Wagner Beyond Established Differences: Rethinking Controversial Aspects of Wagner's Music Dramas in the Light of Contemporary Culture - Softcover

Nefkens, Victor

 
9783826066917: Wagner Beyond Established Differences: Rethinking Controversial Aspects of Wagner's Music Dramas in the Light of Contemporary Culture

Synopsis

This book concentrates on the philosophical-ideoligical debate about Wagner centered around the question of whether proto-Nazi tendencies are intrinsic to the artist´s music dramas. It examines aspects of Wagner´s mature body of work that, according to its Adornoian critics, coincide with core features of National Socialism, namely the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk and leitmotif technique, the music´s overwhelming sensuousness, Germanness, and the idea of regeneration. By reconceptualizing these aspects in the context of new cultural-historical circumstances as well as Roger Scruton´s and Alain Badiou´s universalist readings of Wagner, a Nietzschean conception of Wagner´s work can be developed that resists the racism, bigotry and nationalism with which it has often been associated.

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