Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Wagner's Musical Prose
  • Cited by 32
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
1995
Online ISBN:
9780511470301
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511470301
Subjects:
Philosophy: General Interest, Music, Philosophy, Music: General Interest, Music Criticism
Series:
New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism (3)
Information

Book description

This book is a study of the prose writings of Richard Wagner and their relevance to an understanding of his music and drama, as well as their relation to music criticism and aesthetics in the nineteenth century in general. As a by-product of Wagner's many-faceted career as musician, conductor, cultural critic and controversial ideologue, the writings are documents of undisputed interpretative value. This study focuses on Wagner's words on music, and interprets them in the light of the musical, aesthetic and critical contexts that generated them. Professor Grey considers Wagner's ambivalence concerning the idea of 'absolute music' and the capacity of music to project meaning or drama from within its own system of referents. Particularly relevant are Wagner's appropriation of a Beethoven legacy, the metaphors of musical 'gender' and 'biology' in Opera and Drama and the critical background to ideas of 'motive' and 'leitmotif' in theory and practice.

Reviews

"...we are very fortunate to have this new study, which deals with Wagner's writings in an intelligent, authoritative, and probing manner. Thomas S. Grey seems to have read not only everything Wagner wrote but everything written about him from his own day to the present and about the principle aesthetic issues relevant to the Wagner `case.'...the scope and command of Grey's book is...magisterial." The Opera Quarterly

"This is a serious study that no Wagnerian scholar should ignore." Warren Darcy, Notes

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.