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Not the book of linked topical essays I was expecting but a huge, sprawling examination of everyone affected by Wagner both during his lifetime and after. Can you write about Wagner without becoming “Wagnerian?�� Apparently not. In this case, encyclopedic isn’t necessarily a virtue. Ross has to rely on the secondary sources and potted histories because he has so much ground to cover. (His lens is almost always biographical which enforces its own limitations.) The result is a study that is too thin for the specialist and too diffuse for the general reader.

Also, just asking: we now have the technology to embed audio (and visual) clips in e texts. Is not doing so a rights and expense issue? As it stands, there is something weird about the ongoing attempt to render music into words. Of course, one of the reasons music mystifies (in both the common and philosophical senses) and is seen by some as a higher language, is because it’s non verbal.