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    Wagner: His Life and Music
    Wagner: His Life and Music
    Wagner: His Life and Music
    Audiobook8 hours

    Wagner: His Life and Music

    Written by Stephen Johnson

    Narrated by Stephen Johnson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Well over a century after Wagner’s death, the man and his music are as controversial as ever. Praised for his profound insights into the workings of the human heart, he has also been condemned as a dangerous libertine, a proto-fascist and an arrogant bore.

    His vast four-part operatic Ring cycle has been elevated as one of the greatest achievements of western culture and dismissed as an unparalleled example of creative megalomania.

    This audio-book makes no attempt to gloss over the darker sides of Wagner’s character, personally or artistically, but argues that the finer aspects of his vision transcend its flaws.

    It tells the story of an extraordinary life, and charts Wagner’s development, from unpromising beginnings, into the creator of some of the most brilliantly and seductively beautiful music ever composed.

    ©2013 Naxos AudioBooks (P)2013 Naxos AudioBooks

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateMay 13, 2013
    ISBN9781843797524
    Wagner: His Life and Music
    Author

    Stephen Johnson

    Stephen Johnson has taken part in several hundred radio programmes and documentaries, including Radio 3's weekly Discovering Music series. He is also presented on the Classic Arts Podcast series Archive Classics. He has contributed as guest interviewee on BBC 4 coverage of The Proms, ITV's The Southbank Show and more recently, on BBC1's The One Show. Stephen Johnson is the author of several books, including The Eight: Mahler and the World in 1910 (Faber) and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (NHE).

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    Reviews for Wagner

    3.5/5

    14 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A fairly impartial biography of Wagner with a detailed explanation of his operas, offering synopsis, analysis and music selections. A well-rounded work.
    • 3/5
      A good idea. Less than half the book is biography, the rest musical excerpts and analysis. It is a reasobaly impartial biographical narrative by today's Wagner-bashing standards, and an overall OK music section.

      A few observations:

      1. Hans Sachs does not "turn over" Eva to Walther. He's not her daddy.

      2. It is suggested that the Dutchman may be a Jew. Hadn't heard that one.

      3. Minme and Alberich, being dwarfs, are menmtioned as often being regarded as Jewish caricatures. I know Wagner never thought such a thing and I often wonder what sort of people make that connection.

      In fact, the author seems to make this assumption outright for himself, then tries to mitigate it by deciding that yes, Wagner meant them to be Jews but the news is not all bad as he seems to show some empathy for them. Hilarious.

      4. There is the usual total misconception of Wagner vs. Schopenhauer. The two had very little in common. Wagner's works are all about love, all the time, and of course compassion. Schopenhauer didn't know the meaning of lthe word. He was probably the least loveable man in Germany at the time, his great philosophy notwithstanding. He was basically a pessimist. Not much for compassion either. He once threw his landlady down the steps, injuring her permanently, & for which he had to pay her an income for life. When she died he said (he was a superb philologist!) "Obit anus, abit onus". I will let you translate the L:atin. BTW "anus" is "the old one", not u-know-what.

      Wagner mistakenly associated his Tristan with Schopenhauer's philosophy & gave him a copy of the score, which S. rejected. S.'s favorite composer was Rossini. Enough said.

      5. Finally there are te usual absurd notions of misogyny, homosexuality and racism in Parsifal, the serenest opera ever written. Absurd to dredge all that stupidity up one more time.

      In sum, I think the idea of the "singing audiobook" is quite good. It at least can introduce the neophyte to Wagner's incoimparable works. Most of the perfomances chosen (presumably of Naxos vintage) are mediocre, but so are most everyone else's . A surprising exception is the Bruennhiled in the final scene in Goetterdaemmerung. Superb voice!. Did they sneak in Nilsson?

      On the whole the biography is overly tendentious, rehashing all the composer's anti-Semitism. Yes, he was that - unnecessarily so - but so was half the Western world at the time. Of course, his overwhelming influence had corresponding effects. I still believe most of the blame he gets is due to his having been Hitlker's favorite composer. It is the height of absurdity to state that he was somehow the inspiration fior Hitler's horrors, yet that is held axiomatic by too many fools.

      I would instead recommend three fine alternatives - "Richard Wagner" by Derek Watson, an eponymous one by Hans Gal, and "The Tristan Chord" by Brian Magee.