A study of Wagner

the long version

Before Ernest Newman began to scrutinize the details of Wagner's life, a preoccupation of several decades which resulted in his monumental biography in four volumes, he wrote this extended essay on Wagner as composer and thinker. As critical an observer as Newman was to become of Wagner the man, he viewed the work of the poet and musician with the warmest of praise: "The muse of poetry seems to have dipped her wings into the lucid stream of music, disturbing it with suggestions of a world it had never reflected before, deepening its beauty by closer associations with the actual world of men. This was the brain of Wagner. There is none like him, none; it is almost safe to say there will be none like him to the end of time." - Back cover.