Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Ranging far beyond the bounds of conventional biography and music history, this book examines the cultural background of Wagner’s art, including the nether regions of nationalism and racism. New Introduction by the Author. Index; photographs.

About the Author

Robert W. Gutman is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Richard Wagner. Gutman was one of the founders and directors of the Master Classes at Bayreuth Festival, where he lectured on Wagner. He was a member of the faculty of the State University of New York, and has taught at The City College of New York, The New School for Social Research, Bard College, and Duchesne College.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, 22 May 1813, Leipzig, Germany – 13 February 1883, Venice, Italy) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner wrote both the scenario and libretto for his works.

Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with particular characters, locales or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music.

He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). To try to stage these works as he imagined them, Wagner built his own opera house.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (June 25, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156776154
• ISBN-13: 978-0156776158
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #853,550 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay on the "life"; unreliable on the "mind and music", July 21, 1999

By	Laon (moon-lit Surry Hills) - See all my reviews

This is an adequate Wagner biography. Though Ronald Taylor's "Wagner", and Barry Millington's Wagner biography (sold on this site) are both better.

Where Gutman's book falls down is in his tenditious interpretations of "the mind and music".

Here are two examples.

1 There is a misprint in Act 1 of "Tristan und Isolde": Isolde says that she spared Tristan's life (after she recognised the mortally wounded Tristan as the man who killed her husband) only so that the man who next won her (Isolde) could kill Tristan. The correct sense is obvious from the context. However, a misprint in the text has "ihn", not "ihm". With "ihn", Isolde seems to say that she spared Tristan's life so that the man who won _him_, not her, could kill him.

There are three possible interpretations, here: (a) There is a misprint, not too surprising in a long sentence with complicated syntax. Gutman even acknowledges that Wagner seldom bothered to correct misprints once they'd got into print;

(b) Isolde means to insult Tristan, calling him a woman, or homosexual, who could be "won" by another man; or

(c) There is an entire subplot, involving a homosexual triangle between Tristan, his uncle King Mark, and his treacherous "friend" Melot, established before Isolde arrived, and which is not referred to in Wagner's text or music anywhere except for this one "n" instead of an "m": "ihn" instead of "ihm".

Of these three options, (a) is overwhelmingly most likely, followed very distantly by (b), while (c) is beyond far-fetched, and merely silly. Gutman chooses (c), an example of the kind of decision, when evaluating evidence, that recurs throughout his book.

Another example involves the HG Wells Literary Time Machine. Gutman wants to read "Parsifal" as a racist, antisemitic parable. To do this he has to ignore Wagner's text and substitute a plot of his own. In Wagner's "Parsifal", Amfortas is wounded by the Spear that pierced Christ in the side, when he (Christ) was on the cross. This contact with Jesus' divine blood, through the agency of the Spear, causes Amfortas permanent agony; as a mere sinner he cannot cope with this contact with the Divine.

In Gutman's "Parsifal" Amfortas is actually injured by sexual contact with a woman called Kundry, and his wound won't close because of the mix of Amfortas' superior and Kundry's inferior blood. Problems with this include:

(1) the wound was dealt by a Spear, not by sexual contact - because of an interruption there was no sexual contact anyway;

(2) Amfortas specifically says his problem is his inability to cope with the contact, through the wound, with the Divine;

(3) At the climax of the opera, Amfortas' wound is healed "by the Spear that caused it";

(4) Kundry is a sinner, like Amfortas, but there's no suggestion that she has "inferior blood", or (which is what Gutman is really getting at) that she is supposed to be a Jewish character. In Act II, Klingsor points out that in one of Kundry's past lives she was Gunndryggia, a Valkyrie (just like Bru:nnhilde!) If Gutman is suggesting that Kundry and her sisters, the Valkyries, are supposed to be Jewish characters, and antisemitic caricatures at that, that could perhaps lead to an interesting re-reading of the "Ring".

But Wagner's text makes it clear that Kundry has been many people in many lives, and does not represent any particular racial identity. And she's always been the most faithful, enduring and bravest of the Grail's servants, except when under Klingsor's enchantment; though a sinner, she is nowhere presented as "inferior". The concept of "inferior and superior blood" absolutely does not occur in "Parsifal". It is not there in the text, implied in the plot, or in the music.

Gutman, however, wants to present "Parsifal" as a proto-Nazi work, and even describes the Grail knights as a "homosexual SS order". We'll leave aside Gutman's use of slightly far-fetched "discoveries" of homosexual content as a stick with which to beat Wagner; homophobia was more acceptable in 1968, when Gutman's book was written, than it is now.

What's more interesting is Gutman's Time Machine. To back his case for his reading of "Parsifal", Gutman would like to have Wagner influenced by the racist philosopher Gobineau. If Gobineau had influenced "Parsifal", that would indeed be in a racist direction. Unfortunately, Wagner wrote his first draft of "Parsifal" in 1857, including much of the most important dialogue; and finished the complete draft of the drama in 1877. We know from Cosima's Diaries that Wagner first read Gobineau in 1881, four years after he finished the text of "Parsifal". Gutman's reading of Gobineau into "Parsifal" involves time travel. It's an odd mistake, given how often Gutman cites Cosima's Diaries. How could he not know this?

Anyway, Gutman tends to use any old device, any old how, to try to "prove" some of his points. And that's not a respectable procedure, and makes the book unreliable in many respects.

Laon

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Even less reliable than I remembered, December 25, 2001

By	Laon (moon-lit Surry Hills) - See all my reviews

I've just re-read this book, after first reviewing it over two years ago. I noted Gutman's unreliability then, but on re-reading I can only report that my opinion of Gutman has fallen further. I originally awarded it two stars; I now think that was generous.

This book is more careless of source material than any book has right to be, but it's not ordinary carelessness. All errors and misstatements happen to support Gutman's case for a proto-Nazi Wagner. When a book's errors all support one thesis, that pattern must raise questions not just of competence but also of integrity.

For example Gutman claims Wagner was "sympathetic" to proto-Nazi Bernhard Förster's attempted German community in Paraguay. But Cosima's Diaries show that Wagner held Förster in general and the South American project in particular in contempt. Why this "mistake"? Because it suits Gutman's thesis.

Or take Wagner's late essays. If you read the essays themselves rather than Gutman's profoundly dishonest exegesis, you find a man wrestling with his own racism.

In _Heroism and Christianity_, for example, Wagner does take it as a given that white people are superior to other "races". Wagner, like many other European and American artists, was the product of a racist culture and it is unhistorical to pretend otherwise. But then Wagner writes that although people find the idea of the commingling of all human "races" into "a uniform equality" distressing, this is because of their cultural blinkers. "It is only looking at it through the reek of our own civilisation and culture than makes this picture so repellant," he says.

Christianity, Wagner continues, is superior to other religions because it is aimed equally at all "races" while Judaism and Brahminism, for example, include noble ideas but are aimed at only one "race" or caste. Although (he writes) it is "natural" [meaning "likely to occur in nature"] for strong "races" to rule weaker "races", the rule of one "race" by another has led to "exploitation" and an "utterly immoral system". Wagner's answer is equality of all "races" under "a universal moral concord", something Wagner suggests that Christian doctrines could bring about. (Wagner was not a Christian, but in later life admired Christian rituals and doctrines.)

The essay is not enlightened by modern standards, but in its historical context it stands as Wagner's rejection of the proto-Nazi ideas of his own day. Gutman's systematic distortions are regrettable not just because they go beyond mere inaccuracy but also because they are much less interesting than the truth.

A passage recently cited as an example of Gutman's merits provides another example of Gutman's method:

"Monsalvat was Wagner's paranoiac concept of a small self-contained elite group, uniquely possessed of the truth, obsessed with its 'purity,' and struggling with an outside world it held worthless. Redemption was promised the hard-pressed knights, but, obviously, the Wagnerian redeemer was not to be found among Jewish craftsmen or lepers. Not by accident did Guernemanz almost immediately remark upon Parsifal's noble, highborn appearance. He knew what signs to read. Racial heredity and strict breeding, not natural selection, formed the new mechanism of salvation. Wagnerian eugenics had come into being; in his latest writing the composer had embraced the darker implications of Darwinism."

Problems? First, Gutman misses the way _Parsifal_ shows Montsalvat critically and ironically (our first glimpse is of its watchmen sleeping on the job), as a damaged community that fails to live up to its ideals. An example is the knights' and squires' rejection of Kundry as Outsider, a moral fault for which the saintly Gürnemantz, clearly Wagner's mouthpiece, reproves them.

Second, the reference to "Jewish craftsmen and lepers" is Gutman's invention. Neither are mentioned, let alone disparaged, in _Parsifal_.

Third, Gutman must know that the remark on the hero's "noble appearance" is standard in Wagner's source material, and referred not so much to race as to "gentle upbringing", meaning having "courtly" deportment as opposed to the gestures and manners of a peasant. Example? In Wagner main source, von Eschenbach's _Parzifal_, similar observations are made about Parzifal's half-brother Fierafiz, whose mother was black.

Fourth, the Montsalvat community is not "self-contained". Wagner's text mentions that Gawain is a member of the Montsalvat community, though that character is also a member of Arthur's court. And Gawain, like the other Montsalvat knights, spends as much or more time out in the world than at Montsalvat.

Fifth, Montsalvat's alleged "racial hereditary and strict breeding" is more Gutmanian invention. Not only does _Parsifal_ not contain any such idea, or anything remotely like it, but Wagner's text rules out the possibility. Gürnemantz tells us that Montsalvat was founded by Titurel, who has had one adult child and is still alive when the opera begins. Gürnemantz was also a founding Montsalvat member. "Breeding program"? When? Instead the Montsalvat community must have grown through that bugbear even of modern racists: immigration. Some of Montsalvat's knights and squires may be children of original members, but that's hardly a breeding program. (By the way, Wagner's Montsalvat is in Spain. Not Germany.)

Can a passage so densely inaccurate be the product of mere carelessness? I think not.

Actually Gutman misses an intriguing possibility about Parsifal's ancestry. Parsifal comes from "Arabia". His father Gamuret was probably Welsh or Cornish, but we are told that Herzeleide was pregnant with Parsifal when Gamuret was in "Arabia". Since knights didn't take wives with them on crusade, the implication is that Gamuret met Herzeleide in "Arabia". (Wagner's text concerning Herzeleide differs significantly from his sources.) It's amusing in this context to consider that Wagner's Parsifal may have been what the media is currently calling "of Mid-Eastern appearance", and quite ineligible for the Hitler Youth. Still, the Nazi thing is Gutman's obsession, not Wagner's. Oh, and far from loving _Parsifal_, as Gutman would have you believe, the truth is that the Nazis banned it.

In short, Gutman's "first casualty" wasn't Wagner, but truth. An irresponsibly unreliable book.

Cheers!

Laon

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intellectually dishonest, September 1, 2003

By	Anthony Louis (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Richard Wagner;: The man, his mind, and his music (A Harvest book, HB 272) (Hardcover)

Gutman has an axe to grind. He despises Wagner and sets out to discredit the composer whenever possible. While it is true that Wagner had many despicable traits (antisemitism, mendacity, oportunism, megalomania, womanizing, etc.), Gutman creates a wholly unsympathetic picture of this musical genius. Gutman sees the influence of Wagner's antisemetism everywhere, similar to the way UFO enthusiasts see the influence of space aliens everywhere in our culture. As a result this biography is not fair and balanced. Gutman's goal seems to be to get the reader to despise Wagner as much as he does. Laon, in his review, gives many detailed examples of Gutman's intellectual slipperiness as a biographer. Gutman maintains that Parsifal is Wagner's antisemitic magnum opus and the fact that Wagner's text does not support his argument, Gutman regards as proof of how clever Wagner was in hiding his antisemitism in his artistic works. He hid it so well that only Gutman can see it. Give me a break! How could the fact that there is no evidence be proof of the agrument he is making?

Regarding the "ihn" versus "ihm" controversy in Tristan, Laon does a good job in elucidating Gutman's silly inuendoes. There is another possibility, which is that Wagner was trying to emulate an archaic German, so he may have deliberately chosen the "wrong" grammar (by modern standards) to make the sentence sound like an older pre-modern Germanic tongue. Native German speakers sometimes have difficulty understanding Wagner's texts for that reason. I agree with Laon that Gutman's book is decent on the facts of Wagner's life but is biased and misleading on the interpretation of those facts. It's too bad that such a knowledgeable writer as Gutman could let his personal biases mar what could have been a balanced and thoughtful biography of this controversial musical genius. Gutman's logic appears to run as follows: Wagner was anti-Semitic, Hitler liked Wagner's music and ideas, therefore Wagner was responsible for the Holocaust.

I read this book hoping to understand how Wagner, with all his character flaws, could write such beautiful and psychologically insightful musical dramas. Gutman did not answer my question, except to say that what appear on the surface to be works of genius are really clever attempts by a scoundrel to indoctrinate others into his antisemitism. How is it then that I come away from listening to Wagner with a loathing of anti-Semitism and a overwhelming experience of comapssion for the human family?