COSIMA WAGNER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 10 (Supplement)

COSIMA WAGNER.

A FINE BIOGRAPHY. One of the most ambitious musical books of the year is the biography of Cosima Wagner, by Richard Count Du Moulin Eckart, which has recently been published in an English translation by Catherine Alison Phillips. The book is a thorough and moving human document of this woman who played such an important part in the musical life of the nineteenth century, and who has been subjected to much incredibly malicious contumely and scorn from many Writers. Irrespective of the virtues of her character Cosima Wagner is shown in an entirely new light, and much of the action of this daughter of Liszt in leaving her husband, Hans von BuloW, in order to live with Wagner, must be reviewed in .the light of new facts which have been revealed by the author.

Quoting from many letters and intimate diaries, the author clarifies a great deal of Cosima's doings, and in additions reveals the truth of her relations with Wagner, von Billow, Ludwig King of Bavaria, Nietszche, and other, prominent people. In the words of Ernest Newman, who writes a fine introduction to the book, the great value of the work is that it lifts the whole Wagner-Bulow-Cosima story out of the commonplace of a mere struggle of two men for the possession of a woman, and shows the inner significance of tho amazing story. The book itself shows only too clearly the folly which attends judging a person's action before all the facts have been recorded. Cosima's perception that her influence would serve to shield Wagner from the brutal world and the weaker part of himself, and her devotion to him in their subsequent years together, is shown with a depth of insight which is thoroughly 'convincing. Apart altogether from the personal interest contained in its vindication of Cosima, the hook is a valuable study of European music circles in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The writer's style is a fascinating one, and his powers of description make the book enjoyable to the general reader as well as to the music lover. "Cosima "Wagner," by Richard, Count Du Moulin Eckart (Knopf).