Alex Ross: Wagner in the Twenty-First Century
What makes Richard Wagner such an anomaly is the reach of his influence, and Wagnerism, Alex Ross’s new 660-page biography of both the man and his legacy, is saturated with obscure anecdotes and analogies, both from Wagner’s lifetime and after his death, illustrating that point. From Alfred Hitchcock to Adolf Hitler, both Wagner the artistic genius and Wagner the vile bigot weaseled into political theory, film, the visual arts, and beyond.
Other distinguished composers, like Mozart or Bach, remain popular figures in classical music. But Wagner’s fame was different. Even during his lifetime, he and his work generated a cult-like following that remains unrivaled. No other composer has had such a profound and controversial impact on the ways we create and perceive art.
Ross, the longtime music critic of The New Yorker, has also written two other books: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century and Listen to This, both of which garnered praise for deftly exploring modern audiences’ relationships to Western music. But Wagnerism is a different feat. Though the book’s focus is narrower than treatment of a single subject to grow into a magnum opus.
