Das Judenthum in der Musik

WAGNER, RICHARD

J. J. Weber

Leipzig

1869

FIRST EDITION in book form

The brilliant composer Richard Wagner makes the charge in this blatantly anti-Semitic text, that the Jew is bereft of true artistic creation and to admit the Jew into the world of art would result in pernicious consequences. It has been suggested that Wagner's anti-Semitic rages were motivated by jealousy of his contemporary, the conductor Giacomo Meyerbeer. The book is one of the first formulations of racial anti-Semitism. See P.R. Mendes-Flohr and J. Reinharz, Jewry in Music, in: The Jew in the Modern World (1980), pp. 268-71