“” Can we only love Wagner today despite ? To answer this question, Timothée Picard recalls that music is not “ in itself, anti-Semitic or nationalist ». The Wagner encyclopedic dictionary that he directed opportunely demonstrates it.
After the success of “ All Mozart “And” All bach », In the Bouquins collection, it is another publisher, Actes Sud, which pursues, with this Wagner encyclopedic dictionary, the idea of putting a great composer in original perspective. What to convince us that a dictionary ultimately allows better to approach the universe of a creator than a biography. Nearly 2500 pages, six million signs, 1,400 entries written by around thirty specialists under the leadership of Timothy Picard, a young Wagnerian already very recognized, and devoted to the most varied subjects: biographical elements, certainly, but also interpreters of works, Characters of operas, contemporary composers, writers and poets liable to Wagner, etc. As if the ambition of this dictionary should marry the aim, totalizing itself, of the Wagnerian project.
Even more than all the composers who claimed to be him (Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, to cite some), Wagner is the one that has aroused the most passions, entrances and reactions of rejection-we have moreover Difficult to imagine, today, the virulence of debates around Wagnerism, that this term designates compositional processes, dramaturgical principles, a poetics or a philosophical thought. In France, the positions of each other radicalized with the war of 1870, then diminished from 1914, Paris – which became an undisputed center of artistic influence – opening up to Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and their emulator. The most passions and the most misunderstandings, too. From Wagner, it was said that he was the one on whom the greatest number of pages had been written … with the exception of Jesus Christ and Napoleon. Legend too beautiful to be true: if Wagner holds a record, it is good to be the one on whom the most myths and legends have been propagated, and we can regret the absence of notice “ myth ” Or “ legend “, Who could have done the share of things.
Over the entrances, the enlightened amateur like the fervent will be happy to wander. He will be invited to read the monograph of Martin Gregor-Dellin Richard Wagner, breast leben, breast jahrhundetsto discover the pages that Nerval, Baudelaire, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Mallarmé, Romain Rolland, Suarès, Louÿs, Valéry or Gracq wrote on Wagner, to penetrate the network of literary and artistic correspondences that his work weaves, and Detangle, in the background, the cultural, political and aesthetic issues it reveals. It is not, far from it, the first guide dedicated to Wagner in French. Fayard had for example published in 1988 a Wagner operas guideunder the direction of Michel Pazdro (reissued in 1994), followed, in 1998, of a Rasted Guideunder the direction of Barry Millington – two works deepening the knowledge of Wagner and allowing to take the measure of the genius of the composer. But in addition to its elegant presentation – Bible format and, for sure, bedside book – this Encyclopedic dictionary To the advantage of addressing enthusiasts and neophytes, and above all, to multiply the angles under which our curiosity can approach it, showing an obvious ease of looming correspondence, points of convergence or opposition, and to spot significant simultaneities.
This sum that is both exhaustive and accessible gives all the biographical keys (“ family relationships “,” Occupied posts ), Deals with technical musicological questions (“ harmony “,” Piano (music for) “, Scholars (“ Wagnerian studies “,” Wagnerian journals “), Iconoclasts (“ Boredom (Wagner Source d ‘) »), And happily manages to mix history of reception and history at all: see in particular the notices» Create after Wagner ? “,” antiwagnerism “,” Wagnerian dramaturgy “,” Wagnerian recording (History of the) ». And also authorizes some detours to regions generally left aside by musicologists: “ Ken Russell “,” Cinema (theoretical reflection »), The question of kitsch, advertising – as well as the influence of Wagnerism on the Universe fantasywhose Rings De Tolkien is one of the examples.
In afterword, Timothée Picard wonders: “ Can we love Wagner today that despite ? To answer this question, he starts from a simple idea and yet too often forgotten – music is not “ in itself, anti-Semitic or nationalist ” -, draws a parallel between the reception of Wagner in Germany and that of Verdi in Italy -“ What to say, for example, of the national and reactionary “Verdi-Renaissance” of the 1930s in Italy ? That post-Resorgimento nationalism of Verdi and the fascinating nationalism of the thirties are as linked as those of Wagner and the Nazis ? ” – To finally argue that” Wagner and Wagnerism are not entirely contained in Nazi recovery “But that it is difficult, however, to repeat, as some do,” Until tension the tightness of the world in which Wagner gravitates and his work in relation to that where their most detestable thuriféraires have evolved ». This questioning finds a particularly acute resonance at a time when the Paris Opera presents to its audience a new production of the Tetralogy. Especially since the staging, signed Günter Krämer, takes the side of revisiting some of the symbols of European nationalism: in this regard, represented last season (2009-2010), Rhine gold and the Walk were not always in lace ; In 2010-2011, the options selected for Siegfried And The twilight of the gods Will they be more convincing ?