Below is Stephen Follows’ entry for Solti in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Solti, Sir Georg (1912–1997), conductor, was born György Stern in Vérmezö utca, in the Buda district of Budapest, on 21 October 1912, the younger of the two children of Moricz (later Móric) Stern, a businessman originally from Balatonfökajár in southern Hungary,…
Born on this date. It’s worth giving a listen to this curated bunch of podcasts presented under the auspices of the BBC’s “Composer of the Week” series. As the one and only Bernard Williams wrote: “You can have a well-formed, deep relation to Western music while passing Wagner’s works by, finding them boring or not…
Scruton, Grayling, Janaway, Tanner and Deathridge each present a short episode on the philosophical influences on Wagner. anthony graylingchris janawayClassical musicGerman Idealismmichael tanneroperaRichard WagnerRoger Scrutonromanticism
Chose your digital format of “The Case Of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem” made available by Project Gutenberg. Of course, one should also give a close listen to this version of Parsifal from Bayreuth 2016. And yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what business had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic simplicity,” that…
Roger stylishly and lucidly outlines the timelessness of The Ring’s significance — especially salient to our troubled current times. aestheticsconsciousnessDer Ring des Nibelungenfreedommusicpolitics and religionpolitics of faithpolitics of skepticismReligionRichard WagnerRoger Scruton
New York Review of Books November 2, 2000. My point here is not to reinstate the distinction between the work and the man, which I have already said is not a helpful device in Wagner’s case. The point is just that one cannot decide in advance, either positively or negatively, what facts about the man,…
NYT Review: here is the full production in three parts. Jonas KaufmannParsifalWagner
Having being posted on Phil-L listserv this piece is bound to attract a lot of attention – Paul Heise is quite an exceptional character. It was only a few days ago that I made reference here to Feuerbach. (This is one of the best photos of Roger I’ve come across – it brings to mind my…
manwithoutqualities 