Richard Wagner's Beethoven (1870): A new translation
Despite the enormous and accelerating worldwide interest in Wagner, his prose writings have received scant scholarly attention. Wagner's book length essay on Beethoven, written to celebrate the centenary of Beethoven's birth in 1870, is really about Wagner himself rather than Beethoven. It...
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Boydell & Brewer
2014
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| Summary: | Despite the enormous and accelerating worldwide interest in Wagner, his prose writings have received scant scholarly attention. Wagner's book length essay on Beethoven, written to celebrate the centenary of Beethoven's birth in 1870, is really about Wagner himself rather than Beethoven. It is generally regarded as the principal aesthetic statement of the composer's later years, representing a reassessment of the ideas of the earlier Zurich writings, especially Opera and Drama (1851) in the light of experience gained through the composition of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger and the greater part of the Ring Cycle. It is an essential text for the understanding not only of Wagnerian thought but also late nineteenth-century musical aesthetics in general. Until now the English reader with no access to the German original has been obliged to work from two Victorian translations. This brand new edition has been prepared from autograph sources (draft and fair copy) and restores the original spellings and paragraphing. It gives the German original and the newly-translated English text on facing pages. It comes along with a substantial introduction placing the essay not only with the wider historical and intellectual context of Wagner's later thought but also of the political context of the establishment of the German Empire in the 1870s. It is extensively annotated throughout and a full bibliography is appended. |
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