In Search of Wagner

I'm not sure if Adorno likes any music, at all. Also suspicious that he allows Strauss to do so much of his intellectual labor. But the chapters about color, myth, and phantasmagoria are amazing. Suggested to me by Dominic Coles.

My copy of this book is unique. Adorno was searching for the meaning of Wagner. I am searching for meaning in Adorno. Someone who came before me was doing one or the other, or perhaps both. Whoever it was left behind traces of their search: underlinings, sometimes lasting for several pages; marginal notes; graphics. There are even two pencilled epigraphs: [1] "the mixture of D. Michael Quinn and cyberpunk", and [2] "Come Again to the Healing Waters -- Liszt." Now, D. Michael Quinn could either be: (a) a Mormon historian fixated on polygamy and homosexuality, or (b) an orthopedic surgeon practicing in Bloomfield, Michigan. Liszt is, presumably, Wagner's piano-playing father-in-law. Now, mormonism has a somewhat conflicted view of Jews show more and Judaism, considering Native Americans to be both (1) the lost tribe of Israel, hence blessed by God as the Chosen People and (2) cursed by God with a red skin as a result of their antagonism to the Sons of Nephi. And, of course, we know about Wagner's anti-semitism, although some of his best friends and benefactors were Jews. How Bloomfield, Michigan comes into it, I don't know. The search continues... show less

It always strikes me as strange when people use Adorno's musical works as the basis for their interpretation of Adorno, and now I've read this it seems even stranger. There's very little here that you can't find more clearly expressed in shorter programmatic essays, or essays on literary figures.The meat here comes in the form of sentences wedged into paragraphs which are incomprehensible to me, and I assume to most of the rest of the world, since they deal with details of the plot or the musical structure of Wagner's operas. I got very little out of it, to be honest, either for Adorno or for Wagner. If you're looking for an 'easy' way in, you should try 'Critical Models,' or the first few essays in 'Notes to Literature' instead. Unless show more you're a music buff, in which case this might make more sense to you. show less