Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love
Emslie's study of Wagner's creativity examines the centrality of love - and its obverse, hate - to the composer's world view.

Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love is a bold book which argues that Wagner's music dramas cannot be understood if treated separately from his essays, his life, the intellectual and artistic climate of his day, and the broader history of Germany. Wagner attempts a range of reconciliations that are radical in content and form and appear to succeed partly because he is in well-nigh complete command of the aesthetic product; not only text and music, but also production practice. Nonetheless, all the reconciliations ultimately break down, but in a manner that is illuminating. This is not a celebration of the seamless work of art, but a radical unpicking of the seemingly seamless.
'Love' is the central organising concept of the whole Wagnerian project. Love - sexual and spiritual, egotistical and charitable, love of the individual and of the race - is the key Wagnerian driving force. And therefore so is hate. Of course Wagner cannot employ love without its opposite, and it is critically significant that his anti-semitism is based upon his view that the Jews are 'loveless'. The book handles Wagner's anti-semitism (andthe ongoing row about it) in a unique way, in that it is shown to be aesthetically and intellectually productive (for him!). This leads to a radical reinterpretation of Wagner's music dramas.

BARRY EMSLIE is an independent scholar who lives and teaches in Berlin.
1018290839
Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love
Emslie's study of Wagner's creativity examines the centrality of love - and its obverse, hate - to the composer's world view.

Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love is a bold book which argues that Wagner's music dramas cannot be understood if treated separately from his essays, his life, the intellectual and artistic climate of his day, and the broader history of Germany. Wagner attempts a range of reconciliations that are radical in content and form and appear to succeed partly because he is in well-nigh complete command of the aesthetic product; not only text and music, but also production practice. Nonetheless, all the reconciliations ultimately break down, but in a manner that is illuminating. This is not a celebration of the seamless work of art, but a radical unpicking of the seemingly seamless.
'Love' is the central organising concept of the whole Wagnerian project. Love - sexual and spiritual, egotistical and charitable, love of the individual and of the race - is the key Wagnerian driving force. And therefore so is hate. Of course Wagner cannot employ love without its opposite, and it is critically significant that his anti-semitism is based upon his view that the Jews are 'loveless'. The book handles Wagner's anti-semitism (andthe ongoing row about it) in a unique way, in that it is shown to be aesthetically and intellectually productive (for him!). This leads to a radical reinterpretation of Wagner's music dramas.

BARRY EMSLIE is an independent scholar who lives and teaches in Berlin.
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Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love

Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love

by Barry Emslie
Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love

Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love

by Barry Emslie

Hardcover

$85.00 
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Overview

Emslie's study of Wagner's creativity examines the centrality of love - and its obverse, hate - to the composer's world view.

Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love is a bold book which argues that Wagner's music dramas cannot be understood if treated separately from his essays, his life, the intellectual and artistic climate of his day, and the broader history of Germany. Wagner attempts a range of reconciliations that are radical in content and form and appear to succeed partly because he is in well-nigh complete command of the aesthetic product; not only text and music, but also production practice. Nonetheless, all the reconciliations ultimately break down, but in a manner that is illuminating. This is not a celebration of the seamless work of art, but a radical unpicking of the seemingly seamless.
'Love' is the central organising concept of the whole Wagnerian project. Love - sexual and spiritual, egotistical and charitable, love of the individual and of the race - is the key Wagnerian driving force. And therefore so is hate. Of course Wagner cannot employ love without its opposite, and it is critically significant that his anti-semitism is based upon his view that the Jews are 'loveless'. The book handles Wagner's anti-semitism (andthe ongoing row about it) in a unique way, in that it is shown to be aesthetically and intellectually productive (for him!). This leads to a radical reinterpretation of Wagner's music dramas.

BARRY EMSLIE is an independent scholar who lives and teaches in Berlin.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781843835363
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer, Limited
Publication date: 03/18/2010
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Author's Note vi

1 Introduction, or the Uses of Love 1

2 Sensuality and Spirituality in the Early Music Dramas 8

3 Music and the Eternal Feminine 21

Music, philosophy and religion 21

Art and the woman 34

4 The Ring of the Nibelung 55

Contradiction, disorder and musical language 55

Plot 76

Meaning 92

Theory 95

The pagan Ring 98

Pantheism 100

Incest 111

5 Love and Death: Tristan und Isolde 128

Schopenhauer betrayed and/or corrected 137

Identity 146

Words and Music 151

6 The Mastersingers of Nuremberg 167

Words and music again 176

Language and Volk 182

Love, hate and anti-semitism 198

7 Parsifal 223

Kundry 233

The Grail 249

8 Contradictions and Speculations 255

Notes 295

Bibliography 301

Index 307

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