Hans Rudolf Vaget, The Importance of Ernest Newman

Speaking at the 1966 Bayreuth Festival, Theodor W. Adorno made a point of drawing the attention of his audience to Ernest Newman’s four-volume biography of Wagner. He did so, he said, because he was secretly hoping that someone in the audience might be willing, finally, to support a German version of Newman’s monumental work, which began to appear in 1933 and was completed in 1947. Adorno specifically endorsed Newman’s high regard for Wagner’s theoretical writings, particularly the essays on Beethoven and on conducting, and he praised the English critic’s singular command of the details of Wagner’s biography. More than forty years later Newman’s biography has still not been translated into the language of its subject.