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III.

Given the concept of “tendency,” it is easy to see an intimate relation between the work of Wagner and of Nietzsche. (more…)

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“I simply said to you that Wagner was the greatest man who ever lived. I didn’t say that he was God himself, but I was tempted . . .”

— Pierre Louÿs (letter to Debussy)

“‘Let us look one century ahead, and let us suppose my attack against two thousand years of unnaturalness and the desecration of man should succeed. (more…)

The great Wagner Machine–Siegfried and Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung

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It heaves and groans. It shimmies and clicks. One holds one’s breath during the best parts, hoping it will not malfunction and ruin the whole evening. One fears for the performers, halfway expecting it to devour them.

(more…)

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“Your themes — they almost always consist of even values, of half, quarter, eighth notes; they are syncopated and tied, to be sure, but nonetheless persevere in what is often a machinelike, stamping, hammering inflexibility and inelegance. (more…)

1,720 words

Portuguese translation here

He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.  (more…)

A night at the opera: Adolf Hitler with Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner

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Part 4 of 4

Wagner and National Socialist Germany

Richard Wagner has long been reviled by Jews as the intellectual and spiritual precursor to Adolf Hitler who, according to William Shirer, once declared: “Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner.”[1] (more…)

Arno Breker, Bust of Richard Wagner

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Part 3 of 4

Wagner’s Music Dramas as Coded Anti-Semitism

T. W. Adorno and Wagner biographer Robert Gutman began a modern Jewish intellectual tradition (more…)

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Part 2 of 4

Wagner’s Racial Thinking

In addition to his concern about the baleful Jewish influence on German culture, Wagner, under the influence of Darwinism and the French racial theorist Arthur de Gobineau, became increasingly concerned about the fate of the White race generally. (more…)

Richard Wagner, 1813–1883

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Part 1 of 4

Richard Wagner was a one man artistic and intellectual movement whose shadow fell across all of his contemporaries and most of his successors. Other composers had influence; Wagner had a way of thinking named after him. It has been claimed that “never since Orpheus has there been a musician whose music affected so vitally the life and art of generations.”[1]  (more…)

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Bryan Magee
The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000

Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (just Wagner and Philosophy in the UK) combines two of my favorite subjects into an informative, stimulating, and highly readable book. Creativity and critical reflection are two very different activities, and excellence in one is seldom accompanied by excellence in the other. (more…)

Ary Scheffer, “Francesca da Rimini,” 1854

454 words

In 1902, Gabriele D’Annunzio published Francesca da Rimini, a tragedy based on Boccaccio’s elaboration of an episode in Dante’s Inferno.

Francesca was the Daughter of Guido I da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. (more…)

2,373 words

Bryan Magee
Aspects of Wagner
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988

In preparation for the Wagner bicentennial on May 22, I have been listening to, watching, and reading about Wagner non-stop. But one’s enjoyment of art and ideas is magnified by sharing them with others. So I am going to get you in the Wagner spirit, or drive you crazy trying, (more…)

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Today is the 130th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s death in Venice. May 22, 2013 is the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth. To mark this occasion, Counter-Currents/North American New Right will run a symposium on “Our Wagner.” The symposium will consist of essays, reviews, poems, podcasts, and videos on Wagner’s life, work, and ongoing significance for the metapolitical project of the North American New Right and the New Right in general. (more…)

Jean Sibelius, 1865–1957

1,361 words

French translation here

Tapiola is the last major work composed by Jean Sibelius. It was commissioned by the New York conductor Walter Damrosch at the beginning of 1926 and was premiered on Boxing Day of the same year. Damrosch asked for a symphonic poem with the choice of subject left to the composer. For inspiration Sibelius turned, as he so often did, to the Kalevala, the collection of Finnish folklore that looms so large in his work.

(more…)

Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound

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Call him what you will — a paranoic, a fascist, a zealot — but remember one thing about Ezra Pound: he was the first serious writer to bring attention to Vivaldi’s work. A big fan of early music in general, Pound was one of a select few who helped resuscitate the long-neglected composer’s music.  (more…)

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Podcast here

Welcome to Counter Currents Radio. I’m your host Greg Johnson. With us today is Jonathan Bowden. First of all, I need to ask you is it “Boden” or Bowden?

JB: Depends where you are in England basically, if you are in the North of England you say “Boden,” but if you are from the South of England, and I’m from the South of England, you say Bowden.  (more…)

Counter-Currents Radio

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 27 
Jonathan Bowden's Last Interview, Part 1

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The platform of this year’s “Yukoku-Ki,” November 25th, 2012, Tokyo

3,668 words

The Keynote Speech at the 42nd Yukoku-Ki in Tokyo, November 25, 2012

Translated by Riki Rei

(more…)

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“Rome is the boundary between East and West. South of Rome, the East starts, and north of Rome, the West starts. This border-line now, runs exactly over the Forum Romanum. There’s my house, this explains my life and my music.” — Giacinto Scelsi

The music of Giacinto Scelsi is still relatively obscure, which is in keeping with the reclusive and esoteric character of the composer himself. (more…)

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“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit.”[1] — Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) is today universally celebrated as the consummate exponent of nineteenth century German opera, whose developed Romantic idiom helped to usher in the musical innovations of Modernism in the early twentieth century. (more…)

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