Being Wagner : a larger-than-life biography of a short man /
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Vintage Books, 2018Description: pages cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780525436188
- 0525436189
- 782.1092 B 23
- ML410.W1 C3 2018
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Biography | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | B WAGNER CALLOW (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610021117549 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles , delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans.
Richard Wagner's music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an unmatched body of work. A man who spent most of his life in abject poverty, inspiring both critical derision and hysterical hero-worship, Wagner was a walking contradiction: belligerent, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, demanding, visionary, and poisonously anti-Semitic. Acclaimed biographer Simon Callow evokes the intellectual and artistic climate in which Wagner lived and takes us through his most iconic works, from his pivotal successes in The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin , to the musical paradigm shift contained in Tristan and Isolde , to the apogee of his achievements in The Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal , which debuted at Bayreuth shortly before his death. Being Wagner brings to life this towering figure, creator of the most sublime and most controversial body of work ever known.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Foreword (p. ix)
- Vorspiel (p. xix)
- 1 Young Richard (p. 1)
- 2 Out in the World (p. 19)
- 3 Doldrums (p. 39)
- 4 Triumph (p. 53)
- 5 The World in Flames (p. 73)
- 6 Pause for Thought (p. 83)
- 7 It Begins (p. 99)
- 8 Suspension (p. 115)
- 9 Limbo (p. 127)
- 10 Enter a Swan (p. 139)
- 11 Towards the Green Hill (p. 159)
- 12 The Long Day's Task is Done (p. 181)
- Coda (p. 195)
- Chronology (p. 201)
- Wagner's Works (p. 207)
- Bibliography (p. 215)
- List of Illustrations (p. 219)
- Acknowledgements (p. 221)
- Index (p. 223)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Richard Wagner (1813-83) is often considered one of the five greatest composers who changed music forever. Actor, director, and biographer (Orson Welles) Callow focuses here on the composer's life, not his music. He charts Wagner's struggles for recognition to final triumph, detailing the poverty that dogged him for years, until young Ludwig II of Bavaria took the composer under his wing. Also covered are Wagner's amorous escapades culminating in his second marriage, to Cosima, daughter of composer Franz Liszt. -Callow traces Wagner's close then acrimonious relations with such contemporaries as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and French composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. He also delves into Wagner's blatant anti-Semitism. Calling Wagner a "turbulent, troubled . loathing mess of instincts and impulses," he concludes that his subject would have been "locked up" if he were "anything other than a musical genius." Callow's easily readable prose succeeds in bringing his subject to life. An extensive chronology and list of works is also included. An interesting novelization of Hitler's relation to Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred is A.N. Wilson's Winnie and Wolf; a definitive study of Wagner's monumental Ring Cycle is Roger Scruton's The Ring of Truth. VERDICT This engaging book is highly recommended to anyone with at least a passing interest in Wagner, his times, and his music.-Edward B. Cone, New York © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Booklist Review
Born of research conducted for Inside Wagner's Head, a one-man show Callow wrote and performed in London in 2013, Being Wagner is an accessible, if modest, biography of the composer/provocateur, focusing understandably, given Callow's theatrical background on the drama swirling around Wagner's explosive private and public lives, the newly minted German Confederation, and the epoch-making music dramas the composer preposterously succeeded in staging throughout his long career. It would be entirely inappropriate for me to attempt musical analysis, Callow admits at the outset, but that's still a loss for any reader seeking the theoretical underpinnings of Wagner's mesmerizing scores. Still, the narrative moves along briskly enough, and all the landmarks, including Wagner's infamous anti-Semitism, which would find purchase in Hitler's Third Reich, are covered.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2018 BooklistKirkus Book Review
A brief life of the composer who "got under people's skin."Actor, writer, and musician Callow (Orson Welles: One-Man Band, 2016, etc.) takes a break from his ongoing, multivolume biography of Welles to pen this compact and witty biography of the idiosyncratic German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Its genesis began in 2012 when Callow performed his one-man show, Inside Wagner's Head, for the composer's bicentenary. He now "aims to give a sense of what it was like to be near that demanding, tempestuous, haughty, playful, prodigiously productive figure." The "lazy and willful" young Wagner was a "bit of a problem child" and a terrible student. A talented musician, at 17 he took on the "monumental task of making a piano transcription of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony." He would conduct the piece some 17 years later. At 28, he had written four operas, but he had no prospects nor money. He finally got some of his work produced, and he was appointed Royal Conductor in Dresden. Wagner felt The Flying Dutchman ("nobody understood it") was his first piece of "real music" that he had written from his "unconscious mind." Tannhuser and Lohengrin "were the end of a road," and he set out to write the artwork "of the future." In 1850 he wrote a pamphlet, Judaism in Music. Callow argues that it shows him moving from his "casual anti-Semitism typical of the time into a fixed intellectual positionGermanness," which made him Hitler's favorite composer. He became more involved in a revolutionary politics and read Schopenhauer as he began work on Tristan and Isolde and The Ring of the Nibelung, which was performed in 1876, along with Parsifal in 1882, in the theater Wagner had built in Bayreuth, Germany."Dangerous and dynamic," Callow's Wagner is a "musical genius," but he "cannot bring comfort. Which is why people fight over him." An infectiously readable biography. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Simon Callow, acclaimed biographer and celebrated author of Orson Welles, evokes the intellectual and artistic climate in which Wagner lived and takes us through his most iconic works, from his pivotal successes in The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, to the musical paradigm shift contained in Tristan and Isolde, to the apogee of his achievements in The Ring and Parsifal, which debuted at Bayreuth shortly before his death. Being Wagner brings to life this towering figure, creator of the most sublime and most controversial body of work ever known. Callow delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy-a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans.There are no comments on this title.