“Geck brings to his book on Wagner’s ‘life in music’ a rare combination of profound knowledge of Wagner and his work and an unfailingly intelligent capacity to select and to discriminate, so as to produce a clear account of all the operas and music dramas in the context of Wagner’s life and changing ideas. . . . People who would like to know more about Wagner, and people who have loved his music for years but would like to know more about why they do, will find a great deal in this book to enjoy and to admire.”

Tablet

“Geck describes a Wagner who is grounded, focused and even cautious, a savvy realist and ironist rather than a flamboyant, flailing ideologue. . . . Suffused with his readings of contemporary productions of the operas, Geck’s musical analyses are succinct and superb, and he is skilled at finding clues to Wagner in the interstices of his career, like the early rarity ‘Rienzi’ or what he calls ‘the revolutionary drafts’ of never-completed works that Wagner envisioned before embarking on the ‘Ring’ cycle.”

New York Times

“As an editor of Wagner’s Complete Works, Geck brings a deep familiarity with the composer to his task. He seems to have read everything Wagner ever wrote and, what is more, a substantial portion of everything that has ever been written about Wagner.  Geck is thus able to document his claims about Wagner’s life and works with apt quotations, often drawn from obscure corners of the composer’s correspondence and recorded conversations. . . . The result is a multifaceted investigation of Wagner’s achievement as the supreme master of music drama.”

Weekly Standard

“Geck adds to the crowded field of literature on Richard Wagner with this intriguing exploration of the composer’s life and thought as exemplified by his music. . . . An excellent biography.”

Library Journal

“Geck, one of the most distinguished contemporary German musicologists, knows an enormous amount about every aspect of Wagner’s life and works, but this book is . . . much more about the works than the life. . . . The book is best read . . . as a fairly loose-knit series of improvisations on themes that Geck has been mulling over for most of his life.”

Literary Review

“Martin Geck’s new biography deftly weaves both familiar and unfamiliar facts about the composer to create a striking, fresh portrait, or rather a tapestry, shot through with insightful remarks on musical matters. The contributions of language, harmony, leitmotif, voices, instrumentation, and stage production to the elusive goal of a ‘total artwork’ are illuminated from the perspective of Wagner’s own life and writings as well as that of many notable contemporaries. Geck engages the politics of Wagner’s legacy honestly and without polemics. A series of brief interchapters on key Jewish figures in the composer’s biography and in his reception offer a novel, constructive approach to the vexed theme of Wagner’s anti-Semitism. The scholarly frame of reference is truly international. Geck succeeds brilliantly in synthesizing the complex phenomenon of Wagner in a thoroughly approachable yet consistently provocative study.”

Thomas S. Grey, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Wagner

“Martin Geck’s major new study of Wagner’s oeuvre moves at a fast but engaging pace. In a remarkably fleet translation by Stewart Spencer, the book is studded with historical insights, not least because Geck capitalizes on little-known diary entries, letters, and documentary evidence that imbue his readings with genuinely fresh perspectives. The author’s erudition is worn lightly, and his provocative forays into the so-called Jewish Question—by treating a succession of Jewish figures in the Wagnerian universe in separate ‘contrapuntal’ chapters—encourages a contextual view of the composer’s work at the same time that it grapples with what we might treasure in Wagner today.”

Laurence Dreyfus, author of Wagner and the Erotic Impulse

"Geck succeeds in what he originally set out to do: to uncover the ways in which Wagner still holds a poignant mirror to the face of our own age and time. A better incentive to commemorate the composer’s 200th birthday can hardly be imagined."

Nexus Institute

“Geck’s biography is commendably self-reflexive. He points to Wagner’s lack of distinction between ‘life’ and ‘art’; he shows awareness of the nature of history as writing, even briefly discussing ‘language games’ and Hayden White’s rapprochement between history and poetry. Such an approach is perfectly possible, indeed desirable, for a dangerous, radical Wagner. . . . Geck’s fine synthesis deserves to be read, especially as beautifully translated by Stewart Spencer.”

History Today