Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. Alex Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that Richard Wagner “sums up modernity.” Nietzsche continued, “There is no way out, one must first become a Wagnerian.” Modernity is a timeless subject. Everyone thinks that they are modern. And countless dissertations, books, and lectures have been undertaken to define modernity. Wagnerian, or Wagnerism, such an essential aspect of modernity, is equally contentious—but we have a better understanding of what is sometimes meant when speaking of Wagnerism.

Alex Ross, the longstanding music critic at The New Yorker, has written a book about modernity from a Wagnerian perspective. As he writes, “Wagnerism may mean a modern art grounded in myth, after Wagner’s example. It may mean imitating aspects of his musical and poetic language. It may involve combining genres in pursuit of a total artwork. It may take the form of what I call ‘Wagner Scenes’—tableaux in novels, paintings, and films in which the music is played, discussed, or heard in the background of interaction, often seduction.” If there is a word that defines Wagnerism, it would be a word that Wagner himself shied away from and was popularized by his critics and fans: Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art).

It goes without saying that Wagner was a celebrity and troublemaker during his own lifetime. A participant in the 1848 Revolutions which embodied the progressive utopian fervor in the aftermath of industrialization and the Napoleonic Wars, Wagner had to flee to Switzerland to escape the monarchical authorities in what we now call Germany. Wagner’s music was edgy, to say the least. His reputation was assailed by defenders of musical classicism and hailed by the prophets and critics of the new world of the will and its boundless aspirations and potential.

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, is neither biography nor commentary on the musical meaning of Wagner’s many operas and musical scores. Though Ross entreats us to the basic biographical sketch of Wagner, including his fraught relationship with Nietzsche, and some ruminations on the musical moments in Wagner’s many operas (mostly focusing on the Ring tetralogy), the book is really a history of how the spirit of Wagner influenced art and politics during his own lifetime and after his death. In its many pages we see the breadth of Wagner’s shadows over art, literature, music, and more.

One of the reasons for Wagner’s broad appeal, from Europe to Asia, is how his music and stories have been received through the ages. There is a Wagner for just about everyone as Ross highlights. French Wagner. English Wagner. American Wagner. German Wagner. Japanese Wager. Gay Wagner. Reactionary Wager. Radical Wagner. Bourgeois Wagner. Socialist Wagner. Pop Culture Wagner. High Culture Wagner. The list is seemingly endless.

Moreover, it is interesting to dip one’s feet into the contentious issue of Wagnerian reception. The French Wagner, for instance, is best seen in the intoxicating captivation of Charles Baudelaire. The French Wagner was an undeniable arbiter of “modernity” and “decadence.” By comparison, the English and American Wagner was something entirely different. Concerning this flux of Wagner’s appeal outside Germany, “Each country saw Wagner through a self-fashioned prism. For the French, he was a torchbearer of the modern; for the British a messenger of Arthuriana. In the United States, Wagner harmonized with a national love of wilderness sagas, frontier lore, Native American tales, stories of desperadoes searching for gold.”

Most of us have some relationship to Wagner without knowing it. The Anglo-American tradition of creating a moralistic and child-friendly Wagner led to the proliferation of the “Bridal Chorus” from Lohengrin to seep into our wedding traditions. Hollywood’s extensive use of set Wagner pieces, especially “Ride of the Valkyries,” also means we have all heard something from Wagner’s mad genius in our lives. Even the proliferation, following John William’s composition of the score to George Lucas’s Star Wars, impregnated our cinematic culture with the communicative emotion through the leitmotif that Wagner brought into its definitive form.

Alex Ross’s book attempts to rescue Wagner from the Hitlerian appropriation of the Meister. Most people who have some awareness of Wagner are probably familiar with the story: Wagner was something of a proto-Nazi, antisemitic and racist; Hitler fell in love with Wagner; Wagner became the music of Nazi propaganda. Ross brings a necessarily corrective to this deeply flawed story of Wagner and his music. Ross systematically shows, though in brief considering the scope of the work, how Wagner influenced much more than twentieth century reactionary political sentiment and propaganda.

Among the highlights of the book are in Ross’s analyses of those Wagnerian archetypes, especially “Wagner scenes,” in literature. From Willa Cather to T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to Thomas Mann, Ross shines a light on how Wagner’s shadow—positively and negatively—shaped many of the great twentieth century modernist writers. Likewise, Ross’s tour through Wagnerism in other countries is deeply illuminating. It was in France and America, for one, where that spirit of Wagner took a deeper and more significant hold than in his native Germany.

Returning to Nietzsche, everyone who was cultured and intellectual during Wagner’s life and after his death had to have an opinion on the Bayreuth Meister. Some loved him. Others were indebted to him while trying to break away from him. Others still rejected him outright as a harbinger of death, decadence, and destruction. The twentieth century may bear witness to the insight of those who saw Wagner as deeply troubling. Yet still, Wagner’s renunciation of power and politics and endorsement of Mitleid, compassion, and the redemptive power of love (especially in the Ring) cloud Wagner’s spirit.

Like so many geniuses, Wagner’s spirit has escaped the grave. There is Wagner the composer and intellectual, an undeniably troubled and complicated—if not sometimes contradictory—soul. Then there is Wagnerism, the spirit of art that has been influenced—knowingly and unknowingly—by Wagner’s artistic creations and agenda. Ross shines light on the pervasive shadow of Wagner in art, culture, and politics. We are enlightened as a result; and we may just come to a newer appreciation of the many artists, writers, and intellectuals who have been shaped by Wagner’s spirit.

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