Rating: 
Summary: Intellectually dishonest
Review: Gutman has an axe to grind. He despises Wagner and sets out to discredit the composer whenever possible. While it is true that Wagner had many despicable traits (antisemitism, mendacity, oportunism, megalomania, satyriasis, etc.), Gutman creates a wholly unsympathetic picture of this musical genius. Gutman sees the influence of Wagner's antisemetism everywhere, similar to the way UFO enthusiasts see the influence of space aliens everywhere in our culture. As a result this biography is not fair and balanced. Gutman's goal seems to be to get the reader to despise Wagner as much as he does. Laon, in his review, gives many detailed examples of Gutman's intellectual slipperiness as a biographer. Gutman maintains that Parsifal is Wagner's antisemitic magnum opus and the fact that Wagner's text does not support his argument, Gutman regards as proof of how clever Wagner was in hiding his antisemitism in his artistic works. He hid it so well that only Gutman can see it. Give me a break! How could the fact that there is no evidence be proof of the agrument he is making? Regarding the "ihn" versus "ihm" controversy in Tristan, Laon does a good job in elucidating Gutman's silly inuendoes. There is another possibility, which is that Wagner was trying to emulate an archaic German, so he may have deliberately chosen the "wrong" grammar (by modern standards) to make the sentence sound like an older pre-modern Germanic tongue. Native German speakers sometimes have difficulty understanding Wagner's texts for that reason. I agree with Laon that Gutman's book is decent on the facts of Wagner's life but is biased and misleading on the interpretation of those facts. It's too bad that such a knowledgeable writer as Gutman could let his personal biases mar what could have been a balanced and thoughtful biography of this controversial musical genius. I read this book hoping to understand how Wagner, with all his character flaws, could write such beautiful and psychologically insightful musical dramas. Gutman did not answer my question, except to say that what appear on the surface to be works of genius are really clever attempts by a scoundrel to indoctrinate others into his antisemitism. How is it then that I come away from listening to Wagner with a loathing of antisemitism and a moving experience of comapssion for all members of the human family?
Rating:
Summary: Intellectually dishonest
Review: Gutman has an axe to grind. He despises Wagner and sets out to discredit the composer whenever possible. While it is true that Wagner had many despicable traits (antisemitism, mendacity, oportunism, megalomania, satyriasis, etc.), Gutman creates a wholly unsympathetic picture of this musical genius. Gutman sees the influence of Wagner's antisemetism everywhere, similar to the way UFO enthusiasts see the influence of space aliens everywhere in our culture. As a result this biography is not fair and balanced. Gutman's goal seems to be to get the reader to despise Wagner as much as he does. Laon, in his review, gives many detailed examples of Gutman's intellectual slipperiness as a biographer. Gutman maintains that Parsifal is Wagner's antisemitic magnum opus and the fact that Wagner's text does not support his argument, Gutman regards as proof of how clever Wagner was in hiding his antisemitism in his artistic works. He hid it so well that only Gutman can see it. Give me a break! How could the fact that there is no evidence be proof of the agrument he is making? Regarding the "ihn" versus "ihm" controversy in Tristan, Laon does a good job in elucidating Gutman's silly inuendoes. There is another possibility, which is that Wagner was trying to emulate an archaic German, so he may have deliberately chosen the "wrong" grammar (by modern standards) to make the sentence sound like an older pre-modern Germanic tongue. Native German speakers sometimes have difficulty understanding Wagner's texts for that reason. I agree with Laon that Gutman's book is decent on the facts of Wagner's life but is biased and misleading on the interpretation of those facts. It's too bad that such a knowledgeable writer as Gutman could let his personal biases mar what could have been a balanced and thoughtful biography of this controversial musical genius. I read this book hoping to understand how Wagner, with all his character flaws, could write such beautiful and psychologically insightful musical dramas. Gutman did not answer my question, except to say that what appear on the surface to be works of genius are really clever attempts by a scoundrel to indoctrinate others into his antisemitism. How is it then that I come away from listening to Wagner with a loathing of antisemitism and a moving experience of comapssion for all members of the human family?
Rating:
Summary: an axe to grind?
Review: Gutman undertakes the enormous task of writing a Wagner biography and he uses Wagner's ethnic background, biases, and racial views (such as anti-semitism) as weapons against the composer. What I found interesting and even titillating in this accusation of bias on the part of Wagner is the fact that Gutman, who tells us that he was born in New York City of German-speaking parents, does NOT tell us his own ethnic background. His silence on this issue in the midst of so many trivial aspects of a writer's preparation and credentials is highly suspicious. The reader is thus left to wonder if the book was written by an unbiased mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Biography, Great Composer, Flawed Personality
Review: I first read Robert Gutman's biography of Wagner many years ago and found it a revelation and a fascinating read. I read it again recently and still think it one of the best cultural biographies of a composer I have ever read. Mr. Gutman's biography is very comprehensive and discusses Wagner's anti-Semitism and racist ideas in great detail, mostly in relation to his works (both music and writings). This distasteful aspect of Wagner's personality is unpleasant and reading this material may turn off readers who aren't fans of the "feet of clay" tell-it-all school of biography. However, one also gets much useful information about the composer, his times, and his works. For anyone who enjoys Wagner's music and wants deeper insight into this troubling genius, this is the biography to read.
Rating:
Summary: Admirable study of the man and his music
Review: I have read with immense enjoyment Robert Gutman's admirable biography of Wagner, and although he has his own opinions and a definite point of view (surprise?), they hardly amount to an "axe to grind" -- he adduces powerful evidence to support his position. Many of the previous reviewers have been grossly unfair to Mr. Gutman, and having read their arguments I think they are skating on very thin ice with regard to a charge ("intellectual dishonesty") that could be considered slanderous. Let me just say that Wagner's writings have perplexed and offended many, not just Nietzsche and Gutman, and provide ample support for Gutman's position. For example, in his memoir "Themes and Conclusions", Stravinsky (who could hardly be more different from Wagner) includes a chapter on Wagner's prose. See in particular his discussion of "Jews in Music", where he says:"The unpleasant truth, which Thomas Mann himself could not whitewash, is that Wagner (not Nietzsche, not Hegel) was a prophet of the Third Reich."
It is simply not true that Gutman always seeks to depict Wagner in the worst possible light. In Section 6 of the chapter "Youth and Apprenticeship", the debacle at the premiere of Wagner's early overture is recounted, based roughly on Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben, in a thoroughly sympathetic and charming way. Part of the burden of Gutman's exposition is to chronicle the deterioration in Wagner's character as he aged. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the same is no less true of transcendent talent -- Wagner became a monster of conceit and unbearable to his former friends.
I'm not claiming that Gutman's book is definitive and the final word on its subject, for such a complex phenomenon as Wagner is inexhaustible. But the book, quite apart from its many insights and its sizable contribution to Wagnerian studies, is an absolute pleasure to read. The quality of the writing is extraordinary, and in places (such as in the Preface) can stand side by side with that of his model, Nietzsche.
Rating:
Summary: an axe to grind?
Review: I would like to warn people of this book and all it's lies. As another reviewer showed before me, this man is not sticking to the facts even though he most obviously knows them...he is simply lying. Why? I don't really know. But I do know that this isn't scholarship but a malicious rant and should be avoided at all costs.
Rating: 
Summary: Rubbish!
Review: I would like to warn people of this book and all it's lies. As another reviewer showed before me, this man is not sticking to the facts even though he most obviously knows them...he is simply lying. Why? I don't really know. But I do know that this isn't scholarship but a malicious rant and should be avoided at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Even less reliable than I remembered
Review: I've just re-read this book, after first reviewing it over two years ago. I noted Gutman's unreliability then, but on re-reading I can only report that my opinion of Gutman has fallen further. I originally awarded it two stars; I now think that was generous. This book is more careless of source material than any book has right to be, but it's not ordinary carelessness. All errors and misstatements happen to support Gutman's case for a proto-Nazi Wagner. When a book's errors all support one thesis, that pattern must raise questions not just of competence but also of integrity. For example Gutman claims Wagner was "sympathetic" to proto-Nazi Bernhard Förster's attempted German community in Paraguay. But Cosima's Diaries show that Wagner held Förster in general and the South American project in particular in contempt. Why this "mistake"? Because it suits Gutman's thesis. Or take Wagner's late essays. If you read the essays themselves rather than Gutman's profoundly dishonest exegesis, you find a man wrestling with his own racism. In _Heroism and Christianity_, for example, Wagner does take it as a given that white people are superior to other "races". Wagner, like many other European and American artists, was the product of a racist culture and it is unhistorical to pretend otherwise. But then Wagner writes that although people find the idea of the commingling of all human "races" into "a uniform equality" distressing, this is because of their cultural blinkers. "It is only looking at it through the reek of our own civilisation and culture than makes this picture so repellant," he says. Christianity, Wagner continues, is superior to other religions because it is aimed equally at all "races" while Judaism and Brahminism, for example, include noble ideas but are aimed at only one "race" or caste. Although (he writes) it is "natural" [meaning "likely to occur in nature"] for strong "races" to rule weaker "races", the rule of one "race" by another has led to "exploitation" and an "utterly immoral system". Wagner's answer is equality of all "races" under "a universal moral concord", something Wagner suggests that Christian doctrines could bring about. (Wagner was not a Christian, but in later life admired Christian rituals and doctrines.) The essay is not enlightened by modern standards, but in its historical context it stands as Wagner's rejection of the proto-Nazi ideas of his own day. Gutman's systematic distortions are regrettable not just because they go beyond mere inaccuracy but also because they are much less interesting than the truth. A passage recently cited as an example of Gutman's merits provides another example of Gutman's method: "Monsalvat was Wagner's paranoiac concept of a small self-contained elite group, uniquely possessed of the truth, obsessed with its 'purity,' and struggling with an outside world it held worthless. Redemption was promised the hard-pressed knights, but, obviously, the Wagnerian redeemer was not to be found among Jewish craftsmen or lepers. Not by accident did Guernemanz almost immediately remark upon Parsifal's noble, highborn appearance. He knew what signs to read. Racial heredity and strict breeding, not natural selection, formed the new mechanism of salvation. Wagnerian eugenics had come into being; in his latest writing the composer had embraced the darker implications of Darwinism." Problems? First, Gutman misses the way _Parsifal_ shows Montsalvat critically and ironically (our first glimpse is of its watchmen sleeping on the job), as a damaged community that fails to live up to its ideals. An example is the knights' and squires' rejection of Kundry as Outsider, a moral fault for which the saintly Gürnemantz, clearly Wagner's mouthpiece, reproves them. Second, the reference to "Jewish craftsmen and lepers" is Gutman's invention. Neither are mentioned, let alone disparaged, in _Parsifal_. Third, Gutman must know that the remark on the hero's "noble appearance" is standard in Wagner's source material, and referred not so much to race as to "gentle upbringing", meaning having "courtly" deportment as opposed to the gestures and manners of a peasant. Example? In Wagner main source, von Eschenbach's _Parzifal_, similar observations are made about Parzifal's half-brother Fierafiz, whose mother was black. Fourth, the Montsalvat community is not "self-contained". Wagner's text mentions that Gawain is a member of the Montsalvat community, though that character is also a member of Arthur's court. And Gawain, like the other Montsalvat knights, spends as much or more time out in the world than at Montsalvat. Fifth, Montsalvat's alleged "racial hereditary and strict breeding" is more Gutmanian invention. Not only does _Parsifal_ not contain any such idea, or anything remotely like it, but Wagner's text rules out the possibility. Gürnemantz tells us that Montsalvat was founded by Titurel, who has had one adult child and is still alive when the opera begins. Gürnemantz was also a founding Montsalvat member. "Breeding program"? When? Instead the Montsalvat community must have grown through that bugbear even of modern racists: immigration. Some of Montsalvat's knights and squires may be children of original members, but that's hardly a breeding program. (By the way, Wagner's Montsalvat is in Spain. Not Germany.) Can a passage so densely inaccurate be the product of mere carelessness? I think not. Actually Gutman misses an intriguing possibility about Parsifal's ancestry. Parsifal comes from "Arabia". His father Gamuret was probably Welsh or Cornish, but we are told that Herzeleide was pregnant with Parsifal when Gamuret was in "Arabia". Since knights didn't take wives with them on crusade, the implication is that Gamuret met Herzeleide in "Arabia". (Wagner's text concerning Herzeleide differs significantly from his sources.) It's amusing in this context to consider that Wagner's Parsifal may have been what the media is currently calling "of Mid-Eastern appearance", and quite ineligible for the Hitler Youth. Still, the Nazi thing is Gutman's obsession, not Wagner's. Oh, and far from loving _Parsifal_, as Gutman would have you believe, the truth is that the Nazis banned it. In short, Gutman's "first casualty" wasn't Wagner, but truth. An irresponsibly unreliable book. Cheers! Laon
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Occasionally in life one encounters a biography so insightful, so rich in detail and so beautifully written that it nearly transcends its subject and stands as a work of art unto itself. It is in this category that Gutman's masterpiece belongs. There is so much to learn from this historiographical account of the great composer's life that one scarecely knows where to begin praising it. Best of all, in the Ernest Newman tradition, Gutman shows us the real Wagner, warts and all, and traces the all-too-tangible line leading from the composer's pen to the Nazi nightmare. At times shocking, Gutman's work "opens the kimono" on the breeding ground of hatred and racism that Bayreuth became, and the composer's steadily increasing obsession with the Jews. He offers incontrovertible proof, now widely accepted and expounded on in the indispensable works of Rose and Weiner and Zelinsky, of how Wagner incorporated these racist ideal into his operas. At the same time, Gutman recognizes the incredible genius of his subject, and praises the works mightily. His account is always balanced, fair and backed by evidence. It is no wonder the Wagner apologists have criticized this book heavily, while the leading musical journals and book reviewers have blessed it with near-unanimous acclaim: Many simply cannot bear the fact that their favorite composer directly influenced Hitler and had a streak of true evil in him. Gutman bravely shatters myths and shows us Wagner for what he truly was: a composer of incomparable gifts and a human being of precious few qualities. If you haven't read this book yet, I strongly recommend you explore it now.
Rating:
Summary: Okay on the "life"; unreliable on the "mind and music"
Review: This is an adequate Wagner biography. Though Ronald Taylor's "Wagner", and Barry Millington's Wagner biography (sold on this site) are both better. Where Gutman's book falls down is in his tenditious interpretations of "the mind and music". Here are two examples. 1 There is a misprint in Act 1 of "Tristan und Isolde": Isolde says that she spared Tristan's life (after she recognised the mortally wounded Tristan as the man who killed her husband) only so that the man who next won her (Isolde) could kill Tristan. The correct sense is obvious from the context. However, a misprint in the text has "ihn", not "ihm". With "ihn", Isolde seems to say that she spared Tristan's life so that the man who won _him_, not her, could kill him. There are three possible interpretations, here: (a) There is a misprint, not too surprising in a long sentence with complicated syntax. Gutman even acknowledges that Wagner seldom bothered to correct misprints once they'd got into print; (b) Isolde means to insult Tristan, calling him a woman, or homosexual, who could be "won" by another man; or (c) There is an entire subplot, involving a homosexual triangle between Tristan, his uncle King Mark, and his treacherous "friend" Melot, established before Isolde arrived, and which is not referred to in Wagner's text or music anywhere except for this one "n" instead of an "m": "ihn" instead of "ihm". Of these three options, (a) is overwhelmingly most likely, followed very distantly by (b), while (c) is beyond far-fetched, and merely silly. Gutman chooses (c), an example of the kind of decision, when evaluating evidence, that recurs throughout his book. Another example involves the HG Wells Literary Time Machine. Gutman wants to read "Parsifal" as a racist, antisemitic parable. To do this he has to ignore Wagner's text and substitute a plot of his own. In Wagner's "Parsifal", Amfortas is wounded by the Spear that pierced Christ in the side, when he (Christ) was on the cross. This contact with Jesus' divine blood, through the agency of the Spear, causes Amfortas permanent agony; as a mere sinner he cannot cope with this contact with the Divine. In Gutman's "Parsifal" Amfortas is actually injured by sexual contact with a woman called Kundry, and his wound won't close because of the mix of Amfortas' superior and Kundry's inferior blood. Problems with this include: (1) the wound was dealt by a Spear, not by sexual contact - because of an interruption there was no sexual contact anyway; (2) Amfortas specifically says his problem is his inability to cope with the contact, through the wound, with the Divine; (3) At the climax of the opera, Amfortas' wound is healed "by the Spear that caused it"; (4) Kundry is a sinner, like Amfortas, but there's no suggestion that she has "inferior blood", or (which is what Gutman is really getting at) that she is supposed to be a Jewish character. In Act II, Klingsor points out that in one of Kundry's past lives she was Gunndryggia, a Valkyrie (just like Bru:nnhilde!) If Gutman is suggesting that Kundry and her sisters, the Valkyries, are supposed to be Jewish characters, and antisemitic caricatures at that, that could perhaps lead to an interesting re-reading of the "Ring". But Wagner's text makes it clear that Kundry has been many people in many lives, and does not represent any particular racial identity. And she's always been the most faithful, enduring and bravest of the Grail's servants, except when under Klingsor's enchantment; though a sinner, she is nowhere presented as "inferior". The concept of "inferior and superior blood" absolutely does not occur in "Parsifal". It is not there in the text, implied in the plot, or in the music. Gutman, however, wants to present "Parsifal" as a proto-Nazi work, and even describes the Grail knights as a "homosexual SS order". We'll leave aside Gutman's use of slightly far-fetched "discoveries" of homosexual content as a stick with which to beat Wagner; homophobia was more acceptable in 1968, when Gutman's book was written, than it is now. What's more interesting is Gutman's Time Machine. To back his case for his reading of "Parsifal", Gutman would like to have Wagner influenced by the racist philosopher Gobineau. If Gobineau had influenced "Parsifal", that would indeed be in a racist direction. Unfortunately, Wagner wrote his first draft of "Parsifal" in 1857, including much of the most important dialogue; and finished the complete draft of the drama in 1877. We know from Cosima's Diaries that Wagner first read Gobineau in 1881, four years after he finished the text of "Parsifal". Gutman's reading of Gobineau into "Parsifal" involves time travel. It's an odd mistake, given how often Gutman cites Cosima's Diaries. How could he not know this? Anyway, Gutman tends to use any old device, any old how, to try to "prove" some of his points. And that's not a respectable procedure, and makes the book unreliable in many respects. Laon
|
