Abstract
This article explores the critical reception of Richard Wagner's work in the writings of the Czech philosopher and sociologist Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Masaryk was surrounded by music throughout his lifetime, but his approach to music remained that of an educated layperson.
He rarely referred to music in his writings and when he did, it was often to highlight the prominent role of music, especially that of Bedřich Smetana, in the process of the Czech national reawakening. Masaryk became familiar with Wagner's music and writings early in his life as student in Vienna and Leipzig.
In his early On the Study of Poetic Works (1884), he echoed Wagner's rejection of the dictate of money over art. In the same year, he declared that Wagnerism should be studied as a political and religious phenomenon.
Having abandoned the internal reading of the works of art in favour of an external, sociological or ideological, approach to the arts, Masaryk formed judgments of Wagner and his art from either the political or religious point of view. On Masaryk's political reading, Wagner was a leading representative of German nationalism and the embodiment of the Prussian spirit.
On his religious reading, Wagner was one of the exemplars of what Masaryk termed 'modern Titanism'. Wagner represented for Masaryk the type of a Decadent Romantic artist and a modern dilettante whose work and thought brought together disparate religious, philosophical and artistic doctrines and styles.