Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy

Richard Wagner's great-grandson Gottfried Wagner, born after the end of World War II, was taught to worship his great-grandfather as a cultural ancestor of all of Germany. Richard Wagner inspired a generation of philosophers, cultural critics, and politicians. Perhaps no one took Richard Wagner's polemics more to heart than Adolf Hitler, for whom the musician was a foundational influence. In Gottfried Wagner's memoir, Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy, Hitler is an inescapable presence, as he was in Gottfried's family--one of the many specters haunting the Wagner estate, though young Gottfried wondered if he was the only one who could see them. One afternoon he discovered old photographs and oil paintings of Hitler among the family memorabilia. Warned never to mention the pictures to anyone, he became an unwilling coconspirator in his family's secret. Gottfried Wagner reclaimed his voice during adolescence and began an impassioned crusade in adulthood to examine the hatred and racism he knew growing up in Bayreuth. Although disinherited and ostracized by his father, Gottfried has become an outspoken critic of Richard Wagner's legacy and a champion of greater understanding between Germans and Holocaust survivors worldwide. With a judicious eye for detail, a sweeping sense of conscience, and the determination to redeem himself and his past, Gottfried Wagner lays bare the sins of this powerful family.

Biographies & Memoirs

Wagner, Gottfried

Couling, Della

Arts & Literature

Picador USA

The first full length biography of Busoni since Edward Dent's in 1933, this work contains a significant amount of material unavailable to Dent, and is not written under the restrictions imposed on Dent by Busoni's widow or the demands of others still living at the time. Drawing largely on Busoni's own letters to his parents, his wife, and his many friends, and much material published since his death on Busoni himself and on others with whom he came in contact. Couling offers a truer picture of the very complex genius, a Faustian figure torn between his allegiances to Germany and to Italy, between the demands (and attractions) of a life as a celebrity virtuoso pianist and those of a composer, between the family man and the restless seeker after solitude and contemplation. Busoni was a forerunner in his ideas on what music was, is, and could be, which drew the fire of conservatives during his lifetime. His ideas on musical notation, the division of the scale, and opera were well ahead of his time, but in many cases are common practice today. Only recently has the veil of shadow been lifted from his work and ideas. Della Couling shines a deserving light on Busoni's life, ideas, and profound influence on contemporary musicology.

Ferruccio Busoni: A Musical Ishmael

Scarecrow Press

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Books by Couling, Della