Why read Wagnerism?

Book cover of Wagnerism

Book description

Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics―an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Wagnerism as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David W. Stowe

Author

I knew Wagner was a big deal, but I had no idea how big a deal. What a superstar he was in his day, the range of his influence, how innovative he was. The research for this book was prodigious and somehow it never drags. I don't remember a bad sentence in this whole very long book. There's a reason Alex Ross is music critic for The New Yorker.

From David's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Justin O'Connor

Author

All the myths about Wagner, half remembered, half picked up from pop culture and black and white images of Hitler or women with horned helmets - overturned! Amazing work of historical archeology which uncovers Wagner at the very bedrocks of our modern culture.

From Justin's 3 favorite reads in 2024.