Famous Wagner Book Re-issued

Wagner As Man And Artist, by Ernest Newman (Golloncz, 450 pp., English price 30/-.

A landmark was erected in the history of musical criticism and biography when Ernest Newman's exhaustive study Wagner as Man and Artist, which has now for many years been out of print, was first published in 1914. The scholarliness of the author's approach to Wagner's theory of his art, to his practice of that art, and to the contradictions to be found between the two, is rivalled only by the exemplary thoroughness with which he has explored the most obscure aspects of the great composer's life.

Mr Newman, by combining the information found in Wagner's Correspondence with material derived from the composer's autobiography (a work containing many serious inaccuracies consistencies has succeeded in presenting a most detailed picture of Wagner's rather unattractive character, a picture whose objectivity is unimpaired by Mr Newman's veneration of Wagner the Musician.

Although this book is primarily one for the serious student of Wagner, the dilettante, who has sufficient enthusiasm to digest this at times somewhat solid study, will not fail to profit richly. This is, indeed, the definite study of Wagner, and admirers of the great composer should not fail to consult it. The house of Victor Gollanez is to be congratulated on the service it has done to the musical world in re-issuing the second and final edition (1923) of this famous book.