Wagner in England: Four writers before Shaw.
Item
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Title
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Wagner in England: Four writers before Shaw.
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Identifier
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AAI9732950
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identifier
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9732950
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Creator
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Muir, Theresa.
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Contributor
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Adviser: L. Michael Griffel
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music | Mass Communications | Journalism | Literature, English
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Abstract
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This project examines Wagner's critical reception in 19th-century England, through a study of four writers: James W. Davison, Joseph Bennett, Francis Hueffer and William Ashton Ellis. These four represent the full range of Wagner reception in England during the composer's lifetime.;James W. Davison (1813-1885) was the music critic of The Times (London) from 1846 to 1878. Davison was long Wagner's adversary in the English press. In 1876, he attended the first Ring cycle in Bayreuth, and had a remarkable conversion. For the next several years, he supported Wagner's works, then mysteriously resumed a stance of robust ridicule.;Joseph Bennett (1831-1911) was the music critic of The Daily Telegraph. Bennett defended Wagner from irrational or uninformed attacks. Yet in his reviews of the works, Bennett seems not to have enjoyed or approved much that he actually heard.;Francis Hueffer (1843-88) succeeded Davison at the Times. He was the first writer in England to promote Wagner to the educated public. A medieval scholar as well as a musician, he responded to the rich complexity of Wagner's works, and was well equipped to explicate them.;William Ashton Ellis (1852?-1919) abandoned medicine for the study of Wagner. He founded and edited The Meister, the London Wagner Society's journal, wrote a massive English-language Wagner biography, and translated all of Wagner' s prose writings.;These four critics' writings about Wagner reveal not only that the composer was the talk of the English musical scene for forty years before Shaw's The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), but also an evolution of artistic values in nineteenth-century England.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
