---
product_id: 3562776
title: "Aspects of Wagner"
brand: "bryan magee"
price: "¥6004"
currency: JPY
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.jp/products/3562776-aspects-of-wagner
store_origin: JP
region: Japan
---

# Aspects of Wagner

**Brand:** bryan magee
**Price:** ¥6004
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Aspects of Wagner by bryan magee
- **How much does it cost?** ¥6004 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.jp](https://www.desertcart.jp/products/3562776-aspects-of-wagner)

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## Description

Aspects of Wagner

## Images

![Aspects of Wagner - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51mv5otIBDL.jpg)
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Excellent
  

*by W***B on Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2023*

This is a fun little book.  Can be read quickly and has many quirky and interesting observations.  Love the author’s philosophical interviews on YouTube.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Enjoyable, informative, inspiring
  

*by S***E on Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2012*

This is a short book of 6 essays, less than 90 pages of text. Yet it covers Wagner's career as composer and dramatist and traces his enormous influence on music after him. It is very well written, as might be expected from an Oxford philosopher, novelist, Member of Parliament, BBC personality and - above all else, he says (elsewhere) - music lover.Among the subjects he covers in this short compass, is Wagner's notorious anti-Semitism, which has played a significant role in his acceptance or rejection over the years, especially when it was put about that his music really turned Hitler on. Of course Wagner was long dead by then - he died six years before Hitler was born - and cannot be blamed for what use others made of his music. But it seems still to be an issue today, and Magee confronts it directly.Magee quotes Wagner (p. 24): "Mendelssohn has shown us that a Jew can have the richest abundance of specific talents, be a man of the broadest yet most refined culture, of the loftiest, most impeccable integrity, and yet not be able - not even once, with the help of all these qualities - to produce in us that deep, heart-seizing, soul-searching experience that we expect from art." Now, Mendelssohn was Christian - he was baptized while quite young - and therefore could only be deemed Jewish by race, and Magee correctly notes that Jews do not possess the genetic characteristics of a race. In a way, Jews are defined by anti-Semitism, and there was surely enough of that in 19th century Germany - and that really is the point, not that someone of Jewish heritage could not achieve the highest level of art, but that in Germany someone of Jewish heritage would not be accepted by the arbiters of great art. In other words, Wagner's opinion of Mendelssohn's art says more about Germany, and indeed about Wagner, than it does about Mendelssohn - or about great art.We have an example of Jewish accomplishment in music in a country where the air is not suffused with anti-Semitism, and it demonstrates that where Jews are accepted, their achievements are not inferior to that of people of other heritages. I mean of course the United States and Irving Berlin (God Bless America, White Christmas, Easter Parade), Jerome Kern (Show Boat), George Gershwin (Porgy and Bess), Richard Rodgers (Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific), Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story), Stephen Sondheim, and more. Indeed, even in Germany, during Wagner's life, the poet Heinrich Heine, like Mendelssohn a Christian of Jewish heritage, attained the highest and deepest levels of German art, many of his poems so embedded in German culture and spirit, that they seem like folk art, as the Nazis called them - they couldn't ban all the songs Schubert and Schumann among others set to Heine's verse so they attributed them to "Unbekannte Dichter" (unknown poet). Indeed, Wagner got his inspiration for The Flying Dutchman, his first successful opera, from a novel by Heine. In other words, Wagner knew better.But in the end, I would argue, it doesn't really matter. Wagner was a great composer and should be judged by musical not moral standards, especially as I cannot find a bar of anti-Semitism (if music can be anti-Semitic) or for that matter an anti-Jewish word in the entirety of Wagner's artistic output. It is past time to drop the issue and judge Wagner by the same standards one would judge Bach (who incidentally set some viciously anti-Semitic texts, like the St. John's Passion), Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi or Puccini. I for one prefer La Bohème to Das Rheingold, and I would do so were Wagner a rabbi.All these essays are enjoyable, informative, and even inspiring - that is, if you don't know Wagner, Magee may well inspire you to make his acquaintance; and you can only be richer for that. Highly recommended.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Good but not the best printing quality
  

*by U***A on Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2021*

Small book. I found this book expensive given the poor printing quality.Arrived in time to Colombia.

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*Product available on Desertcart Japan*
*Store origin: JP*
*Last updated: 2026-02-26*