Despite its one-word title, this small treatise, completed by Wagner (1813-1883) in September 1870 on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Beethoven's birth, is not only about this great composer.

It is equally about Schopenhauer and the metaphysics of will, music, dreams, and the seeing of phantoms; it is about theater, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller; it is about opera, fashion, public opinion, modern culture in other words; it is about the national culture of the Germans and the French, set against the backdrop of their warring conflict and within the context of the impending political unification of the German nation.

It is about Art in its opposition to the artistic commodity; but fundamentally and primarily, it is about Wagner himself and the philosophical defense of musical drama.

This is Wagner's most important theoretical writing after `Opera and Drama` and encapsulates the philosophical and aesthetic views of the great composer in the later period of his work and life.

This first Greek translation is made on the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]