The Sorcerer of Bayreuth by Barry Millington

The Sorcerer of Bayreuth by Barry Millington

The power of Wagner's music to enchant, to cast a spell, to transport the listener to states of hedonistic delight, has often been remarked - sometimes appreciatively and sometimes not. Indeed, no other composer arouses such fiercely divergent responses as Richard Wagner. For Baudelaire, Wagner's music induced a feeling of being engulfed, intoxicated. For Nietzsche, Wagner was like a disease: "Everything he touches falls sick." In The Sorcerer of Bayreuth, Barry Millington, a leading authority on Wagner, presents an engaging, accessibly written overview of the life and works one of the world's most influential and controversial composers. This richly illustrated book considers a wide range of themes, including Wagner's original sources of inspiration; his compositional process; his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; his perplexing ideology; the anti-Semitism that is undeniably present in the operas; their proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. Millington illuminates these issues in a series of chapters, each exploring a theme through text, illustrations, and documents in elegantly designed spreads, thus avoiding the conventional formats of illustrated biography and documentary study. The results are often surprising. Drawing on the very latest biographical and musicological scholarship - much of it undertaken by the author himself - Millington reassesses received notions about both Wagner's life and his music, demolishing tired clichés and ill-informed opinion in favor of proper critical understanding. Marking the bicentenary of the birth of Richard Wagner, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth offers readers a fascinating reappraisal of this most provocative of composers and the incomparable music he made.

The Wagner Journal's editor is Barry Millington. He resides in the United Kingdom.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199933761
ISBN 10	0199933766
Title	The Sorcerer of Bayreuth
Author	Barry Millington
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	OUP India
Year published	2012-10-29
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.