Arnold Whittall, Directions in Wagner Analysis since 2013

This essay is an updated transformation of two articles that appeared in the Musical Times after the publication by Plumbago Books of my book The Wagner Style. The first is a book review of Dmitri Tymoczko’s Tonality: An Owner’s Manual, and of Wagner in Context, edited by David Trippett. The original version of my Musical Times review makes a special point of considering how Wagner in Context’s treatment of Lohengrin sheds new light on the fuller context that the editor David Trippett’s earlier work on Wagner’s last Romantic opera opens up. It also discusses aspects of Lohengrin and its analysis that reinforce the pervasive uneasiness with established genres and cultural practices that remained central features of the Wagner style. The second article is about that style. It focuses on one aspect of Siegfried: Wagner’s unfolding of the interactive complexity of Siegfried’s character, Siegfried’s own special blend of success and failure, and the striking confrontation between mastery and ineptitude which frames his brief life-story.