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The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy
by Bryan Magee: Opera News Review

by Marion Lignana Rosenberg

In an essay published in January 2002 in The New Republic, historian Daniel Jonah Golhagen expressed astonishment that anti-Semitism continues to be “minimized” and “cordoned off” in discussion of “subjects to which it is centrally relevant.” Alas—for it is a book with many strengths, dealing with an inherently fascinating topic—Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy is a painful example of this tendency. Magee, a distinguished scholar and broadcaster, author of the acclaimed Aspects of Wagner, allows his study to come undone by his worshipful attitude toward Wagner and his works, and by his sometimes simplistic handling of complex historical and cultural issues.

The Tristan Chord’s table of contents warns of trouble to come, with “Wagner and Anti-Semitism” lopped off and relegated to an appendix. Magee draws a sharp distinction between the composer’s personal loathing of Jews and any possible anti-Semitism in his works, maintaining that “there is not really anything anti-Semitic to see” in Wagner’s operas. Though few, I think, would reject his contentions out of hand, Magee’s shoddy way of defending them undercuts their credibility.

He resorts to ad hominem attacks, dismissing the writings of an unnamed member of the Wagner family (great-grandson Gottfried, presumably) as analogous to “the emotional outbursts of teenagers.” He makes the desperate argument that since Wagner was “the most compulsively self-explanatory” of artists but never described any of his characters as examples of Jewish treachery, they cannot possibly be construed as such. (Magee, who earlier writes of “the divergence between Wagner’s conscious intentions and his artistic achievement” in the Ring, knows better than to invoke the intentional fallacy.) Similarly, he scolds his opponents for “reading things into the operas from outside” and warns readers against viewing Wagner’s anti-Semitism through the “distorting lens” of the Holocaust. One would expect from an expert in philosophy at least a nod to the notion that the meanings of a work of art are, in part, created by its audience, and that it may not be possible (or even ethically desirable) for interpreters to “rise above” their historical location.

The Tristan Chord has other shortcomings: no footnotes or bibliography and limited engagement with current Wagner literature; bloated and repetitive prose; and relatively skimpy analysis of such major works as Lohengrin, Tannhaüser and Der Fliegende Holländer. The incessant proselytizing for Wagner and his operas (“positively gargantuan,” “colossal and oceanic,” “nowhere left to go in any available categories of human insight or understanding”) is tiresome and unnecessary given the composer’s unchallenged stature.

On the other hand, Magee’s accounts of the Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal stories and their philosophical dimensions are insightful and beautifully written, and generalist readers will welcome his accessible (if sometimes schematic) presentations of Feuerbach, Schopenhauer and others whose thought informed Wagner’s life and art. (Here, too, let the reader beware: Magee downplays the importance of Gobineau, treats the thorny issue of the composer’s Christian belief in a cursory manner, and offers a trivializing overview of Nietzsche’s critique of Wagner.)

Overall, despite the author’s obvious qualifications for dealing with his subject, I would rate The Tristan Chord a missed opportunity: slapdash and tendentious, best read in conjunction with studies by Carolyn Abbate, Barry Millington and other scholars keen to both the surpassing beauties and the grim undercurrents of the master’s works.

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