Manet, Wagner, and the Musical Culture of Their Time

How did the tumult caused by German composer Richard Wagner result in the first modernist painting? In the first full-length book dedicated to the study of Edouard Manet and music, art historian Therese Dolan demonstrates that the 1862 painting Music in the Tuileries represents the progressive musical culture of his time, heretofore read by scholars predominantly through the words of Charles Baudelaire. Dolan sees in this painting's radical style the conceptual shift to modernism in both painting and music, a transition that, she convincingly argues, received a strong impetus from Manet's Music in the Tuileries and Wagner's controversial Tannhäuser, which premiered the previous year. Supplemental to analysis of the painting, Dolan incorporates discussion of texts by Theophile Gautier, Champfleury, and Baudelaire who are represented in the painting. This book incorporates studies of the major artistic, literary, and musical figures of nineteenth-century France. It represents an important contribution to an understanding of French culture in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, a period of intense literary, artistic, and musical activity that formed the crucible for modernism.

Contents: Introduction: Manet’s soundscape; Wagner in Paris: the music of the future; Listening to color and seeing sound: Baudelaire, Wagner and Manet; Transposing and composing; Gautier, Wagner and Manet; Realism and music: Champfleury, Courbet, Wagner and Manet; Ebony keys: Fantin’s Venusberg scene and Manet’s Balloon; Serious spoofing: Offenbach, Wagner and Manet; Facing the music: Wagner and Manet; Conclusion: MéloManet; Bibliography; Index.

Therese Dolan is Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, USA.