Volume 28, Number 6 · April 16, 1981
What 'R.' Wrought
By Robert Craft
The Diary of Richard Wagner The Brown Book: 1865-1882
presented and annotated by Joachim Bergfeld, translated by George Bird
Cambridge University Press, 218 pp., $15.95
Cosima Wagner's Diaries Vol. II: 1878-1883 additional notes by
edited and annotated by Martin Gregor-Dellin, by Dietrich Mack, translated, with an introduction, postscript, and Geoffrey Skelton
A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1,200 pp., $35.00
Cosima Wagner
by George R. Marek
Harper and Row, 291 pp., $16.95
In Search of Wagner
by Theodore Adorno, translated by Rodney Livingstone
NLB (distributed by Schocken Books), 160 pp., $14.50
The Dream of Self-Destruction: Wagner's "Ring" and the Modern World
by L.J. Rather
Louisiana State University Press, 256 pp., $17.50
Bayreuth: The Early Years
compiled, edited, and introduced by Robert Hartford
Cambridge University Press, 284 pp., $19.95
The phenomenon of Richard Wagner has been recounted, analyzed, and discussed in such abundance that it would seem as if the end must be somewhere in sight. Instead, the publication of Cosima Wagner's Diaries during the centenary (1976) of the first performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen has provoked an entirely new interest in the man, though perhaps more from historians than from musicians. Books such as Dr. L.J. Rather's The Dream of Self-Destruction: Wagner's 'Ring' and the Modern World radically readjust the emphasis, to the extent of describing many of Wagner's prose writings as 'works of art' and referring to his 'greatness as a theoretician in the realm of the sociology of knowledge.' Cosima's Diaries, however, and in lesser, because shorter, measure, The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book, have claimed the attention of the world and therefore demand prior examination.
Review, 4123 words
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