On conducting

Just as Richard Wagner´s music deeply stirred the musical world and inspired a generation of composers, so his many performances on the podium with Europe´s leading orchestras galvanized 19th-century audiences and shaped a generation of conductors. Wagner wrote on this theories of conducting and musical interpretation, and in 1869 he published the famous essay reprinted in this volume, a work that abundantly reveals both the wellsprings of his musical genius and the qualities that made him a figure of controversy.