Description
Book SynopsisAn examination of work by the German music theorist, Alfred Lorenz, to explain Wagner's operas and how they fit with German nationalist ideology. The work of the Wagnerian theorist and analyst Alfred Lorenz (1869-1939) has had a profound influence upon both Wagnerian scholarship and music analysis in the twentieth century, and yet it has never been properly evaluated. Analyzing Wagner's Operas outlines the origins and development of the expressive aesthetic in writings by Wagner and others, as well as in early-twentieth-century theories of musical form, and it considers Lorenz's work and contributions in this light. The book also hopes to show, to the extent possible, where Lorenz's work acted as a sort of "musical metaphor" for German nationalist ideology during the Nazi era.
Trade ReviewA rich book. It teaches us a great deal about late Romantic aesthetics and Wagnerian analysis, as well as Lorenz's career, his analytic work, and its reception. McClatchie's intelligent and knowledgeable consideration of complex questions about the interactions between ideology, cultural politics, and musical scholarship should challenge us to think as carefully and clearly about such questions whenever and wherever they arise. * JOURNAL OF AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY *
Table of ContentsAlfred Lorenz - the discoverer of Wagnerian form - Lorenz's life and work, Lorenz and national socialism; aesthetics and analysis of form at the turn of the century - the expressive aesthetic, musical form and analysis, the problem of Wagner; Lorenz's aesthetics - the work of art and its form, the Leitmotive, the Gesamtkunstwerk; Lorenz's analytical method - the ring analysis, the three elements of form, creation of large-scale structure, Lorenz's formal types; the development of Lorenz's analytical methods - the later volumes, evaluating Lorenz; the reception of Lorenz's analytical method -contemporary reception in Germany, post-war reception in Germany, English language reception - Lorenz as artifact; Alfred Lorenz and German nationalist ideology. Appendices: Lorenz's formal types; Lorenz's analysis of the poetic musical periods of "Der Ring des Nibelungen".
