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Summary: Once you get past the Schopenauer and Nietzche love fest...
Review: ... this is really quite a terrific read. I picked this up based on Magee's reputation in the world of Philosophy, and figured I'd learn a lot, first about Wagner, and then about opera. Magee's work satisfies enormously on all these accounts. Magee clearly loves what he is undertaking and the joy and enthusiasm carry the narrative long with a passionate flow. What was at work in the writings, and to some extent in the life, of Wagner is presented witha clarity and precision that illuminates just how revolutionary and uncompromising a genius Wagner was. The book builds, rightfully, to PARSIFAL, and the radical departure that opera was on a philosophical as well as operatic level. PARSIFAL is the music that endeared me to Knappertsbusch, it is the music that infused Inspector Morse, it is where man's spirituality is relieved of the weight of so much hierarchical baggage and set free, as near an ecstatic experience as is possible to achieve in music, and Magee gets it right in every detail.
Of course, along the way, you have to endure the love fest with Schopenauer and Nietzche, against whom, for Magee, all other writers in Philosophy, and especially Hegel, are anathema. Typically British in that respect, Magee none the less delivers brief and informative scribs on the philosophical directions of these 2 writers, and how they intersect with Wagner.
Magee saves the most controversial element for the last, that being Wagner's anti-semitism. In what is certainly a valid inquiry, Magee asks what role should any author's prejudices play in evaluating the art if there is no evidence of it in his art. Magee is no apologist for Wagner's roaring and overbearing personality, regardless against whom it is directed, and certainly points out that Wagner was an unabashed anti-semite. Yet he still relegates the discussion itself to an "Appendix." Not entirely cricket. The point that Wagner's operas feature no invectives, no insulting characters, nothing patently directed at anyone other than the powerful, the bourgeoisie, the hierarchies in religion and society, still does not satisfactorily resolve the bad taste in the mouth that the Wagner legacy has left. If you happened to be in that class that he inveighed against in the operas, then you got what was coming to you from Wagner's standpoint. His personal distastes he managed to keep out of his art. So, is it all guilt by association? Largely, to Magee. Odd, though, when you consider the castigation Heidegger went through, having uttered 2 extraordnarily stupid oratories, yet resigning his post when it dawned on him what was going on. Perhaps it is the fact that Wagner's progeny couldn't restrain themselves from blowing kisses to Adolf that will forever rub people the wrong way. The music, especially by the time it got to PARSIFAL, stands on its own. We will have to deal with that on its own terms. Magee's book is an exacting look at those terms and worth the read by anyone with a love for great music.
Rating: 
Summary: Wagner, from leftist revolutionary to world-rejecting mystic
Review: Before picking up this book, I had Wagner pegged as a proto-Nazi. This was not based on any investigation, I just absorbed it somehow, and took it for granted. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that Wagner was a hotheaded anarchist revolutionary as a young man, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Bakunin as a leader of the 1848 uprising in Dresden! This part of Magee's book is just the prelude to his real topic, Wagner's later turn to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, but I enjoyed it tremendously. Like many before and since, Wagner became disillusioned as he reached middle age. Whereas he had developed an elaborate philosophical and aesthetic theory about revolutionizing human relations, based on Fuerbach among others, he read Schopenhauer and had an epiphany. One of the most fascinating aspects of this is that he was only partially through composing "The Ring" -- the libretto was complete, but not the music. He stopped in the middle of "Siegfried," wrote "Tristan und Isolde" in a Schopenhauerian frenzy, went on to write "The Mastersingers," and only then returned to finish the music for "Siegfried" and then "Gotterdammerung." So the story of the "The Ring" reflects an anarchist revolutionary vision, far from any proto-Nazi sentiments! "Parsifal," often taken for a Christian work, is not Christian per se, but rather Schopenhauerian -- Wagner used Christian mythic imagery just as he used "pagan" mythic imagery in The Ring. If you have only the received view of Wagner, prepare for a journey of discovery. Magee's writing is smooth and easy, and the nearly 400 pages read as if only half that. My only minor complaint is that Magee proclaims at regular intervals that Wagner is one of history's greatest geniuses, alongside Shakespeare and Mozart. I have only heard a small sample of Wagner's music, and I am as of yet far from convinced of that, but for the first time I'm ready to give Wagner a fair hearing!
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable in Every Way; Brushes Away Many Cobwebs
Review: Contrary to most Wagner "scholars," Bryan Magee possesses keen insight into the various branches of knowledge which are a sine qua non for coming to terms with the composer's gargantuan achievements: philosophy, music, literature, and political history. Magee has taught philosophy at the university level, served as a member of the British Parliament, and been employed as a critic of both opera and the theater. His credentials are impeccable; his intellect is capacious; and his gift for clarity and lucidity tend to make him something of an anomaly amongst other Wagner commentators. In fact, just when you thought there was little or nothing left to say about Wagner's legacy, along comes Magee with his brilliant book that not only provides remarkable insight into the subject at hand, but which also seriously brings into question other generally accepted "truths" about the composer's legacy. In short, uputdownable -- an indispensable work.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable in Every Way; Brushes Away Many Cobwebs
Review: Contrary to most Wagner "scholars," Bryan Magee possesses keen insight into the various branches of knowledge which are a sine qua non for coming to terms with the composer's gargantuan achievements: philosophy, music, literature, and political history. Magee has taught philosophy at the university level, served as a member of the British Parliament, and been employed as a critic of both opera and the theater. His credentials are impeccable; his intellect is capacious; and his gift for clarity and lucidity tend to make him something of an anomaly amongst other Wagner commentators. In fact, just when you thought there was little or nothing left to say about Wagner's legacy, along comes Magee with his brilliant book that not only provides remarkable insight into the subject at hand, but which also seriously brings into question other generally accepted "truths" about the composer's legacy. In short, uputdownable -- an indispensable work.
Rating:
Summary: Masterthinker?
Review: Excellent summaries of the principal ideas that influenced Wagner - particularly those of Schopenhauer - well integrated into an engaging biographical narrative. The author's enthusiasm for his subject is contagious, reconciling a passion for the music with an objective historical archaeology that never seeks to excuse or justify his shortcomings. Magee has a rare ability to listen to the past before passing judgment. Consequently, Wagner emerges neither as a god nor a demon, but as he is: a brilliant and complex man.
Rating:
Summary: Fun to read, even
Review: Fantastic book on Wagner and philosophy. With Newman's "Wagner Operas," this should just about do it.
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Summary: Aesthetic states...
Review: I read this at the same time as J. Kholer's Wagner's Hitler (q.v.) and the result was partial dialectical collision. It is difficult to know how to take Wagner in the midst of so much revisionist detective work. But Magee's book is, in the realm of pure Wagner limbo, a splendidly done piece which shows Wagner to be one of the most complex and significant figures of the nineteenth century. This is not the same as the usual oulala about genius since Wagner and Nietzsche both did a lot of bungled work, among them fixing culturally inadequate views of tragedy. They both failed their own tests, and if you can't figure out the essence of Greek tragedy you can end up in the middle of one yourself. Worth keeping in mind in the tiresome eulogies of these two failures of genius. What a waste.
As a musical peon in the Verdi bleachers with the old rotten cabbage in reserve I can do without hagiographies of this period, but find the subject interesting in a different way. With the Marx brothers A Night At The Opera under one's belt maybe the right methodology to deal with all this is at hand: this complete shambles is important!
Thus it is worth looking at a book such as Josef Chytry's The Aesthetic State for a history of the context of attempts to produce a tragic theatre, and/or the Gesantkuntswerk that Wagner so heroically pursued. But in the context of the overall history which starts with the ancient Greeks the question (which haunted Hegel) is why modern society simply can't match that great other chord of the 'aesthetic state' proceeding from Homer to Euripides. Here Wagner, good or bad, fails his own test, but is the most remarkable self-appointed guinea pig putting the whole issue to a test. It is hard to believe a man of such talents and heroic endeavors could be so unlucky as to fall into the whole occult shebant leading into the emergence of the lunatic far right. Watching him fail is significant in itself, especially next to the stupefying things he manage to accomplish in the process.
But in the final analysis, Wagner was coopted by the society he was and we see a great success in the middle of a great fiasco.
Anyway, Magee's book is a really good snapshot of Wagner. It is good to see the bright side first in trying to get the riddle of Wagner straight.
Rating:
Summary: Twilight of the idol
Review: I went into this book knowing the Wagner, Schopenhauer/Buddhist and Nietzche connection. This book was a major explicator of all these themes. The book's greatest highlight for me was a precis on Kant's philosophy and how it linked with Schopenhauer's eventual world view. The concepts of phenomena and noumena are well explained, and there is a brilliant vision of the occidental philosophical grasp of reality in the romantic era. Certainly, these German philosphers were brilliant and sufficiently detached to transcend their cultural outlook and fly over it. To me the book did not wade deeply enough into Nietzche and Schopenhauer but this was obviously not the author's objective and his treatments though non voluminous are comprehensive. On the other hand the book is also a eulogy of Wagner and was certainly a bit subjective as the author pours over some of the operas and gives a great deal of over zealous details, which a reader unfamiliar with the stuff may want to pass over in preference to actually getting the CD (telling us what to buy would have spared most of the description). The author uses the book as a stage from which to demolish Wagner's neo-Nazi credentials and he gives the low down as to why Nietzche abandoned Wagner, using the composer to enhance Nietzche's reputation at the same time as ridiculing the composer later on. Whether Wagner was really that philosophical compared to any other great composer (the philosophical interests of which are less known) as the author contends is debatable. That the composer drew on the finest German philosophy and myth available to him is not in doubt. My own impression is that Wagner was a sort of Walt Disney (leaving aside the former's compositional genius which Walt probably needed more of) who cherry picked using his tremendous intelligence all the finest resonances of German culture, poetry and the new religions emerging and transformed them to music that all people would be moved by. Wagner appears to have been deeply religious though how sincere this was is another matter. He did worship Schopenhauer and appears to have been eternally grateful to his Eastern world renouncing ideas. Wagner succeeded better than any other composer in fulfilling his wildest dreams amd ambitions and being able to awe the public in his very lifetime. The secret of some of this success is revealed in this great book.
Rating:
Summary: A great book by an intelligent author
Review: It's an almost incredible book. It touches every aspect that contributes to really understand a great artist, probably the greatest in history of Art, with no distinction. And it's done with extreme clarity and attractivity. When my son saw that I had no more in my hands the great red book ask me why hadn't I continued. I answered him, "because I already read it and will do it again; it's uneasy to abandon it". After reading the book one becomes more serious over a matter that being extremely serious is dealed by many people unseriously, wrongly and stupidly. This book teaches, between many perspectives, that artists are suposed to be managed by their art, not by their personalities. The example of what have said Solti, a clear jew, is illuminating.
Rating:
Summary: A work of genius
Review: Magee's book on Wagner is brilliant. He puts Wagner's ideas in perspective in the tradition of German philosophy and intellectual history (Feuerback, Schopenhauer, Hegel, etc.). The writing is lucid and enjoyable. Having read this book, I have a much deeper appreciation of Wagner, the man and his music. It is hard to recommend Magee's text highly enough. This book is illuminating, exciting, fun, and absorbing -- I found it hard to put down. No Wagner lover should be without it.
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