On Conducting by Richard Wagner

Suggest and discuss books to read (all languages welcome!)
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Sue Anderson
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Joined: July 24th, 2008, 11:48 am
Location: Midwest, USA

Post by Sue Anderson »

Richard Wagner
On Conducting, A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music, (second edition) 1897. https://archive.org/details/onconductinguebe00wagn/page/n5/mode/2up

Richard Wagner's essay On Conducting was originally published, in German, in nine short installments in 1869 -1870. In the English translation, the essay totals just 108 pages. The short sections would make good reads for the Short Nonfiction Collection viewtopic.php?t=96980

The style is pithy: sample "Looking back upon my earliest youth I remember to have had unpleasant impressions from performances of classical orchestral music... I was puzzled by the apparent flabbiness of Mozartian Melody..."

A new (2021) English translation of On Conducting was reviewed in the March 16, 2023 issue of the London Review of Books, which is where it came to my attention. Per the LRB reviewer, "Wagner is mainly concerned with Beethoven: the Overture to Egmont, the 'Eroica', the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies."
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