First Eleven: Katherine Syer welcomes an illuminating collection of essays on Wagner

Review of Arnold Whittall, The Wagner Style: Close Readings and Critical Perspectives (Plumbago Books, 2015).

March 2016, Volume 10, Number 1, 85–8.

Arnold Whittall began writing about Wagner in a sustained fashion in the early 1980s, when scholarly attention to the composer blossomed around the 100th anniversary of his death. Recent years have witnessed a similar burst, this time spurred on by the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth. The Wagner Style honours another birthday, Arnold Whittall’s 80th, in the form of a collection of eleven of his essays published between 2004 and 2007 in the pages of this journal and the Musical Times. Whittall’s earlier books have focused mainly on 20th-century music. In a time when the idea of a volume celebrating an individual scholar is rarely a publisher’s delight, The Wagner Style presents, in its breadth and coherence, a compelling case for such a book, placing an important area of the author’s work under the spotlight.