Philosopher Marcel Hébert developed his Religious Experience in the Work of Richard Wagner (1895) from this background of sustained popular interest in Wagner, an interest that had intensified with the return of his operas to the Paris stage. Newspaper debates about the impact of Wagner's ideas on French society often stressed the links between Wagner and religion. These debates inspired works like Hébert's, intended to explain the complex myth and allegory in Wagner's work and to elucidate it for a new generation of French spectators.
This is a compelling and inspiring look at spiritual beliefs that influenced some of the world's greatest composers, now revised and expanded with eight additional composers.
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. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil. In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.
Wagner's Ring addresses fundamental concerns that have faced humanity down the centuries, such as power and violence, love and death, freedom and fate. Further, the work seems particularly relevant today, addressing as it does the fresh debates around the created order, politics, gender, and sexuality. In this second of two volumes on the theology of the Ring, Richard Bell argues that Wagner's approach to these issues may open up new ways forward and offer a fresh perspective on some of the traditional questions of theology, such as sacrifice, redemption, and fundamental questions about God. A linchpin for Bell's approach is viewing the Ring in the light of the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, which, he argues, confirms that the artwork does indeed address questions of Christian theology, both for those inside and those outside the church.
Wagner’s Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner’s creation was such that even he felt he stood before his work ‘as though before some puzzle’. A clue to the Ring’s greatness lies in its multiple avenues of self-disclosure and the corresponding plethora of interpretations that over the years has granted ample scope for directors, and will no doubt do so well into the distant future. One possible interpretation, which Richard Bell argues should be taken seriously, is the Ring as Christian theology. In this first of two volumes, Bell considers, among other things, how the composer’s Christian interests may be detected in the ‘forging’ of his Ring, in his appropriation of sources (whether they be myths and sagas, writers, poets, or philosophers), and in works composed around the same time, especially his Jesus of Nazareth.
Covering religious traditions ranging from Buddhism to Christianity to Zoroastrianism and modern apocalyptic movements such as Arun Shinrikyo and the Branch Davidians, this book addresses prophesied end of days from a breadth of perspectives and includes material on often-neglected themes and genres. End of Days: An Encyclopedia of the Apocalypse in World Religions describes apocalyptic writings in the world's major religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The cross-referenced entries address ancient traditions—Zoroastrianism, as one example—as well as modern apocalyptic movements, such as Arun Shinrikyo, the Branch Davidians, and the Order of the Solar Temple. This book's broad scope offers coverage of overlooked traditions, such as Mayan Apocalyptic, Norse Apocalyptic, Native American eschatological literatures, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Readers seeking detailed information on the eschatological and apocalyptic movements and proponents of End Times can reference entries about individuals such as Harold Camping, Jerry Falwell, David Koresh of the Brand Davidians, and James Jones and the People's Temple. This single-volume encyclopedia also contains numerous historical entries on subjects such as the Great Disappointment, the Great Awakening periods of religious revival, Joachim of Flora, the Maccabean Revolt, and the Plymouth Brethren. The influence of apocalyptic ideas far outside the realm of religion itself is documented through entries on film, including well-known modern movies such as The Hunger Games and Apocalypse Now, literature by writers such as Dante, and works of fine art like Wagner's Götterdämmerung. The inclusion of entries related to literature, film, and other art forms further attests to the wide-ranging social influence of belief in the end of days.
All modern artists have had to market themselves in some way. Richard Wagner may just have done it better than anyone else. In a self-promotional effort that began around 1840 in Paris, and lasted for the remainder of his career, Wagner claimed convincingly that he was the most German composer ever and the true successor of Beethoven. More significantly, he was an opera composer who declared that he was not composing operas. Instead, during the 1850s, he mapped out a new direction, conceiving of works that would break with tradition and be literally 'brand new'. This is the first study to examine the innovative ways in which Wagner made himself a celebrity, promoting himself using every means available: autobiography, journal articles, short stories, newspaper announcements, letters, even his operas themselves. Vazsonyi reveals how Wagner created a niche for his works in the crowded opera market that continues to be unique.
"One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion." With these words Richard Wagner began "Religion and Art" (1880), one of his most passionate essays. That passion made Wagner himself a central icon in the growing cult of art. Wagner felt that he lived in an age of spiritual crisis. "It can but rouse our apprehension, to see the progress of the art-of-war departing from the springs of moral force, and turning more and more to the mechanical," he wrote. In response to the frightening progress of dynamite and steel, Wagner adopted the role of the Tone Poet Seer, who reveals the inexpressible in concert halls and cleanses souls in waves of symhonic revelation. "Religion and Art" is the pivot of the works collected here. Also included are his defining essays "Public and Popularity" and "The Public in Time and Space"; his papers relating to the creation of the Bayreuth School; his complaint against publishers, "On Poetry and Composition" (1879); his article on the first production of Parsifal (1882); and other works that speak his mind about strengthening the spirit through music. These works participated in the duel between Wagner and Nietzsche that ensued after the breakup of their friendship in 1878. Nietzsche publicly called Wagner an incurable romantic, emphasizing how sick he thought both Wagner and his art were. Here Wagner counterattacks with arch innuendo and sarcasm. This edition includes the complete volume 6 of the 1897 translation of Wagner's works commissioned by the London Wagner Society. William Ashton Ellis is one of the most important translators of nineteenth-century musicology. In addition to his monumental translation of Wagner's prose works, he translated Wagner's correspondence with Franz Lizst, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Wagner's own family. Ellis died in 1919.
Concerned that American Catholic theology has struggled to find its own voice for much of its history, William Portier has spent virtually his entire scholarly career recovering a usable past for Catholics on the U.S. landscape. This work of ressourcement has stood at the intersection of several disciplines and has unlocked the beauty of American Catholic life and thought. These essays, which are offered in honor of Portier's life and work, emerge from his vision for American Catholicism, where Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are distinct, but interwoven and inextricably linked with one another. As this volume details, such a path is not merely about scholarly endeavors but involves the pursuit of holiness in the "real" world.
The study of the business of opera has taken on new importance in the present harsh economic climate for the arts. This book presents research that sheds new light on a range of aspects concerning marketing, audience development, promotion, arts administration and economic issues that beset professionals working in the opera world. The editors' aim has been to assemble a coherent collection of essays that engage with a single theme (business), but differ in topic and critical perspective. The collection is distinguished by its concern with the business of opera here and now in a globalized market. This includes newly commissioned operas, sponsorship, state funding, and production and marketing of historic operas in the twenty-first century.
