Wagner was one of the few major composers who studied philosophy seriously. Bryan Magee places the composers artistic development in the context of the philosophy of his age & gives us the first detailed & comprehensive study of the close links between Wagner & the philosophers
- from the pre-Marxist socialists to Feuerbach & Schopenhauer. Magee explores the relationship between words & music between the conscious & the unconscious mind between art & philosophy. It tackles soberly & judiciously the Wagner whose paranoia egocentricity & anti-semitism are repugnant as well as the Wagner of artistic genius. The resulting text illuminates Wagner & the music-dramas in altogether new ways.