Wagner And The Romantic Hero

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Wagner and the Romantic Hero

Author : Simon Williams
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139451669
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Wagner and the Romantic Hero by : Simon Williams

Download or read book Wagner and the Romantic Hero written by Simon Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-24 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few major artists have aroused the ire and adulation of successive generations as persistently as Richard Wagner. He was the centre of controversy during his lifetime and yet, when he died, he was the most idolized man in Germany. The situation has not changed much since then. Simon Williams explores the reasons for this adulation and antipathy by examining an aspect that may be a fundamental cause for this radical division in the reception of Wagner's work, the phenomenon of heroism. Williams analyses this heroism as a function of Wagner's theatre and music, beginning with a definition and examination of the concept of the heroic. The book also discusses all thirteen stage works by Wagner and the phenomenon of heroism and Wagner's adaptation of the figure of the Romantic hero. Williams offers a theatrical, musical, and cultural re-evaluation of one of the most enduring figures in the arts.

The Consolations of History: Themes of Progress and Potential in Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung

Author : Alexander H. Shapiro
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000672808
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The Consolations of History: Themes of Progress and Potential in Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung by : Alexander H. Shapiro

Download or read book The Consolations of History: Themes of Progress and Potential in Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung written by Alexander H. Shapiro and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book on Richard Wagner’s compelling but enigmatic masterpiece Götterdämmerung, the final opera of his monumental Ring tetralogy, Alexander H. Shapiro advances an ambitious new interpretation which uncovers intriguing new facets to the work’s profound insights into the human condition. By taking a fresh look at the philosophical and historical influences on Wagner, and critically reevaluating the composer’s intellectual worldview as revealed in his own prose works, letters, and diary entries, the book challenges a number of conventional views that continue to impede a clear understanding of this work’s meaning. The book argues that Götterdämmerung, and hence the Ring as a whole, achieves coherence when interpreted in terms of contemporary nineteenth-century theories of progress, and, in particular, G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophies of mind and history. A central target of the book is the article of faith that has come to dominate Wagner scholarship over the years – that Wagner’s encounter in 1854 with Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy conclusively altered the final message of the Ring from one of historical optimism to existential pessimism. The author contends that Schopenhauer’s uncompromising denigration of the will and denial of the possibility for human progress find no place in the written text of the Ring or in a plausible reading of the final musical setting. In its place, the author discovers in the famous Immolation Scene a celebration of mankind’s inexhaustible capacity for self-improvement and progress. The author makes the further compelling case that this message of progress is communicated not through Siegfried, the traditional male hero of the drama, but through Brünnhilde, the warrior goddess who becomes a mortal woman. In her role as a battle-tested world-historical prophet she is the true revolutionary change agent of Wagner’s opera who has the strength and vision to comprehend and thereby shape human history. This highly lucid and accessible study is aimed not only at scholars and researchers in the fields of opera studies, music and philosophy, and music history, but also Wagner enthusiasts, and readers and students interested in the history and philosophy of the nineteenth century.

Wagner and the Erotic Impulse

Author : Laurence Dreyfus
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674018818
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Wagner and the Erotic Impulse by : Laurence Dreyfus

Download or read book Wagner and the Erotic Impulse written by Laurence Dreyfus and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though his image is tarnished today by unrepentant anti-Semitism, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was better known in the nineteenth century for his provocative musical eroticism. In this illuminating study of the composer and his works, Laurence Dreyfus shows how Wagner’s obsession with sexuality prefigured the composition of operas such as Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal. Daring to represent erotic stimulation, passionate ecstasy, and the torment of sexual desire, Wagner sparked intense reactions from figures like Baudelaire, Clara Schumann, Nietzsche, and Nordau, whose verbal tributes and censures disclose what was transmitted when music represented sex. Wagner himself saw the cultivation of an erotic high style as central to his art, especially after devising an anti-philosophical response to Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of sexual love.” A reluctant eroticist, Wagner masked his personal compulsion to cross-dress in pink satin and drench himself in rose perfumes while simultaneously incorporating his silk fetish and love of floral scents into his librettos. His affection for dominant females and surprising regard for homosexual love likewise enable some striking portraits in his operas. In the end, Wagner’s achievement was to have fashioned an oeuvre which explored his sexual yearnings as much as it conveyed—as never before—how music could act on erotic impulse.

Wagner's Ring Cycle and the Greeks

Author : Daniel H. Foster
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139486314
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Wagner's Ring Cycle and the Greeks by : Daniel H. Foster

Download or read book Wagner's Ring Cycle and the Greeks written by Daniel H. Foster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-04 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through his reading of primary and secondary classical sources, as well as his theoretical writings, Richard Wagner developed a Hegelian-inspired theory linking the evolution of classical Greek politics and poetry. This book demonstrates how, by turning theory into practice, Wagner used this evolutionary paradigm to shape the music and the libretto of the Ring cycle. Foster describes how each of the Ring's operas represents a particular phase of Greek poetic and political development: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre create epic national identity in its earlier and later stages respectively; Siegfried expresses lyric personal identity; and Götterdämmerung destructively culminates with a tragi-comedy about civic identity. This study sees the Greeks through the lens of those scholars whose work influenced Wagner most, focusing on epic, lyric, and comedy, as well as Greek tragedy. Most significantly, the book interrogates the ways in which Wagner uses Greek aesthetics to further his own ideological goals.

Wagner's Parsifal

Author : William Kinderman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190623543
Total Pages : 660 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Wagner's Parsifal by : William Kinderman

Download or read book Wagner's Parsifal written by William Kinderman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Kinderman's detailed study of Parsifal, described by the composer as his "last card," explores the evolution of the text and music of this inexhaustible yet highly controversial music drama across Wagner's entire career. This book offers a reassessment of the ideological and political history of Parsifal, shedding new light on the connection of Wagner's legacy to the rise of National Socialism in Germany. The compositional genesis is traced through many unfamiliar manuscript sources, revealing unsuspected models and veiled connections to Wagner's earlier works. Fresh analytic perspectives are revealed, casting the dramatic meaning of Parsifal in a new light. Much debated aspects of the work, such as Kundry's death at the conclusion, are discussed in the context of its stage history. Path-breaking as well is Kinderman's analysis of the religious and ideological context of Parsifal. During the half-century after the composer's death, the Wagner family and the so-called Bayreuth circle sought to exploit Wagner's work for political purposes, thereby promoting racial nationalism and anti-Semitism. Hitherto unnoticed connections between Hitler and Wagner's legacy at Bayreuth are explored here, while differences between the composer's politics as an 1849 revolutionary and the later response of his family to National Socialism are weighed in a nuanced account. Kinderman combines new historical research, sensitive aesthetic criticism, and probing philosophical reflection in this most intensive examination of Wagner's culminating music drama.

Theology of Wagner's Ring Cycle II

Author : Richard H. Bell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1498235743
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (982 download)

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Book Synopsis Theology of Wagner's Ring Cycle II by : Richard H. Bell

Download or read book Theology of Wagner's Ring Cycle II written by Richard H. Bell and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Vol 1.) Wagner's Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner's creation was such that he himself felt he stood before his work "as though before some puzzle." A clue to the Ring's greatness lies in its multiple avenues of self-disclosure and the corresponding plethora of interpretations that over the years has granted ample scope for directors and will no doubt do so well into the distant future. One possible interpretation, which Richard Bell argues should be taken seriously, is the Ring as Christian theology. In this first of two volumes, Bell considers, among other things, how the composer's Christian interests may be detected in the "forging" of his Ring, looking at how he appropriated his sources (whether they be myths and sagas, writers, poets, or philosophers) and considering works composed around the same time, especially his Jesus of Nazareth. -- back cover.

The Heroic in Music

Author : Beate Kutschke
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783276894
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis The Heroic in Music by : Beate Kutschke

Download or read book The Heroic in Music written by Beate Kutschke and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs the socio-political history of the heroic in music through case studies spanning the middle ages to the twenty-first century The first part of this volume reconstructs the various musical strategies that composers of medieval chant, Renaissance madrigals, and Baroque operas, cantatas or oratorios employed when referring to heroic ideas exemplifying their personal moral and political values. A second part investigating the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expands the previous narrow focus on Beethoven's heroic middle period and the cult of the virtuoso. It demonstrates the wide spectrum of heroic positions - national, ethnic, revolutionary, bourgeois and spiritual - that filtered not only into 'classical' large-scale heroic symphonies and virtuoso solo concerts, but also into chamber music and vernacular dance music. The third part documents the forced heroization of music in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes such as Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union and its consequences for heroic thinking and musical styles in the time thereafter. Final chapters show how recent rock-folk and avant-garde musicians in North America and Europe feature new heroic models such as the everyday hero and the scientific heroine revealing new confidence in the idea of the heroic.

Being Wagner

Author : Simon Callow
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0525436197
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (254 download)

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Book Synopsis Being Wagner by : Simon Callow

Download or read book Being Wagner written by Simon Callow and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles, delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans. Richard Wagner's music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an unmatched body of work. A man who spent most of his life in abject poverty, inspiring both critical derision and hysterical hero-worship, Wagner was a walking contradiction: belligerent, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, demanding, visionary, and poisonously anti-Semitic. Acclaimed biographer Simon Callow evokes the intellectual and artistic climate in which Wagner lived and takes us through his most iconic works, from his pivotal successes in The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, to the musical paradigm shift contained in Tristan and Isolde, to the apogee of his achievements in The Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal, which debuted at Bayreuth shortly before his death. Being Wagner brings to life this towering figure, creator of the most sublime and most controversial body of work ever known.

A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal

Author : William Kinderman
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1571132376
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal by : William Kinderman

Download or read book A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal written by William Kinderman and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2005 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays demonstrating and exploring the abiding fascination of Wagner's controversial work.

The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas

Author : Barry Millington
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195345517
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas by : Barry Millington

Download or read book The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas written by Barry Millington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most controversial figures in the history of ideas as well as music, Richard Wagner continues to stimulate debate whenever his works are performed. Drawing upon the scholarship of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the most comprehensive dictionary of opera in the world, Barry Millington offers a concise, portable survey and guide, which will make a welcome addition to the shelf of anyone who loves opera. Millington has completely updated the original pieces and contributed four new chapters on Wagner, including a summary of Wagner productions from 1876 to the present day, a suggested listening and viewing gyide, complete chronology of Wagner's operas, and a glossary of terms that will delight any opera-goer. In addition, there are detailed entries on each of Wagner's operas, a main biographical section, and a group of separate articles on such topics as Leitmotif and Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as a newly revised updated article on Bayreuth. Complete with a new preface, updated bibliography, glossary, and discography--including first release dates of each recording--The New Grove Guide to Wagner and his Operas furnishes both seasoned Wagner-lovers and neophytes with all they require for an in-depth appreciation of this unique historical figure.

The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic

Author : Clive Bloom
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030408663
Total Pages : 867 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic by : Clive Bloom

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic written by Clive Bloom and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-03 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Grey and Jack the Ripper. After the death of Prince Albert (1861), the Gothic became darker, more morbid, obsessed with demonic lovers, blood sucking ghouls, blood stained murderers and deranged doctors. Whilst the gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament and the new Puginesque churches upheld a Victorian ideal of sobriety, Christianity and imperial destiny, Gothic literature filed these new spaces with a dread that spread like a plague to America, France, Germany and even Russia. From 1830 to 1914, the period covered by this volume, we saw the emergence of the greats of Gothic literature and the supernatural from Edgar Allan Poe to Emily Bronte, from Sheridan Le Fanu to Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Contributors also examine the fin-de-siècle dreamers of decadence such as Arthur Machen, M P Shiel and Vernon Lee and their obsession with the occult, folklore, spiritualism, revenants, ghostly apparitions and cosmic annihilation. This volume explores the period through the prism of architectural history, urban studies, feminism, 'hauntology' and much more. 'Horror', as Poe teaches us, 'is the soul of the plot'.

My Travels with Wagner

Author : Chris McQuaid
Publisher : Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN 13 : 1682353192
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (823 download)

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Book Synopsis My Travels with Wagner by : Chris McQuaid

Download or read book My Travels with Wagner written by Chris McQuaid and published by Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Want a true balm for the soul? My Travels with Wagner tells the story of how author Chris McQuaid’s journey took him from young Irish soldier suffering from PTSD, to the finest opera houses in Europe and a passion for the music of Richard Wagner. The 19th-century composer produced dramatic operas and musical works that greatly influenced the course of Western music. “I was a lover of Wagner’s music long before I came to Ireland and listened for hours on the floor of my brother’s flat in Putney, in the early 1950s. Soon afterwards I went to Bayreuth – and went on going. When I came to Ireland, I joined the Wagner Society and met Ireland's supreme Wagnerian, Chris McQuaid. I left the society when he did, in deep sympathy, and sharing his unparalleled love and knowledge. It is reflected, over again, in this book, rich in passionate concern for Richard Wagner and his unique place in Music.” – Bruce Arnold, author and journalist

Wagner Moments

Author : J. K. Holman
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN 13 : 9781574671599
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (715 download)

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Book Synopsis Wagner Moments by : J. K. Holman

Download or read book Wagner Moments written by J. K. Holman and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2007 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "100 Wagner Moments: Have you had one?" The music dramas of Richard Wagner have, for the last 150 years, thrilled and amazed listeners everywhere. In Wagner Moments, author J. K. Holman has assembled 100 such moments, from the living and dead, famous and not so famous, from Charles Baudelaire to Placido Domingo, musicians and non-musicians. Mr. Holman edits these stories, placing them in their biographical and historical context.

The Cambridge Companion to Wagner

Author : Thomas S. Grey
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139825941
Total Pages : 692 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Wagner by : Thomas S. Grey

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Wagner written by Thomas S. Grey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-11 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Wagner is remembered as one of the most influential figures in music and theatre, but his place in history has been marked by a considerable amount of controversy. His attitudes towards the Jews and the appropriation of his operas by the Nazis, for example, have helped to construct a historical persona that sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. Yet Wagner's absolutely central position in the operatic canon continues. This volume serves as a timely reminder of his ongoing musical, cultural, and political impact. Contributions by specialists from such varied fields as musical history, German literature and cultural studies, opera production, and political science consider a range of topics, from trends and problems in the history of stage production to the representations of gender and sexuality. With the inclusion of invaluable and reliably up-to-date biographical data, this collection will be of great interest to scholars, students, and enthusiasts.

Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner

Author : James Garratt
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139485709
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner by : James Garratt

Download or read book Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner written by James Garratt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging received views of music in nineteenth-century German thought, culture and society, this 2010 book provides a radical reappraisal of its socio-political meanings and functions. Garratt argues that far from governing the nineteenth-century musical discourse and practice, the concept of artistic autonomy and the aesthetic categories bequeathed by Weimar classicism were persistently challenged by alternative models of music's social role. The book investigates these competing models and the social projects that gave rise to them. It interrogates nineteenth-century musical discourse, discussing a wide range of manifestos championing musical democratization or seeking to make music an engine for the transformation of society. In addition, it explores institutions and movements that attempted to realize these goals, and compositions - by Mendelssohn, Lortzing and Liszt as well as Wagner - in which the relation between aesthetic and social claims is programmatic.

Franz Liszt

Author : Erika Quinn
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004279229
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Franz Liszt by : Erika Quinn

Download or read book Franz Liszt written by Erika Quinn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of the musician Franz Liszt contributes to our understanding of national identity formation and its interaction with cosmopolitanism. Liszt exemplified the nineteenth-century quest for subjective definition and fulfillment. Seeking to gain agency, authority, and community, Liszt experimented with various subject positions from which to forward his goals. The stances he selected, anchored in ideas about nation, religion, and art, allowed him to retain his cosmopolitan sensibility while making specific aesthetic and creative claims. Quinn’s analysis of Liszt’s correspondence and musical criticism, as well as of contemporary reviews of his performances, compositions, and essays, demonstrates the lack of a nationalist exclusivity in Liszt’s life was a historical phenomenon rather than a personal quirk as previous scholarship has often claimed.

E. M. Forster and Music

Author : Tsung-Han Tsai
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108952445
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis E. M. Forster and Music by : Tsung-Han Tsai

Download or read book E. M. Forster and Music written by Tsung-Han Tsai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the political resonances of E. M. Forster's representations of music, offering readings of canonical and overlooked works. It reveals music's crucial role in his writing and draws attention to a previously unacknowledged eclecticism and complexity in Forster's ideological outlook. Examining unobtrusive musical allusions in a variety of Forster's writings, this book demonstrates how music provided Forster with a means of reflecting on race and epistemology, material culture and colonialism, literary heritage and national character, hero-worship and war, and gender and professionalism. It unveils how Forster's musical representations are mediated through a matrix of ideas and debates of his time, such as those about evolution, empire, Britain's relationship with the Continent, the rise of fascism, and the emergence of musicology as an academic discipline.