The Wagner Clan

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Price: £20
Website: www.faber.co.uk

The legacy of Richard Wagner is associated just as much with personal and political controversy as with music. Beginning in the 1840s with Wagner himself, poverty-stricken and caught in the throes of revolutionary Europe, Jonathan Carr's history traces an incisive narrative through the scandal.

Carr explores the Wagner family's often-fractious personal relations, the lead-up to an inevitable association with the Nazi party, the establishment of a musical empire built around the Bayreuth Festival, and the resulting fallouts as infighting made the clan 'a widely scattered one'. He also re-appraises the work of the 'great man' and examines its critical reception, using interviews and personal testimonies, and balancing out the more shocking aspects of the tale with a wry wit.

Among the most interesting chapters are those dealing with Wagner's early artistic struggles and his association with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

The sections on Bayreuth also provide plenty of food for thought, as does an account of how Friedelind Wagner compromised herself in an attempt to distance the family from Hitler. Winifred's infatuation with the dictator and the influence he drew from Houston Stewart Chamberlain makes for compelling, if disturbing, reading.

Finally Carr, in bringing the ultimate Wagner 'cycle' right up to date, leaves the reader much like the book's principal players: caught in the wake of a man who remained uncompromising in the way he lived his life and pursued his art. Simon Haworth

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