by Alex Ross
First published 2021
Alex Ross examines how Richard Wagner became the most influential figure in music history. The New Yorker critic shows how Wagnerism swept through European and American culture around 1900. Operas like The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal inspired Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay rights activists claimed Wagner as their own. Then Hitler made Wagner the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer's antisemitism overshadowed his art. Ross traces Wagner's influence from Louis Sullivan's architecture to Philip K. Dick's novels, from Theodor Herzl's Zionist writings to W.E.B. Du Bois's civil rights essays. He connects Wagner to works ranging from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. The book reveals how an artist with Shakespeare's potential was destroyed by hatred, yet his mythic themes still appear in superhero films and fantasy stories. Ross offers neither defense nor attack, but seeks an honest understanding of art's power in the world.
Genres: biography, history, art, 20th-century, music, 21st-century, 19th-century, cultural
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: cultural-phenomenon, historical-figures
Setting: America, Europe, Germany, Nazi Germany
Period: 1900s, World War II
976 pages · Paperback · Seix Barral