Wagner Studies and the ‘parallactic drift’

Abstract

Appended music examples, index. Early in 1854, Franz Liszt noted proudly that 'there is already a "Wagner literature"-I have contributed to it myself'. 1 Twenty-eight years later, when Wagner received the first volume of Nikolaus Oesterlein's Katalog eine Richard Wagner-Bibliothek, the composer himself dismissively chortled: 'now I can relish all the fuss and bother that'll be made about me fifteen years after my death'. 2 By 1937, however, the quantity of literature accruing led Ernest Newman to begin his four-volume biography defensively by anticipating the 'superfluity' of yet another contribution to the field. 3 Newman's caveat-ostensibly polite throat-clearing-was widely parroted; but given the lack of scholarly rigour in much of the writing about Wagner over the course of the twentieth century (a flipside of the composer's notoriety), the vastness of the literature rapidly became a misleading cliché. Carl Dahlhaus eyed the problem as one of quality as early as 1971, opening his study Richard Wagners Musikdramen with the withering statement that 'the literature on Wagner is legion'. And-as though warning off would-be contributors by instilling an element of paranoia-he deemed the majority of it worthless: 'compounded of wide-ranging, historic-philosophical speculation, insatiable delight in the minutiae of his life, however far-fetched or trivial, and a curious complacency when it [comes] to the study of the music'. 4 Such sentiments were amplified during a hiatus that saw the founding of the Sämtliche Werke project, where the relentless empiricism from scholars such as John Deathridge and Egon Voss successfully reoriented the Wagnerbild away from 'scores of mediocre biographies'. 5

Wagner and Literature: New Directions: Introduction

“…25 any writer on this subject pause for thought. 33 However, a greater awareness of the range of Wagnerian texts, the potential for new readings of familiar literature, the reassessment of relatively neglected figures, and the exploration of new contexts and methodologies as part of Wagner and literature studies suggests that this area will continue to be a rich source of activity for some time to come. Notes…”