We are delighted to announce the publication of Wagner: The Complete Experience and Its Meaning to Us by Paul Dawson-Bowling.
Across three volumes, Dawson-Bowling introduces, deepens and enriches the Wagner Experience for the newcomer and seasoned Wagnerian alike. Expounding in colourful style the stories, the sources and the lessons of Wagner’s great dramas, the author offers unusual insights into the man, his works and their meaning while grappling with the music’s almost occult power.
The book is the second edition of The Wagner Experience and Its Meaning to Us (Old Street Publishing), complete with many new insights and three newnew chapters unveiling Wagner’s rarely examined early operas Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi.
Before taking us through Wagner’s operas, Dawson-Bowling explores Wagner’s formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality; also Wagner’s first wife Minna and her immense but unrecognised impact. This sets up lenses through which the reader may more accurately view not only Wagner the man but, more importantly, his stage works since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner’s dramas is a direct one.
Uniquely drawing on a lifetime’s experience in General Medical Practice, the author brings us great wisdom, humanity and psychological understanding to his study on the life and work of Wagner with especial reference to the thought of Carl Jung.
Above all, this book draws out the vital lessons which Wagner’s extraordinary, didactic dramas can over us. It reveals their lessons as life-enhancing: capable of transforming our society, our lives and ourselves. There is no other book about Wagner quite like it.
Reviews of the first edition
‘The Wagner Experience and Its Meaning to Us is a unique production by a passionate and curious Wagnerite who has devoted himself to a lifetime quest for the ultimate truths of the composer’s life and work.’
Simon Callow, Being Wagner
‘Rarely do I encounter a book about Wagner that is written from a stance of complete and intelligent openness to his message, and it came as a surprise, therefore, to encounter Paul Dawson-Bowling’s The Wagner Experience and Its Meaning to Us, a penetrating survey in two volumes by a doctor whose life has been changed by Wagner in just the way that mine has been.
Professor Roger Scruton, The Times Higher Education’s ‘Books Of 2014’
‘In every way remarkable … communicates essential truths and modes of understanding Wagner… a wonderful culmination to a lifetime of devotion, and it deserves to be widely read and bought in large numbers. Anyone reading [it] will have a well-informed, sympathetic, perceptive understanding of Wagner without any neglect of the more difficult aspects of his personality – the egocentricity, the mood swings, the anti-Semitic prejudice.’
Professor John Derry, The Bruckner Journal
‘A stand-alone study which introduces, deepens and enriches the Wagner Experience for the newcomer and the seasoned Wagnerian alike. Before taking us through the great dramas themselves, Dawson-Bowling discusses Wagner’s formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality; also his first wife Minna and her immense but unrecognised impact. This sets up better lenses through which to view not only Wagner the man and his less appealing aspects, but more importantly his stage works, since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner’s dramas is the direct one.’
The Wagnerian
‘Impressive …. throws light both on Wagner as a social being and on the works . . . Dawson-Bowling has much of interest to say about Elisabeth, and indeed Venus, in terms of sexual experience from a woman’s point of view. The readability of The Wagner Experience is much enhanced by the clear typeface, with a generous number of superbly produced colour illustrations.’
Barry Millington, The Wagner Journal
‘There have been literally hundreds of books written about Wagner; but there is no other book quite like this. Paul Dawson-Bowling is a retired General Practitioner from an era when this meant ‘family doctor’, and he takes us gently by the hand and guides us lovingly through this enormous undertaking of relating the tempestuous life of Wagner with great enthusiasm, wisdom, humanity and psychological understanding. It is written in a language which is elegant, beautiful, and understandable to all. One feels that a very dear friend is guiding you through this journey of Wagner’s life, with a desire to share his own love and admiration for the composer in order that you may also share his incredible Wagner Experience.’
Dame Gwyneth Jones, The Wagnerian & Wagner News
‘Dawson-Bowling is exactly the kind of wise and well-travelled Wagnerian who knows how to give persistent problems in Wagnerian interpretation a distinctive twist, and never more strikingly than when he reads Beckmesser as a caricature of exaggerated German rectitude and pedantry, rather than as an increasingly deranged Jewish cantor.’
Professor Arnold Whittall, The Musical Times
‘Throughout the book original angles of approach provide freshness. The biographical chapters in particular provide a doctor’s insight into Wagner’s psychological development and the influences upon his work which can be traced back to his earliest childhood and beyond. [And in the opera chapters] the author throws medically-informed illumination upon many of Wagner’s characterisations in a 21st-century handbook which is likely to become as indispensable as that of Ernest Newman. The distillation of a lifetime’s work which has clearly been a labour of love, [and is] beautifully illustrated.’
Roger Lee, Wagner News
Wagner: The Complete Experience and Its Meaning to Us is available from all good bookshops and on Amazon.