"This is the book that shall be my night companion, written by one brilliant man for another."
— Patti Smith
One of the New York Times's Notable Books of 2020; on best-of-the-year lists at NPR, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Kirkus / Rolling Stone, Globe and Mail, Financial Times, Air Mail, Pitchfork, and The New Statesman.
My third book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, was published on Sept. 15, 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. There is also an audiobook, including musical examples, which I read myself. The UK edition is available from Fourth Estate. The book has also been published in Germany (Die Welt nach Wagner, Rowohlt), Italy (Wagnerismi, Bompiani), and Spain (Wagnerismo, Seix Barral).
For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of writers, artists, and thinkers, including Charles Baudelaire, Virginia Woolf, Isadora Duncan, Wassily Kandinsky, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious anti-Semitism. For some, his name is now synonymous with artistic evil.
Wagnerism restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. The narrative ranges across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is implicated in an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of intellectual passion, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.
A Chapter-by-Chapter Audiovisual Companion
Reviews:
“A superb chronicle of obsession, intoxication, hyperbolic exultation, appropriation, exploitation, repudiation, transmutation, and perpetual reinvention―an aerial view of a culture’s nervous system as it responds to an unexpected stimulus . . . The Wagnerian fever charted in this grand and magnificently realized mosaic might be seen as a global and inchoate effort at liberation from a catastrophe that had not yet happened, but whose world-churning orchestral murmurs were already audible.” ―Geoffrey O’Brien, Bookforum
"Capacious and enthralling . . . A superb example of cultural history and, given its themes, a work surprisingly relevant to this plague-ridden, watershed year." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“What I love best about Wagnerism is Ross’s effort to show the teeming floods of fans and their different fandoms, their efforts to grapple with these matters—and their failures—and their adaptations of other failures, and other successes—and above all, the creation, dissolution, and re-creation of communities around the art. That, ultimately, is why he gives us this flood of stories, lives, artworks, anecdotes, conflicts, and creations: to show us not Wagner’s triumphs and failures, but those of our living, ongoing world of culture and belief . . . In the breadth, compassion, humor, and critical rigor of this book." —Alison Kinney, VAN
“A work of enormous intellectual range and subtle artistic judgment that pokes and probes the nerve endings of Western cultural and social norms as they are mirrored in more than a century of reaction to Wagner’s works. The book has its own 'Wagnerian' heft and ambitiousness of intent, being nothing less than a history of ideas that spans an arc from Nietzsche and George Eliot to Philip K. Dick, 'Apocalypse Now' and neo-Nazi skinheads.” — John Adams, New York Times Book Review
“[Wagnerism] takes up Wagner’s protean impact with unprecedented scope . . . The result is an indispensable work of cultural history, offering both a comprehensive resource and a bravura narrative . . . Extraordinary.” ― Joseph Horowitz, The Wall Street Journal
"Ross is making the difficult argument for complexity, and against great-man hero worship generally . . . For all its authorial caution and scholarly deference, Ross has produced what feels like a deeply personal work . . . Wagnerism is pleasurably readable, even funny . . . Ross’ book and his extraordinary scholarship amply suggest that any anxiety over the survival of Wagnerism as a sensibility and theory of art, independent of its creator, is misplaced as well." — Franz Nicolay, Slate
“One of the many beauties of this incomparably rich book is that it refuses to engage in any simplistic analysis of its subject, who emerges in his full bewildering complexity. It is one of the most valuable books about Wagner I know of, compelling one to engage not merely with the composer and his legacy but with music itself, how it works on us, what it is . . . The miracle of Ross’s book is that it is so fresh and so personal; his intellectual stamina, though prodigious, is never flaunted.” —Simon Callow, Air Mail
"Alex Ross’s magnificent and fascinating Wagnerism is not exactly a Wagner book, but a wide-ranging look at the myriad ways this visionary, self-contradictory and deeply problematic creator influenced all the arts and politics." — Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic, The New York Times
"A huge chronicle that might just be what the Wagner world has been waiting for since the 1850s, when Wagnerism began. Certainly, there is no volume in existence that has dared to attempt what Ross has done here as a single author, boldly stamping his work with the one-word main title for a subject that seems paradoxically both limitless and all-embracing. This survey of nearly 150 years of Wagnerism is excitingly set forth, and its coverage is breathtaking." — Heath Lees, The Wagner Journal
"Sweepingly original . . . [Ross] ushers readers along an endlessly fascinating tour of the lives and works touched by, in his words, 'the chaotic posthumous cult' spawned by a composer with a gift for making impassioned friends and equally impassioned enemies . . . In page after lucid page, Ross narrates this epic tour while hovering above the fray with a kind of lyrical skepticism that eventually starts to feel like its own quietly principled way of knowing the past: an ethic of reading history against its accumulated layers, granting irony its own power of illumination, and holding open a space for complex, contradictory truths. Ultimately Wagnerism, the fruit of nearly a decade of exhaustive research, is a masterwork of historical synthesis and historical sleuthing." ― Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe
“Magnificent . . . Every culture has its own issues with Wagner, and Ross’ even hand is especially impressive when taking on the Big One. His explication of Hitler’s rise and the legacy of Wagner’s anti-Semitism is a moving lamentation . . . In the end, the inconsistencies are what made Wagner matter, and what make Ross today’s perfect Wagnerite.” —Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
"Suavely brilliant . . . [This] magnum opus more than a decade in the making sets out to do nothing less than chart the entire scope of Wagner’s influence in Western history and culture, including everything from French Symbolist poetry to Star Wars. That capsule description conveys the work’s jaw-dropping blend of ambition and erudition, but downplays its easy accessibility." — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle
“Ross has written a sweeping and erudite book. In his hands, Wagner becomes a master key that unlocks innumerable facets of modern culture. Ross moves with grace and sophistication across many national contexts and artistic movements . . . And he never lets his enormous learning get in the way of the fun. In 1886, the French musicologist Georges Servières observed, 'The definitive book on Richard Wagner is still unwritten.’ That may still be true. But with Wagnerism, Alex Ross comes as close as any mortal is likely to get.” — Charlie Tyson, The Hedgehog Review
"Reading Wagnerism took me two weeks, and once through with it, I felt as if I'd spent a fortnight in Bayreuth among affable and highly informed friends. It's a magnificent, eminently readable and often entertaining fund of knowledge and I recommend it unreservedly." — Rob Cowan, Gramophone
"It’s always cause for rejoicing when New Yorker music critic Ross (Listen to This) publishes a book, and this latest is on a scale worthy of the composer of the Ring of the Nibelung. ... Eighteen out of 18 anvils" — Bill Baars, Library Journal (starred review)
"Capacious, fascinating ... A deeply informed history as vigorous as Wagner’s music." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A fascinating study of the impact that emotionally intense music and drama can have on the human mind." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Advance praise:
"Wagnerism is as magnificently realized as it is monumentally ambitious, a cultural history of the modern world that Richard Wagner and his protean art helped mightily to create, and equally a brilliantly synthetic mapping-out of the infinitely multiplying, antagonistic and cross-pollinating readings and misreadings, transformations and transmogrifications that the world has wrought in its unceasing, ongoing grapplings with Wagner. Alex Ross has assembled a vast convocation of the artists, proponents and prophets of realism and hallucination, psychology and mythification, avant-gardism and populism, democracy and fascism, cosmopolitanism and racism, and collectively they offer us an epic account of the progress of modernity through mazes of aesthetics, ideology and consciousness. It's a journey for which Ross is the ideal guide: lucid, astoundingly erudite, scrupulous, generous, profound, objective and engaged, and enormously entertaining." — Tony Kushner, playwright
“An absolutely masterly work … a miraculous synthesis. Ross’s writing is an art that conceals art, propelling the reader on and on." — Stephen Fry, actor
"In this epic, extraordinary book, Alex Ross contends with the "infernal logic" of Wagner's legacy, through the centuries and across poetry, literature, art, philosophy, architecture, politics, war, film. Wagnerism is a hugely exhilarating read, and a virtuoso feat of scholarship and supple writing: Ross is such a companionable guide, connecting ideas so casually and unspooling stories so fluidly that you can almost lose sight of the ferocious erudition that undergirds every page. I can't think of a better or more profound work about the long, complicated shadow of cultural influence." — Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing
"For those who love Wagner, this book is obviously heaven. But Wagnerism goes far beyond the man himself, using its subject to springboard into a breathlessly entertaining and dizzyingly diverse survey of art, politics and culture over the past century and a half. Ultimately, it's a book about how humans are inspired by art, and like all of Alex Ross’s writing, it bottles that strange lightning and inspires us in turn." — Rian Johnson, director of The Last Jedi and Knives Out
"A masterpiece―massive and magnificent. A book I’ve been waiting fifty years to read. It turns lights on in regions where I have bumbled in murk." ―Peter Schjeldahl, author of Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988–2018
"Wagnerism is monumental not only in scale but in accomplishment. Wagner casts a vast shadow over modern culture and it takes an incandescent critical intelligence to illuminate this legacy in its full complexity, distorted by neither hagiography nor demonology . . . Afro-Wagnerians jostle with Nazis, Gilded Age feminists share the stage with Zionists, gay Wagnerians consort with modernist litterateurs. The result is a singular achievement of scholarship, sensibility, and storytelling." — Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies That Bind
"In this prodigious interdisciplinary opus, encompassing the visual arts, literature, and philosophy, Ross deftly teases out the tremendous and often polarizing impact Wagner’s music and theories had on modern culture and history, parsing those luminaries who celebrated the composer and those who reviled him. In doing so--in this prismatic examination conducted through a Wagnerian lens--Ross underscores a paradox at the heart of modernism itself: the tension between the retrograde and the avant-garde and, thus, the political right and left, themes of even greater relevance in our present times." — Vivien Greene, senior curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art, Guggenheim Museum
"Until now, what I didn't know about Wagner and his influence on the culture in general could have filled a book. Fortunately, Alex Ross's brilliant evocation of the great composer's life and times, vision, and influence more than elucidates Wagner's various mysteries — it gives voice to why and how this monumental artist came to be such a significant political and aesthetic influence on the world stage. Masterfully written and researched, Wagnerism is itself a masterpiece — a breathtaking achievement."
— Hilton Als, author of White Girls
“Attention: a masterpiece! Wagnerism is extraordinary for the richness of references and testimonies drawn from literature, philosophy, the visual arts, musicology, the cinema. It is probably the most informed work on Wagner and his aesthetic and cultural significance that I have ever read."
― Jean-Jacques Nattiez, author of Wagner Androgyne
Here is the table of contents:
PRELUDE: Death in Venice
1. RHEINGOLD: Wagner, Nietzsche, and the “Ring”
2. TRISTAN CHORD: Baudelaire and the Symbolists
Excerpt: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
3. SWAN KNIGHT: Victorian England and Gilded-Age America
4. GRAIL TEMPLE: Esoteric, Decadent, and Satanic Wagner
5. HOLY GERMAN ART: The Kaiserreich and Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
6. NIBELHEIM: Jewish and Black Wagner
7. VENUSBERG: Feminist and Gay Wagner
8. BRÜNNHILDE’S ROCK: Willa Cather and the Singer-Novel
9. MAGIC FIRE: Modernism, 1900 to 1914
10. NOTHUNG: The First World War and Hitler's Youth
11. RING OF POWER: Revolution and Russia
12. FLYING DUTCHMAN: “Ulysses,” “The Waste Land,” “The Waves”
13. SIEGFRIED’S DEATH: Nazi Germany and Thomas Mann
14. RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES: Film from “The Birth of a Nation” to “Apocalypse Now”
Excerpt: Wagner in Hollywood
15. THE WOUND: Wagnerism after 1945
POSTLUDE
Download: Works Cited (complete alphabetized list)
