Many—perhaps, most--of the respected and honored composers left little of themselves behind to speak for them except their immortal music. And that’s usually enough. But no great composer found the time to write, speculate, theorize, philosophize, and generally inflict his ideas expressed through the written word, as did Wagner. Much was brilliant and influential—and some was simply evil rubbish. His theories and the model of his own compositions changed the world of nineteenth-century opera in profound ways, brought to fruition in his great tetralogy—the Ring. >>>