"Wagnerism" with Alex Ross
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Joshua Weilerstein
4.9 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2020
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week I got to cross off a Sticky Notes bucket list item by interviewing the best-selling author and critic Alex Ross. We talked about his incredible new book Wagnerism, discussing Wagner's influence on just about every artist/thinker of his time and into the future, his anti-semitism, and more. We also talked about how people understood Wagner, and how they understand him today. Talking to Alex Ross allowed me to understand how one composer's music could create so much beauty, and so much destruction.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and I'm a sticky notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Wilerstein, I'm a conductor, and I'm the artistic director of the Lozan Chamber Orchestra in Luzon Switzerland. |
| 0:18.0 | This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of |
| 0:24.5 | incredible music. Before we get started I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors |
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| 0:46.0 | Every rating and review helps more people find the show, and it is greatly appreciated. |
| 0:50.0 | This week, I got to cross off a sticky notes bucket list item by interviewing Alex Ross, the best-selling author of The Rest is Noise, one of the greatest books about classical music of all time. |
| 1:02.0 | He also is a critic and writer for the New Yorker and has a new |
| 1:04.7 | book called Wagnerism. And it is absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants |
| 1:11.2 | a music lesson, a history lesson, and a journey through the turbulent |
| 1:14.8 | Fendice-Echle period and beyond. |
| 1:17.6 | We talked about a lot of things in this interview from Ross's ability to draw different threads |
| 1:21.9 | into one narrative whole, Wagner's unbelievable |
| 1:25.2 | influence on just about every writer, composer, thinker, and politician, his anti-Semitism, and |
| 1:30.4 | how people understood him, which I think is the most fascinating thing of all because |
| 1:34.8 | everyone understood Wagner in their own way, which led of course to both beauty and destruction. |
| 1:41.3 | I'm quite ambivalent about Wagner, as many of you know, but I devoured this book, because |
| 1:46.6 | it's about more than Wagner. It's about art, creation, influence, and also about modern times |
| 1:52.0 | as well. This week I'm going to be shuttling back and forth |
| 1:55.3 | between Liverpool and London, conducting neoclassical works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, |
... |
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