Wagner, Durkheim and the Search for Transcendence: A Study of the Bayreuth-Festival

The annual Bayreuth Wagner-Festival is perhaps the most famous and certainly the most controversial event in classical music history. On the one hand Wagner’s music is associated with humanism and a quest for spiritual and aesthetic transcendence. He likened attending Bayreuth to a pilgrimage and many concertgoers have also used this religious analogy. Yet any easy acceptance of Bayreuth’s mission is compromised by the taint of Wagner’s anti-semitism and the festival’s profound connections to National Socialism. Drawing on historical sources, field observations and interviews the paper first looks at the various ways that individuals and institutions have managed this deeply polluted legacy of evil while continuing to seek aesthetic transcendence. It goes on to identify a number of routine and profane threats to Bayreuth’s attempts to capture the sacred.