen" on one CD-ROM. The definitive Vienna Philharmonic recording, Sir Georg Solti conducting.

* Complete piano-vocal score, German libretto with English translation, and running commentary-all synchronized to the music.

* All 14.5 hours of pristine digitized sound captured by The Media Café's new audio compression technology.

* More than one hundred original essays with detailed explanations.

* Extensive full-color image database from contemporary and historical sources.

* Comprehensive analysis of all the leitmotifs along with hypertext links to specific musical occurrences.

* Search functions instantaneously isolate and index individual leitmotif, characters, and musical examples throughout the entire cycle.

One disc with 14.5 hours of pristine digitized sound.

Computer Requirements:
Pentium Processor PC
Windows 95 or Windows NT
8MB Ram
4xCD-ROM Drive
800x600 Screen Resolution with 16 bit color

The Wagner Operas

Ernest Newman

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ernest Newman's study of the major Wagner operas (from Der fliegende Holländer onwards) was originally published in 1949 and rapidly achieved the status of a classic opera text, which it retains to this day. There are plenty of other, differing treatments of the stories of the operas, but none as detailed or as dramatically aware as Newman's magisterial volume. Of course, the reprint does not contain information about the composer and his works that would later come to light, nor does it traffic in current modes of thought about the operas (in some cases, thankfully). What Newman does is begin with a history of the myth or the tales on which each opera is based, widening that out to a discussion of Wagner's interest in the story, his involvement with its genesis, and an account of how the work in question was created and first produced. Since in some cases this gestation took years, Newman's clear explication does much to lift the mists surrounding even the simplest of Wagner's operas. He then discusses each opera in detail. The plethora of musical examples and Newman's understanding of Wagner's use of the leitmotif ensure that his readings are responsive both to the histrionic and musical aspects of the stories.

Reading the details of the often complex backgrounds of the operas, as well as what goes on in the opera itself (the discussion of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg alone runs to more than 110 pages of text), should immeasurably enrich the listener's opera-going experience, even in this age of the surtitle. And an appreciation of the range and cogency of Wagner's musical and dramatic genius, which this book offers, will serve to balance the unflattering portrait of Wagner the human being that dominates today's thinking about the Master. --Patrick J. Smith