Amazon.com description: Product Description: This German-born composer was quite possibly the most controversial musical figure of the 19th century. A great literary, philosophical, and political man as well as a musical talent, he pursued his artistic aims with ruthless determination in his public and private life as well as through his many critical and theoretical writings. His contribution to the development of the German Romantic opera included the training of a more dramatically powerful type of opera singer and the extension of thematic development. His life and works arouse passions like no other composer's and his works are hated as much as they are worshipped. The New Grove Wagner is a fascinating guide to this challenging, yet stimulating, composer. About The New Grove II Composer Biography Series:These new, fully re-written editions of some of the most popular titles in the New Grove composer biography series last published in the 1980s build on the enormous success of those books, offering fresh new insights drawn from the most recent scholarship. Focusing on some of the greatest and most influential composers of the last few centuries of the millennium, these titles are derived from the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Most excitingly, as they will be published before the dictionary, they offer sneak previews of some of the best, most up-to-date entries in this landmark, end-of-the-century edition of the most authoritative, comprehensive, and widely respected music encyclopedia in the world. In addition to the re-written editions of The New Grove Wagner, The New Grove Haydn,and The New Grove Mozart comes for the first time The New Grove Stravinsky, the first in a series of New Grove composer biographies that will cover the great masters of the 20th century, never before published as individual volumes. This series is edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. Both men live in the United Kingdom and have edited The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition.