Wagnerism

Wagnerism Plot Summary

Introduction

On a cold February day in 1883, Richard Wagner died in Venice, leaving behind not just a revolutionary body of musical works but the beginnings of a cultural phenomenon that would reshape the artistic and political landscape of the modern world. The funeral gondola that carried his body along the Grand Canal marked not an end but a beginning—the transformation of a controversial composer into a cultural icon whose influence would extend far beyond the opera house into literature, painting, philosophy, and ultimately, the darkest chapters of 20th-century politics. Wagner's legacy represents one of history's most fascinating and troubling case studies in the relationship between art and politics. His revolutionary musical innovations and concept of the "total artwork" inspired creative minds from Baudelaire to Joyce, from Kandinsky to Coppola. Yet the same visionary works that expanded the boundaries of human expression also provided inspiration for nationalist and totalitarian movements, culminating in their appropriation by the Nazi regime. By tracing this complex journey from artistic revolution to political exploitation, we gain crucial insights into the power of cultural mythology to shape society, the dangers of aesthetic politics, and the ethical questions that arise when brilliant art emerges from problematic creators. These lessons remain urgently relevant in our own era of cultural polarization and resurgent nationalism.

Chapter 1: Revolutionary Beginnings: Wagner's Artistic Vision (1848-1876)

The revolutionary year of 1848 marked a crucial turning point in Richard Wagner's life and artistic development. As barricades rose across Europe and old regimes trembled, the 35-year-old composer joined the Dresden uprising alongside anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, distributing revolutionary pamphlets and watching the city burn. When the revolution failed, Wagner fled to Switzerland as a political exile, carrying with him radical ideas that would transform art forever. This period of exile proved creatively fertile, as Wagner developed his most ambitious theories while living in poverty, dependent on the generosity of friends and patrons. During these years of exile, Wagner articulated his revolutionary concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk or "total artwork"—a fusion of music, poetry, drama, and visual spectacle that would transcend the fragmentation of modern society. In influential essays like "Art and Revolution" and "The Artwork of the Future," he positioned art as a vehicle for social transformation, critiquing the commercialization of culture under capitalism and envisioning a new kind of communal artistic experience that would unite a fragmented society. Simultaneously, he began work on his monumental four-opera cycle "The Ring of the Nibelung," a sweeping mythological narrative about power, love, and the corruption of the natural world that would take him 26 years to complete. Wagner's musical innovations were as revolutionary as his theories. He developed the leitmotif system—recurring musical themes associated with characters, objects, or ideas—creating a complex musical language that could express psychological depth and narrative continuity. His expansion of harmony, particularly in "Tristan und Isolde," pushed tonality to its limits, opening pathways that would eventually lead to the atonal experiments of the 20th century. Wagner's orchestration, with its unprecedented richness and color, transformed the sonic possibilities of the symphony orchestra, while his approach to vocal writing created new demands for singers who could combine dramatic intensity with musical stamina. The composer's fortunes changed dramatically in 1864 when the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria became his patron, rescuing him from financial ruin and providing resources to realize his ambitious projects. This royal support enabled Wagner to complete his major works and eventually build his own festival theater in the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth, designed specifically for the performance of his operas. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus, with its revolutionary features including a hidden orchestra pit and democratic seating arrangement, embodied Wagner's vision of a new kind of theatrical experience that would focus attention entirely on the stage and create a quasi-religious atmosphere for the audience. When the first complete Ring cycle premiered at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival in 1876, it represented the culmination of Wagner's revolutionary ambitions. Cultural luminaries from across Europe and America made the pilgrimage to this small Bavarian town, including Emperor Wilhelm I, King Ludwig II, philosophers, composers, and writers. Though critically acclaimed, the festival was a financial disaster that left Wagner exhausted and in debt. Yet it established Bayreuth as the sacred center of a new cultural movement that would soon be known as "Wagnerism"—a phenomenon that would extend far beyond music to influence virtually every aspect of modern culture. By 1876, Wagner had transformed from revolutionary exile to cultural institution, though tensions remained between his radical artistic vision and his growing conservatism in politics. The contradictions in his legacy were already becoming apparent: the former revolutionary now enjoyed royal patronage; the critic of capitalism created a commercial enterprise around his works; the champion of German culture incorporated influences from French, Italian, and even Asian traditions. These contradictions would only deepen after his death in 1883, as his artistic legacy became entangled with the political currents that would shape the catastrophic century to come.

Chapter 2: European Transformation: Symbolism and the Wagner Cult (1876-1900)

The quarter-century following the first Bayreuth Festival witnessed an extraordinary proliferation of Wagner's influence across European culture. In France, despite lingering anti-German sentiment after the Franco-Prussian War, Wagner inspired a fervent cult among Symbolist poets and painters. Charles Baudelaire's influential 1861 essay on Tannhäuser had established the template for French Wagnerism, describing the composer's music as a "revelation" that expressed "the tumult of human dreams and passions." By the 1880s, Stéphane Mallarmé, Édouard Dujardin, and Téodor de Wyzewa were publishing the Revue Wagnérienne, applying Wagnerian principles to poetry and developing theories of literary symbolism that would transform modern literature. Visual artists similarly fell under Wagner's spell, creating dreamlike, mythological works directly inspired by his operas. Painters like Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Fernand Khnopff sought visual equivalents for Wagner's musical effects, using color and form to evoke the same emotional states produced by his music. In Belgium, a particularly intense school of Wagnerian Symbolism emerged, while in Britain, Pre-Raphaelite painters like Edward Burne-Jones found in Wagner's medieval legends a kindred spirit to their own aesthetic medievalism. These visual interpretations of Wagner often emphasized the mystical and erotic elements in his works, transforming his music dramas into dreamscapes of desire and transcendence. The phenomenon of "Wagnerism" extended far beyond artistic circles into broader social and intellectual life. Wagner societies sprang up in major cities across Europe and America, organizing concerts, lectures, and study groups dedicated to the master's works. Pilgrimages to Bayreuth became a cultural rite of passage for the European intelligentsia, with the festival evolving into a quasi-religious experience under the direction of Wagner's widow Cosima. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, once Wagner's close friend and advocate, captured this quasi-religious aspect of Wagnerism even as he broke with the composer, writing that "Wagner sums up modernity. There is no way out, one must first become a Wagnerian." Wagner's influence penetrated deeply into literature, transforming narrative techniques and thematic concerns. Marcel Proust incorporated Wagnerian leitmotifs as a structural principle in his monumental novel "In Search of Lost Time," while Thomas Mann explored the decadent aspects of Wagnerian aesthetics in early works like "Buddenbrooks" and "Death in Venice." In Vienna, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal incorporated Wagnerian themes into their explorations of psychological interiority. These literary appropriations of Wagner often focused less on his specific musical techniques than on his approach to time, memory, and the unconscious—elements that would become central to modernist literature. The cultural politics of Wagnerism grew increasingly complex during this period, as the composer's works became battlegrounds for competing ideological interpretations. Wagner's antisemitic essay "Jewishness in Music," republished in 1869, cast a troubling shadow over his reception, particularly as antisemitism intensified across Europe. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908, published his influential "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" in 1899, synthesizing Wagnerian aesthetics with racial theories to produce a comprehensive worldview that would later influence Nazi ideology. Yet simultaneously, many Jewish intellectuals and musicians, including Gustav Mahler and Hermann Levi, remained devoted Wagnerians, creating a complex dynamic that reflected the broader tensions of European cultural identity. By 1900, Wagner had become not just a composer but a cultural institution whose influence extended into virtually every aspect of modern life. His vision of art as a quasi-religious experience capable of transforming society had inspired a generation of artists, writers, and thinkers to reimagine the boundaries of their disciplines. The phenomenon of Wagnerism demonstrated how a single artistic vision could permeate an entire culture, creating new modes of perception and expression. Yet it also revealed the dangers of aesthetic politics, as Wagner's works became vehicles for nationalist and racialist ideologies that would have devastating consequences in the century to come.

Chapter 3: Global Expansion: Wagner Beyond German Borders (1900-1914)

The early twentieth century witnessed Wagner's transformation from a European phenomenon into a global cultural force. In the United States, Wagner's operas became centerpieces of the Metropolitan Opera's repertoire under the leadership of German-born conductors like Anton Seidl and Alfred Hertz. The 1903 American premiere of "Parsifal," breaking Bayreuth's monopoly on the work, became a major cultural event that attracted social elites and sparked heated debates about art, religion, and copyright. American Wagner societies flourished in major cities, while wealthy patrons like the Vanderbilts and Morgans demonstrated their cultural sophistication by supporting Wagner productions and attending Bayreuth. Wagner's influence extended beyond the concert hall into American architecture and design. Louis Sullivan, the pioneering architect of the modern skyscraper, incorporated Wagnerian principles of organic unity into his buildings, while his protégé Frank Lloyd Wright acknowledged Wagner's influence on his concept of "organic architecture." The 1893 Chicago World's Fair, with its grand "White City" designed by Daniel Burnham, embodied the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal in its unified architectural vision. These adaptations of Wagnerian aesthetics to American contexts demonstrated how his ideas could transcend their German origins to inspire new forms of artistic expression in radically different cultural environments. In Russia, Wagner's reception took on distinctive characteristics shaped by the country's complex relationship with Western European culture. Russian Symbolist poets like Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely found in Wagner a kindred spirit for their mystical explorations, while composers from Tchaikovsky to Scriabin absorbed Wagnerian techniques while transforming them through Russian musical traditions. The Ballets Russes, under Sergei Diaghilev's direction, created productions that adapted Wagner's concept of the total artwork to dance, most notably in Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (1913), which, though stylistically distant from Wagner, nevertheless reflected Wagnerian concepts of ritual, myth, and the fusion of arts. In Japan, the Meiji era's openness to Western influences included an enthusiastic reception of Wagner. Japanese musicians studied in Germany and returned home with Wagner scores and recordings, while translations of his libretti appeared in literary journals. By the early 20th century, Wagner performances became markers of Japan's cultural "modernization" and integration into the Western-dominated international order. Yet Japanese intellectuals also found resonances between Wagner's mythological world and their own traditional narratives, creating hybrid interpretations that reflected Japan's complex negotiation of modernity and tradition. The global spread of Wagnerism revealed a paradox at the heart of the composer's legacy. Though Wagner himself had promoted a nationalist vision of art rooted in Germanic tradition, his works proved remarkably portable and adaptable across cultural boundaries. This universality stemmed partly from the mythological dimensions of his narratives, which addressed fundamental human experiences of love, power, sacrifice, and redemption. It also reflected the psychological depth of his character portrayals, which transcended specific cultural contexts to explore universal aspects of human consciousness. As Wagner's music traveled across cultural boundaries, it was reinterpreted through local lenses, taking on new meanings and associations far removed from its original context. By 1914, Wagner had become a truly international cultural phenomenon, his influence extending across continents and artistic disciplines. His works provided a common aesthetic language for artists working in diverse traditions, while his theories of the total artwork anticipated modern multimedia experiences. The Bayreuth Festival attracted pilgrims from around the world, becoming an international cultural institution rather than merely a German national shrine. This global Wagner cult demonstrated the composer's unprecedented cultural reach, which extended far beyond music into literature, visual arts, architecture, philosophy, and even politics. The outbreak of World War I would dramatically transform Wagner's international reception, as his music became entangled with nationalist politics and military conflict. German troops marched to Wagner's music, while Allied nations debated whether to ban performances of his works as "enemy culture." This politicization of Wagner foreshadowed the even more extreme appropriations that would emerge in the interwar period and under the Nazi regime. Yet the global foundations of Wagnerism had been firmly established, ensuring that his influence would survive even the catastrophic conflicts of the 20th century to remain a vital force in world culture to the present day.

Chapter 4: Dark Appropriation: Wagner and the Rise of Fascism (1914-1945)

The period between the outbreak of World War I and the collapse of the Third Reich witnessed the most troubling chapter in Wagner's posthumous influence. As Europe descended into unprecedented conflict, Wagner's music became weaponized for nationalist propaganda. In Germany, "The Ride of the Valkyries" accompanied recruitment posters, while defensive fortifications on the Western Front were named the "Siegfried Line" and "Wotan Line." Wagner's music became the soundtrack for what Kaiser Wilhelm II called a "struggle between two Weltanschauungen"—the Germanic worldview against Anglo-Saxon materialism. This militarization of Wagner stripped his works of their artistic complexity, reducing them to sonic symbols of German power and destiny. The Weimar Republic period (1919-1933) saw competing interpretations of Wagner emerge in a culturally vibrant but politically unstable Germany. Progressive directors like Leopold Jessner and Erwin Piscator created modernist productions that emphasized the revolutionary aspects of Wagner's works, particularly the Ring cycle's critique of power and corruption. At the Kroll Opera in Berlin, conductor Otto Klemperer and designer Ewald Dülberg presented stark, modern interpretations that challenged traditional nationalist readings. Meanwhile, the Bayreuth Festival, reopened in 1924 under the leadership of Wagner's son Siegfried, became increasingly aligned with right-wing nationalism, with swastikas and Nazi uniforms visible among the audience even before Hitler's rise to power. Adolf Hitler's obsession with Wagner has been extensively documented and represents the most extreme appropriation of the composer's legacy. From his youth in Linz and Vienna, where he attended numerous Wagner performances, Hitler saw in Wagner's mythological worlds a template for his own political fantasies. After gaining power in 1933, Hitler made Wagner the musical centerpiece of Nazi cultural policy, attending the Bayreuth Festival annually and developing a close personal relationship with Winifred Wagner, the composer's English-born daughter-in-law who ran the festival. Under Nazi patronage, Bayreuth received substantial government funding and became a showcase for the regime's cultural ideology. The Nazi appropriation of Wagner operated on multiple levels. Most obviously, they exploited the composer's antisemitic writings, particularly his notorious essay "Judaism in Music," to provide cultural legitimacy for their racial policies. More subtly, they reinterpreted Wagner's operas to align with Nazi ideology. "Die Meistersinger" was presented as a parable of German cultural renewal against foreign influence, while "Parsifal," despite its Christian elements, was recast as a drama of racial purification. The Ring cycle was interpreted as a Nordic myth of Aryan heroism, conveniently ignoring its revolutionary elements and critique of power. This selective reading required significant distortion but was central to Nazi cultural politics. Wagner's music permeated Nazi mass culture beyond the opera house. His compositions provided soundtracks for propaganda films, including Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," where the "Meistersinger" prelude accompanied images of Nuremberg awakening on the morning of the Nazi Party rally. The "Ride of the Valkyries" became a staple of military ceremonies and radio broadcasts. This ubiquitous presence in Nazi public life created associations that would permanently complicate the reception of Wagner's works, particularly in countries that suffered under German occupation and for communities targeted by Nazi persecution. By 1945, Wagner had become inextricably associated with the horrors of Nazism in the public imagination. As Thomas Mann, once a devoted Wagnerian who had gone into exile, observed: "There is much 'Hitler' in Wagner." The composer's dream of art as a redemptive force had been perverted into a soundtrack for genocide. The bombing of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus symbolized the collapse of the Wagner-Nazi alliance, while the suicide of Wagner's grandson and festival heir Wieland to avoid capture by American forces marked the end of an era. The question facing postwar culture was whether Wagner's music could be separated from its totalitarian appropriation, or whether, as some argued, it contained inherent elements that had enabled such misuse.

Chapter 5: Postwar Reckonings: Reinterpreting Wagner After Catastrophe (1945-1980)

The aftermath of World War II presented an unprecedented challenge for Wagner's cultural legacy. His works, so thoroughly entangled with Nazi ideology, required radical reinterpretation if they were to survive in the post-Holocaust cultural landscape. The Bayreuth Festival, reopened in 1951 under the direction of Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang, became the epicenter of this reinterpretation. Wieland Wagner's revolutionary productions stripped away the nationalist pageantry and mythological literalism of the Nazi era, replacing them with abstract, minimalist stagings that emphasized psychological and existential themes. This "New Bayreuth" style represented both an aesthetic innovation and a political necessity—a way to perform Wagner while acknowledging the impossibility of innocence after Auschwitz. In divided Germany, Wagner became a contested cultural symbol in the Cold War. In East Germany, socialist interpretations emphasized the revolutionary aspects of Wagner's works, particularly the Ring cycle's critique of capitalism and power. The Dresden Opera maintained a significant Wagner tradition, presenting his works as part of the progressive German cultural heritage that socialism claimed to inherit. In West Germany, Wagner's rehabilitation was more complicated, tied to broader questions of German guilt and cultural identity. Thomas Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus" (1947) used a fictional composer as a vehicle to explore the "demonic" aspects of German culture that had culminated in Nazism, with Wagner as an implicit reference point throughout. The most influential postwar critique of Wagner came from Theodor Adorno, whose essay "In Search of Wagner" (published in English in 1952 but written during his wartime exile) presented the composer as a proto-fascist whose musical innovations—particularly his use of leitmotifs to manipulate audience response—prefigured modern propaganda techniques. For Adorno, Wagner's music contained both revolutionary potential and the seeds of totalitarianism. This dialectical reading influenced generations of directors and scholars, encouraging productions that brought out the internal contradictions and critique embedded in Wagner's works rather than their mythic affirmation. In Israel, an unofficial ban on public performances of Wagner's music emerged, reflecting the composer's association with antisemitism and the Holocaust. This ban became a recurring cultural flashpoint, with advocates for performing Wagner arguing for separating the art from the artist, while opponents maintained that the wounds were too deep for such separation. The conductor Daniel Barenboim would later challenge this ban, arguing that "Wagner, the person, was indeed a disgusting anti-Semite...but the music is of sublime beauty." This ongoing controversy exemplified the broader question of whether artistic works can or should be evaluated independently from their creator's political views or their subsequent appropriation. Film became a crucial medium for postwar reinterpretations of Wagner. Directors like Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, whose epic "Hitler: A Film from Germany" (1977) used Wagnerian aesthetics to deconstruct the Nazi appropriation of the composer, created complex reflections on the entanglement of German cultural history with catastrophe. More controversially, Francis Ford Coppola's use of "Ride of the Valkyries" in "Apocalypse Now" (1979) to accompany a helicopter attack during the Vietnam War both critiqued and perpetuated the militaristic associations of Wagner's music. These cinematic appropriations demonstrated how Wagner had become a cultural shorthand for both sublime transcendence and terrifying power. The culmination of postwar Wagner reinterpretation came with Patrice Chéreau's centennial Ring production at Bayreuth (1976-1980), which reimagined the cycle as an allegory of industrial capitalism and its destruction of nature. Setting the action from the Industrial Revolution to the early 20th century, Chéreau's production acknowledged the political dimensions of Wagner's work while avoiding both Nazi mythology and Cold War ideologies. This production, initially controversial but ultimately acclaimed, established a template for politically engaged Wagner productions that continues to influence directors today. It demonstrated that Wagner's works could be performed in ways that neither ignored their problematic history nor remained trapped by it.

Chapter 6: Contemporary Resonance: Wagner in the Digital Age (1980-Present)

Since the 1980s, Wagner's influence has expanded beyond traditional cultural boundaries, penetrating global popular culture in surprising ways. Hollywood composers from John Williams to Hans Zimmer have drawn heavily on Wagnerian techniques, particularly in science fiction and fantasy films. The "Star Wars" saga, with its system of character-based musical themes, represents perhaps the most successful adaptation of Wagnerian leitmotif technique for mass audiences. Similarly, the "Lord of the Rings" films, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Wagner-influenced novels, employ Wagnerian musical strategies to create their immersive fantasy world. These popular appropriations have introduced Wagnerian musical language to audiences who may never attend an opera. The digital revolution has transformed access to Wagner's works. Complete recordings and videos are available on streaming platforms, allowing listeners worldwide to experience operas that were once accessible only to those who could attend live performances. Virtual reality productions have experimented with immersive approaches to the Gesamtkunstwerk concept. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bayreuth Festival streamed performances online for the first time, reaching global audiences far beyond the traditional festival pilgrims. This democratization of access fulfills aspects of Wagner's original vision of art accessible to all, though in ways he could never have imagined. Contemporary opera productions have increasingly approached Wagner's works through postcolonial, feminist, and ecological lenses. Directors like Ruth Berghaus and Francesca Zambello have reinterpreted the Ring cycle as a critique of environmental destruction, patriarchal power, and colonial exploitation. These productions often highlight elements in Wagner's works that resonate with contemporary concerns, such as the Rhine daughters' lament for their stolen gold as an ecological protest, or Brünnhilde's defiance as feminist resistance. Such readings demonstrate the continued vitality of Wagner's works as vehicles for exploring pressing social and political questions. Wagner's reception outside Europe has evolved in fascinating ways. In Japan, where Wagner performances date back to the early 20th century, directors like Yukio Ninagawa have created productions fusing Wagnerian drama with elements of Noh and Kabuki theater. China's National Centre for the Performing Arts mounted its first complete Ring cycle in 2018, while Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles staged "Tristan und Isolde" in São Paulo with references to Amazonian mythology. These cross-cultural interpretations reveal how Wagner's mythic narratives can resonate across cultural boundaries, often finding unexpected parallels with non-Western traditions. The ethical questions surrounding Wagner's legacy remain unresolved and continue to generate intense debate. His antisemitism and its exploitation by the Nazi regime still cast a shadow over performances of his works, particularly in Israel and Germany. Yet many argue that engaging critically with Wagner's problematic legacy offers valuable insights into the complex relationship between art and politics. As the philosopher Slavoj Žižek suggests, Wagner's works contain both reactionary elements and revolutionary potential, making them powerful vehicles for exploring the contradictions of modernity itself. Wagner's influence on contemporary artists extends beyond direct musical quotation or adaptation. His concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk has found new relevance in digital media, where video games and virtual reality environments combine multiple art forms into immersive experiences. Installation artists like Bill Viola and Anselm Kiefer have created Wagner-inspired works that translate his musical-dramatic principles into visual art contexts. These diverse appropriations suggest that Wagner's aesthetic ideas continue to evolve beyond their original operatic context, finding new applications in art forms that did not exist during his lifetime.

Summary

The cultural trajectory of Wagner's influence reveals a fundamental paradox that continues to challenge our understanding of art's relationship to society. His revolutionary artistic vision—the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the expansion of musical language, the exploration of myth as a vehicle for psychological truth—transformed virtually every artistic discipline and continues to resonate in contemporary culture from Hollywood blockbusters to experimental digital art. Yet this same visionary work became entangled with dangerous political ideologies, culminating in its appropriation by the Nazi regime as a soundtrack for genocide. This tension between aesthetic innovation and political exploitation makes Wagner a uniquely revealing case study in the complex interplay between culture and power. The continuing vitality of Wagner's legacy suggests that great art transcends both its creator's intentions and its historical misappropriations, speaking to each generation in new ways. Rather than either canceling Wagner for his antisemitism or ignoring the problematic aspects of his reception, contemporary culture has found value in confronting these contradictions directly through critical engagement. This approach acknowledges both the sublime achievements and troubling shadows in Wagner's legacy, using this tension as a lens through which to examine broader questions about artistic responsibility, cultural memory, and the ethics of aesthetic pleasure. In an age of renewed nationalism and identity politics, Wagner's complex legacy offers no simple answers but rather a powerful reminder that cultural forces shape our world in ways that demand ongoing critical attention and ethical reflection.

About Author

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Alex Ross

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and became a national bestseller. It won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Creative Communication Award; appeared on the New York Times's list of the ten best books of year; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the Samuel Johnson prizes. Ross has received a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. He has also served as a McGraw Professor in Writing at Princeton University. In 2008 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. His next book, an essay collection titled Listen to This, will appear in fall 2010. A native of Washington, DC, Ross now lives in Manhattan. In 2005 he married the actor and filmmaker Jonathan Lisecki.

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The Rest Is Noise

Alex Ross

Listening to the Twentieth Century

★★★★☆4.1