Review - Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music

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I received a digital copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a really fascinating, often in-depth look at what Wagner's music has meant throughout its history. Parts of the book read as a biography of Richard Wagner, but it's far more a biography of, to put a little flippantly, the Wagnerian "fandom" both during the composer's life and long after his death.

The book does a very good job of presenting the breadth of Wagner's impact in various places, times, and in different intellectual and political circles--positive and negative. It doesn't shy away from Wagner's more unpleasant views, or from the ways his work has been used for ill--but it also presents a complicated, sometimes apparently contradictory Richard Wagner who cannot so easily be dismissed as any one thing and whose work has influenced countless others.

I did not know very much about Wagnerian opera going into this book. I knew the general themes and basic outline of parts of the Ring cycle, Tannhäuser, etc.; like anyone, I can recognize the Ride of the Valkyries and, though I didn't know what it came from, the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. I've had a recording of Tannhäuser on my iPod for years but I'm not sure I've ever listened to it in full. I've come out of reading this book with a much greater appreciation for the wide-ranging impact of Wagner's work--I had never realized just how much of an impact he had on so many other artists, or how many different things his work has meant to different groups of people.

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