Ellen Key och Richard Wagner

Abstract

The Swedish writer Ellen Key (1849–1926) covered a wide range of subjects in her writings and had a keen interest in art and literature. However, she was extremely sparing with comments on music, even though she had an interest in the art form. She mentions Richard Wagner sporadically in her books, linking him to Friedrich Nietzsche. Therefore, the surviving accounts of her visit to Bayreuth and the Festival in August 1906 are of great interest. In Bayreuth she saw several productions: Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. In her own travel notes and in a long letter sent home to her friends in Sweden, she describes her impressions, her admiration for Cosima Wagner and her ambivalent attitude to the Ring, which she thought was too long, contained too many repetitions and was too complicated, while at the same time she believes that the music is sometimes divine. One cannot interpret her statements as meaning that she was a convinced Wagnerian, but she was not insensitive to the works either. However, her overall impression of the Festival is positive.