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Richard Wagner and the English

Anne Dzamba Sessa

出版	Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978
主題	Music / Genres & Styles / OperaMusic / Individual Composer & Musician
ISBN	08386205589780838620557
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=H2EIAQAAMAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋

Wagner was more than a composer--he was a cultural phenomenon. The author seeks to explain this phenomenon. One claim is that Wagner's music dramas served to provide encouragement and inspiration to Victorians struggling with the problems of a changing and challenging era. Intellectual developments (including the theories of Charles Darwin and the impact of historical scholarship on Biblical studies) had struck a severe blow against religious orthodoxy. Thus, the English strove to retain their inherited or instinctive beliefs and at the same time to accept the conclusions of natural and social science. Frustrated by the academic arguments, many persons turned to less intellectual substitutes, including Wagnerism. Almost all of Wagner's plots involve some form of redemption and hunger for the infinite. The author also claims that Wagnerism drew on the Victorian need for social justice, and points out that just as many Wagnerians sought emancipation from confining materialist philosophies or simply delighted in sexual liberation.