Richard Wagner: Self Promotion and the Making of a Brand (review)

Abstract

Richard Wagner: Self Promotion and Making of a Brand. By Nicholas Vazsonyi. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni - versity Press, 2010. [xii, 222 p. ISBN 9780521519960. $99.] Music examples, bibliography, index. In an 1807 letter, Wordsworth quoted Coleridge's dictum that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create by which he is to be relished. This aphorism gets to heart of an issue that composers as well as writers were forced to confront in nineteenth century. Those who self-identified as progressive figures frequently found way to success beset with roadblocks of various kinds: scarcity of opportunities to secure performances, especially of large-scale works; recalcitrant musicians and singers who often were not up to demands of scores; critical hostility, which was a near constant element in responses to advanced music; vested interests whose favor needed to be curried; as well as usual competition for audiences with other forms of entertainment. Small wonder that matter of creating a taste for one's works occupied so much of these composers' time and effort. This might be done by journalistic proselytizing (Berlioz and Schumann), or by personally directing exemplary performances (Liszt and Mahler). In his monograph, Nicholas Vazsonyi demonstrates that Richard Wagner employed an unprecedented variety of means to win acceptance for his art; or, to rephrase this in business speak he adopts throughout, Wagner undertook a multi-fronted advertising campaign to establish and promote his brand. That he was so successful is what makes a study of his methods so interesting. This accessibly written study highlights extent to which Wagner's activities can be interpreted as deliberate efforts at selfpromotion. The book follows a chronological path, starting in chapter 1, Image, with his unsuccessful Parisian years. Wagner is seen to have instrumentalized his failure by establishing in his short stories and reviews from period idea of financial disinterestedness as a necessary component of true artistry (p. 12). This trait is aligned with Germanness, a mental configuration which is expressed in various jingoistic jibes at French and Italian traditions (p. 19). Beethoven, as archrepresentative of Germanic art, is conscripted to Wagner' s nascent project, most obviously in short story Eine Pilger - fahrt zu Beethoven (1840), where Beetho ven endorses Wagner's dismissal of operatic practices of day in favor of a yet-to-be achieved union of instrumental and vocal styles. However, as Vazsonyi demonstrates in chapter 2, Publicity (perhaps most compelling chapter of this study), even performance of Ninth Symphony in Dresden in 1846 can be read as an act of self-advertisement: Wagner's multifaceted involvement, which included mounting a carefully orchestrated press campaign and was capped by his appearance on podium, ensured that his name was indelibly linked with his great German forebear. Only a few years previously, he had established a potent association with another Germanic icon through his involvement with ceremonies that brought Weber's remains from London back to Dresden. Nowadays it is common to describe Wagner as prime mover in this repatriation, but this is demonstrably false. The inflation of Wagner's role has come about thanks to his having left the definitive account of event (p. 51). This is a vivid illustration of how dull chronicle of history can get overwritten by a compelling narrative, or how spin can [shape] our historical memory (pp. 59, 62). Chapter 3, Niche and Branding, focuses on years around 1850, time of Zurich writings in which Wagner established new parameters for his art. The openly propagandistic nature of these essays has been much discussed, although no one previously has framed this in such overtly commercial terms. …