Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays

US: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Paperback. Good. Saint Beethoven!. . . . He was clad in somewhat untidy houseclothes, with a red woolen scarf wrapped round his waist; long, bushy grey hair hung in d isorder from his head, and his gloomy, forbidding expression by no means te nded to reassure. . . ." When Wagner published the first collection of his writings he was pleased t o admit how well he wrote, even when young. Historians and musicians ever s ince have agreed that some of his most important and revelatory works were written when he was first establishing his reputation in Paris and Dresden. Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays provides translations of the firs t two volumes of his Gesammelte Schriften (1871-1873). These works reveal h ow committed he was to emphasizing Germanic qualities in his music and defi ne his opposition to the music of France and Italy. In addition to his influential essay on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, this vo lume includes two early essays on Germanic myth-"The Wibelungen" and "The N ibelungen-Myth"-his homages to Carl Maria von Weber, and the complete text of his autobiographical A German Musician in Paris, with its famous "Pilgri mage to Beethoven." The volume concludes with his "Plan of Organisation of a German National Th eatre" (1849), founded upon Beethoven's moral music. Listeners "inspired by Beethoven's music have been more active and energetic citizens-of-State th an those bewitched by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti." Throughout these es says, as throughout his life, Wagner knew how to provoke. This edition includes the complete volume 7 of the 1898 translation commiss ioned by the London Wagner Society. Editorial Reviews From the.