Good analysis of Wagner the person, and the drama in the operas... hmmm
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Well this book serves well for the casual reader with no or little understanding of music (in terms of dots on a page). Tanner descussed well the basic issues in Wagners life, his loves, struggles and aspirations and certain motivations in his life that may have influenced his work and builds up a good psycho-analysis of the old guy. Once more is that he goes into a very (and I mean very, considering the length of the book) detailed talk about what happens on Wagner's stage, what happens to the charaters and the drama that takes place upon it.
What I found increasingly frustrating however was that it often seems as though Tanner sat there studying the libtretti. He occasionally descusses the actual music (the most important thing) i.e. then Wotan is head over heals with grief, signified with loud strings, and then spend the next two pages descussing the characters.
In fact he went so far as too completely say that Tanhausser (the only one I hadn't studied by this point) was in fact a rubbish work and based the argument solely (it seems) upon the shallow and all-too-simple action within the drama, no 3-d characters and so forth. Yet when I actually came to study the 'silly' opera, yes, the plot was very simple, yet the music was overwhelmingly beatiful and it clearly held a strong merrit within Wagners development as a composer.
What I found frustrating too is that half way he mentioned something about how Wagner makes a 'dangerous bid for our souls', but then says he shall resolve this critical issue at the end of the book. As far as I'm aware this was not done.
Nonetheless it is a good read. As I said, it's good for the casual reader, but can be quite frustrating for those that ask for 'some' relevant descussion of what really mattered; the music. 2.5 stars.
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Content good, style at times difficult
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I am near to finishing this book for the second time. My gratitude to the author for opening my eyes to so many possibilities. Here is a book for the initiated and not ,as I was the first time around, a newcomer to Wagner and his thought. Tanner has a great way of outlining your options for understanding the works. I have little doubt that I will come back to the book in the future. The review of the irate Londoner does introduce a particular gripe I have with Tanner's style. At times his sentances are longer than the Victoria line and his vocabulary tends to shroud his intentions in unnecessary gobbledigook. For all that this is a very valuable book if you are interested in Wagner and his works.
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A quiet, subtle, modest masterpiece
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Tanner writes well, simply, unpretentiously, helpfully. For someone who is only starting to engage with Wagner's operas, Tanner would be an ideal mentor, showing the reader how to think seriously about these great works while sensitively experiencing them. He also offers much to people who know Wagner's works well. Having listened to Wagner and thought about him for over forty years, I have found my relationship to those great works refreshed and deepened by insights in Tanner's Wagner. I was introduced to Wagner by Tanner in about 1960, when we were colleagues in Cambridge. In the past thirty years, when we have lived on different continents, my life has gone on being enriched by what I learned from him through the 1960s. His book could do something of that for others: a reader could carry away from it not merely its immediate content but also guides to ways of thinking and feeling that would be valid and valuable for years to come. It is an astonishing book. Some of the early English reviewers were hostile: bitten perhaps by Tanner's sharp tone with those who have clambered onto the current bandwagon proclaiming that Wagner's operas - as distinct from the man himself - are anti-semitic. Other reviewers regard it as a classic. Roger Scruton, in the Times Literary Supplement, treated the book as an answer to Nietzsche's case against Wagner, and remarked that this is the first time that Nietzsche has been opposed on this topic by someone who is intellectually fit to argue with him. Tanner's many insights into Wagner's work are offered simply, modestly, with no grinding of scholarly gears or flashy post-modern prose.
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Even one crown is too many
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A factually inaccurate, protectively partisan and appallingly badly written study. Wagner deserves better
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