Wagner and so much more: in praise of Alex Ross
Critics used to be arbiters of taste. From their pulpits in the national press they shaped cultural opinions and determined our choice of books to buy and of plays and concerts to attend. In the internet world a thousand voices gabble through the ether, self-authenticating their recommendations. There are, however, a few expert and authoritative critics still holding steady in their pulpits, and Alex Ross, the long-time music critic of The New Yorker, is certainly among them. Ross is the very model of a modern music critic, deeply knowledgeable, intelligently enthusiastic, broad ranging in his focus. And after reading his new book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, no one can doubt his omnivorous energy or be other than impressed by his hard graft on his readers’ behalf.
Wagnerism was more than ten years in the making and Ross describes the writing of it as “the great education of my life.” Its scope is monumental and it ranges across the whole of Wagner’s times and his often fickle preoccupations. Much of this is well-known, of course. In his chameleon public life Wagner shifted from revolutionary enthusiasms in the Europe of 1848, to anarchic political conservatism in his later years. So too in his musical journey from the noisiness of his early opera “Rienzi”, to the sublime effects of “Tristan and Isolde”, to the all-encompassing musical drama of the “Ring” cycle and the chromatic beauty and eclectic religiosity of “Parsifal”.
Ross carries us through the biography informed by his musical appreciation and enormous cultural range. And he does not flinch from due reflection on the dark sides of Wagner’s life and opinions, most especially his anti-Semitism. The “Master” of Bayreuth and its festival was more democratic than elitist in his aspirations (he had wanted attendance to be free and the audience to be drawn from wider society); but his widow, his son and his daughter-in-law sought undiscriminating financial subsidies and, eventually, encouraged political support from the Nazis. Wagner had to be saved in due course from himself and from the cult that grew up around and after him.
Ross’ major achievement in Wagnerism is to have broadened the canvas, to have assessed Wagner’s influence on his contemporaries. Addressing the nearly one hundred and forty years since his death in a palace in Venice, Ross draws out Wagner’s extraordinary survival and the many ways in which his music has insinuated itself into the modern world. He shares Nietzsche’s view, writing in 1888, that “Wagner sums up modernity. It can’t be helped, one must first become a Wagnerian.” Ross succeeds in diluting the cult of Wagner by exploring so thoroughly the composer’s wider cultural and philosophical influence. His claims for Wagner are big indeed and in his search for supporting evidence, Ross takes the reader on a bumper tour through Wagnerism in all its many forms and expressions: national (while he was alive it was as great a phenomenon in France as in Germany); literary (from Baudelaire and Proust to Yeats, from Virginia Woolf to D H Lawrence and above all Thomas Mann); painters (including Cezanne) and filmmakers (Fritz Lang and Francis Ford Coppola, among others) as well as composers (too many to cite). To these Ross adds analyses of left-leaning post-war performances at Bayreuth, Wagner’s influence on Black culture in the US, on gay and feminist culture, and so much more. For Ross there would seem no end to Wagner and no escape.
Ross’ Wagnerism is the peak of his critical achievement to date. It comes, however, on top of his regular contributions to The New Yorker since 1996 and his two earlier books (the much praised The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century from 2008 and Listen to This, an essay collection from 2010). Ross is always wonderfully open-minded and catholic in his musical explorations including, outside the classical canon, Bjork and Radiohead. He is acutely alert to the need to nurture new and younger concert audiences with cutting-edge compositions and performers; he has been a consistent promoter of the adventurous performances of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under its conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. What he is especially good at is sniffing the temper and preoccupations of our times, as he has done with Black Lives and classical music. In recent essays on Poulenc and late Brahms he has refreshed our understanding of these composers and their music. As for Covid-19, Ross has sought out and written of musicians and composers responding to this “chaotic moment”. He has applauded those musicians who have reached out from their locked-down houses or studios, particularly the pianist Igor Levit who live-streamed over fifty recitals from his home in Berlin.
Ross as music critic is not a comfort in hard times. He can be sharp, even sometimes abrasive in tone. He has not isolated himself in a classical music cul-de-sac surrounded by ageing but supportive admirers; he has ventilated the world of classical and other fine music so as to draw in new listeners. Above all Ross is an enlivener, a stimulating guide to the best in contemporary music-making, whether of productions of Wagner, of minimalist composers such as Arvo Pärt or the noisy-edged sound of Radiohead. He is the stand-out music critic of our day.