Richard Wagner's Zurich: The Muse of Place (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Hardcover – Illustrated, 1 Sept. 2007

One of Wagner's most interesting published writings about how songs should be written was an article which William Ashton Ellis translated but did not include in the Prose Works, putting it instead in an Appendix to his Life of Wagner. The reason is that much of the article consists of praise for some songs written by one Baumgartner, a Zurich composer who has not lasted the test of time. Clearly Wagner wanted to do Baumgartner a good turn, & to do so without being insincere. So who was Baumgartner, were there others like him in Zurich & how much (if at all) did they influence Wagner's own work? This book addresses this question & furthermore sheds some light on the genesis of the Ring. For example: the Wagner-Jahrbuch for 1907 documents that in 1850 when at the top of the Rigi, Wagner experienced the natural phenomenon normally referred to as the "Brocken spectre" because also seen there. I had not seen this reference before. Wagner's experiences in the Alps were fairly clearly influential in forming his conception of the Ring (another example which I expect had an impact, not quoted here, is the near-total eclipse of 28 July 1851). Here is another fact: Semper's original design for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus exists not only in drawings but in concrete reality, since it was used for the Parliament building in Zurich after it was discarded for Bayreuth. That means that a chamber in the Parliament looks like a theatre, & indeed a landscape was painted where the stage would have been - of the intoxicating view from Seelisberg, where Wagner insisted on being when he composed Walkure Act II. Such gems as these far outweigh the fact that (as ever) the author has opinions that the reader may not share.

This book is an outstandingly detailed and original view of Wagner's time in Zurich, turning many common assumptions about Wagner, mid-nineteenth century Zurich, and Wagner's relationships with the citizens of Zurich upside down. It is especially revealing about Mathilde Wesendonck, who was patroness not only to Wagner but to a succession of composers, apparently flirted with them as part of her role as 'muse', while nevertheless remaining faithful to her husband. Wagner famously dramatized her as both Sieglinde and Isolde (and her husband as Hunding and King Mark, but her emotions were not roused in quite the same way as Wagner's. She did not have an affair with Wagner, as is often imagined. In fact Wagner himself seems to have misunderstood the nature of their relationship, and made a fool of himself on a grand scale when he tried to persuade Mathilde to elope with him. This is an unusually rewarding book, as the author has gone to a great deal of trouble to find out new things about an episode on Wagner's life that perhaps we already thought we understood. I did not know, for instance, that after Wagner was forced to leave Zurich, Mathilde tried hard to persuade Brahms to take his place as her 'guest', but Brahms wisely turned the siren down.