exploring wagner's the ring of nibelungs

Exploring Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung

Exploring Wagner’sThe Ring of the Nibelung

“Der Ring des Nibelungen”

Music composed by Richard Wagner

Dramas written by Richard Wagner

The Rhinegold, “Das Rheingold”Premiere in 1869 at the Hoftheater, Munich

The Valkyrie, “Die Walküre”Premiere in 1870 at the Hoftheater, Munich

Siegfried,Premiere in 1876 at Bayreuth

Twilight of the Gods, “Götterdämmerung”Premiere in 1876 at Bayreuth

Adapted from the

Opera Journeys Lecture Series

by

Burton D. Fisher

Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Published © Copywritten by Opera Journeys

www.operajourneys.com


“What defies for ordinary people understanding, isthe truth that one man could carry in the totality ofthat design, could somehow construe from the firstnote to the last, a coherent immensity of a complexitywhich defied analysis.”

George Steiner, University of Cambridge

Contents

Inspiration for The Ring Page 3An historical perspective Page 4The clamor for reform PageWagner the revolutionist PageRomantic period PageFeuerbach and iconoclasm PageCultural nationalism and myths PageMyths and allegory PageRing’s development PageProse sketch PageNew impulses: music drama PageLetimotifs and counterpoint PageSchopenhauer and Will PageRedemption PageWhat the Ring says PagePrologue to the Prologue Page


Inspiration for The Ring

Wagner’s intent in his music-drama colossus, TheRing of the Nibelung, was to create an allegorydeconstructing the moral values of his 19th centurycontemporary world: the Ring expressed Wagner’smoral outrage at his society’s political, social, andeconomic values.

Europe’s industrialization and the malaisefollowing the French Revolution nurtured a fiercelycompetitive struggle for political and economicpower: the old order of inherited title and propertybattled for power against new forces that benefitedfrom the industrial-capitalist system; as a result, therewas an even greater disparity between wealth andpoverty, and there were deeper divisions in the socialorder; much of European society had become moreprofoundly than ever divided into the dominators andthe dominated.

Wagner became a cultural pessimist whoperceived a world of decadence, immorality, andinjustice; he viewed the degeneration in the prevailingsocial order as driven by an obsessive lust for materialwealth and power. The Ring’s purpose was to scornsociety’s vices and follies, but during its 26-yearevolution from inspiration to achievement, Wagner’ssocial critique became more profound and visionary:the social and political injustices that are allegoricallyportrayed in the first music drama, The Rhinegold,resolve with the destruction of the old order inTwilight of the Gods; however, the catharsis evokedby the cataclysm in the drama’s final momentsnurtures optimism and the hope that the world hasbeen redeemed and a new order of lofty ideals andelevated conscience will replace humanity’s inherentevil.

An historical perspective

Wagner was viewing his decadent world at themidpoint of the 19th century, but the roots of theperceived turmoil essentially began with the FrenchRevolution and the flowering Industrial Revolution.The previous century’s Enlightenment, the inspirationfor the French and American Revolutions, awakened


the soul of Europe to renewed optimism: they hopedprogress would consolidate egalitarian ideals, and thatthe industrialization of Europe would decrease thedisparity between wealth and poverty.

Napoleon arose from the ashes of the FrenchRevolution and ostensibly crusaded for progress inhuman dignity and freedom in his battle to destroythe oppressive autocratic tyrannies of the Holy Romanand Austrian Hapsburg Empires, a goal that wasfinally achieved one hundred years later at theconclusion of World War I.

Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813 amid theclamor and devastation of the “Battle of the Nations,”Napoleon’s defeat by the victorious Grand Alliance:the coalition of England, Russia, Prussia and Austria.After their victory, the European powers soughtrevenge against the liberal ideals of the FrenchRevolution, restore the ancien regime, and consolidatetheir power.

Napoleon and France had not only threatened thesocial order of Europe, but in the aftermath of war,had endangered Europe’s political balance of power.Each nation was determined to consolidate itsterritorial gains: the Hohenzollern King of Prussia,Frederick William III, sought to strengthen Prussianpower and offset the traditional dominance of Austriain German affairs by acquiring the Kingdom ofSaxony, a reward justified by the treacherouscollaboration of Saxony’s King Frederick AugustusI with Napoleon; the Austrian Hapsburgs, weakenedbadly by Napoleon, were prompted by PrinceKlemens von Metternich to create a newlystrengthened France that would balance fears ofRussian opportunism.

In 1815, after a quarter-century of devastatingwar, the Congress of Vienna convened to imposestability and a lasting peace settlement with France:they preserved France as a great European power byconceding to reduce it to its “ancient” rather than”natural borders; Germany remained a Confederationbut was reorganized by consolidating its original 300states into 39 sovereign states, ostensibly providingit with a new strength that would represent a barrieragainst any future expansion by France into theRhineland. With the balance of power established, abulwark of powerful states was created to thwart their


fear of possible future expansion of the Russiancolossus into Western Europe, as well as thereemergence of a threatening France.

The clamor for reform

After the Congress of Vienna the QuadrupleAlliance of Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and Russia,remained the unwanted guardians over most of theEuropean states. However, the masses responded tothe undercurrents of the French Revolution andNapoleon’s defeat with an impassioned clamor forsocial and political reform, the abolition of poverty,and the inauguration of economic freedoms. It wasalso the beginning of romantic nationalism in whichnationhood and self-determination, the idea of beingkin, numerous, and strong, was viewed as the meanstoward achieving social and political progress. TheIndustrial Revolution had transformed society throughits rapid changes in methods and mechanization inwhich the focus was on machine rather than land.And in that transition new classes of society emerged;the bourgeoisie and middle classes became the newclaimants to the old legitimacy, and a large class ofthe working poor who were ignorant and illiterate,clamored for social progress.

During the years 1815 to 1848, the rulingEuropean monarchies promised social and democraticreforms but failed to provide them. Ultimately,frustration, anxiety, and an uneasy politicalequilibrium exploded into social unrest andrevolutionary riots in virtually every major city inEurope: these were armed revolts by liberals,democrats, and socialists that were countered withfierce and oppressive repression by the ruling powers.

The uprisings were twofold in purpose: firstly,they demanded social and political reform, andsecondly, they were outcries for national identity, self-determination, and liberation from alien rule; foreignoppressed countries such as Greece, Czechoslovakia,Holland, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Italy, andparticularly, the German Confederation of States.Nevertheless, the monarchies remained the unwantedcustodians of nations, and were unhesitant to inviteneighboring allied armies to intervene and quell


domestic uprisings; the “Metternich System,” createdby the Congress of Vienna.

In Saxony, where the thirty-five year old RichardWagner was kapellmeister at the Dresden CourtOpera, social unrest and nationalist fervor explodedin 1848. An uprising was sparked by the politicalactions of the harsh, oppressive, indignant, andtyrannical “foreign” ruler of Saxony, the Prussianking, Friedrich Wilhelm IV; the Saxons becameexasperated after the Prussians, who were fearful andparanoid about threats from the east, appeased theRussian Czar with a peace treaty; a détente that theSaxons interpreted as an utter betrayal.

Wagner the revolutionist

Wagner became consumed by Germannationalism as well as utopian dreams for social andpolitical progress. He wrote, “In 1848 the fight forMan against existing society began…thedetermination of Man is to achieve, through evergreater perfecting of his spiritual, moral and physicalpowers, a higher, purer happiness.” However,unfulfilled promises of democratic progress promptedhis disgust and disappointment, and he reacted withskepticism and despair, ultimately venting hisfrustration by becoming an active and impetuousrevolutionary.

In particular, Wagner’s cultural pessimism anddisillusionment were incited by his perception ofcorrupt and abusive political power, nouveau richematerialism, and the degeneracy of society’s values.He was also embittered by his personal failures: hewas broke, debt-ridden, and frequently fled to othercities to escape creditors. At the Dresden State Opera,he became frustrated by the pettiness of the politicallyappointed opera management who refused to producehis newest opera, Lohengrin; perhaps a form ofcensorship since the opera strongly ennobled Germannationalism through the character of King Henry theFowler, the historic king of Saxony.

Wagner found a solution and panacea to hisfrustrations by advocating socialist ideology: hebecame a violent anti-capitalist, and audaciouslyadvocated socialism, communism, and the abolition


of capital. (Marx, born five years after Wagner in1818, published his Manifesto in 1848.) Now a rabidsocialist and nationalist, he joined radical groups likethe Hegelians who protested religious and intellectualvalues, and befriended the notorious Russiananarchist, Mikhail Bakunnin, who incited him toterrorism: Wagner manufactured and distributedgrenades, and wrote anonymous newspaper articlesand inflammatory political tracts that endorsed armedinsurrection and revolt.

All of Wagner’s personal anxieties, revolutionaryideology, German nationalism, and anti-Prussianism,inspired him to participate in the 1848 Dresdenuprising against the government. The revolt led tobloodshed after Prussian troops were summoned toquell the rebellion, and Wagner was forced to flee toZurich where he started twelve long years of exileand banishment from Germany; he was disheartenedand shattered by the failure of his liberal and socialdreams.

But perhaps the final blow to his utopian idealismand his dreams for social progress occurred while hewas in exile in Zurich. In December 1851, LouisNapoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and sonof Napoleon’s brother, transformed France’s pseudo-democracy into a dictatorship, capitalizing on mostFrenchmen’s desire to restore order after their owndisturbances of 1848. After Napoleon’s election asPresident of France he eloquently expounded theideals of liberty, swore to uphold the constitution,and ingeniously created the illusion that the massesparticipated in his government through universalsuffrage. Nevertheless, from the outset Napoleonplanned to overthrow the Republic and create a newempire. With a stroke of the pen, France’s SecondRepublic was transformed into a presidentialdictatorship in which Napoleon was endowed withfull powers to institute martial law and dominatelegislative matters; Prince Louis Napoleon becameNapoleon III, the totalitarian dictator of the SecondEmpire.

As Wagner read about Louis Napoleon’s coupd’etat, his political optimism of 1848 transformed intoresignation and deepening despair; the apocalypticevents in France made him even more skeptical andpessimistic about future social and political progress,


and he concluded that society was unconscionablyevil and unjust. The exiled ex-revolutionary firebrandof Dresden became consumed to voice his moraloutrage and protest: his cri de coeur would be anartistic gospel that would portray the political andsocial horrors of his contemporary society; The Ringof the Nibelung would become Wagner’s allegoricaldramatization of human evil, immorality, and injusticethat he would endow with the philosophicalprofundity of Goethe and Shakespeare.

In 1849, six months after writing the first prosesketch for the Ring, Wagner wrote an iconoclasticprognosis for Europe’s authoritarian societies: “I willdestroy the domination of one over others. I will breakdown the power of the mighty, of the law, and ofproperty. Let the madness be destroyed which givesone man power over millions, and subjects millionsto the power of one man…”

Romantic Period

Wagner’s pessimism and skepticism weresynonymous with the ideology of the Romanticmovement in art, literature, and music; a period thatcoincides chronologically with the political and socialturmoil that began with the storming of the Bastilleand the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789,to the last urban uprisings that overcame almost everymajor European city in 1848.

Romanticism represented a pessimistic backlashagainst the optimistic 18th century Enlightenment andthe Age of Reason; Rousseau’s idealistic projectionof a world of freedom and civility became viewed asa mirage and illusion. The Enlightenment envisionedegalitarian progress, but those elevated hopes anddreams became dissolved in the Reign of Terror(1892-94), Napoleon’s preposterous despotism, thedevastation of the Napoleonic wars, the subsequentpost-Napoleonic return to autocratic tyranny andoppression, and the economic and social injusticesnurtured by the Industrial Revolution.

But more than anything else, Enlightenmentdreams were shattered by the horrifying slaughtersof the Reign of Terror and the subsequent Napoleonicwars. Like the Holocaust in the 20th century, those


bloodbaths shook the very foundations of humanityby invoking man’s deliberate betrayal of his highestnature and ideals; Schiller was prompted to reversehis exultant “Ode to Joy” (1785) by concluding thatthe new century had “begun with murder’s cry.” Tothese pessimists, the drama of human history wasapproaching doomsday and civilization was on theverge of vanishing completely, while others concludedthat the French Revolution and the Reign of Terrorhad ushered in a terrible new era of “unselfish crimes”in which men commit horrible atrocities out of lovenot of evil but of virtue. Like Goethe’s Faust whorepresented “two souls in one breast,” man wassimultaneously considered great and wretched.

Romanticists sought alternatives to what hadbecome their failed notions of human progress: theywere seeking a panacea to their loss of confidence inthe present as well as the future. As such, Romanticistsdeveloped a growing nostalgia for the past and soughtexalted histories that represented vanished glories:writers such as Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas,and Victor Hugo, provided tributes to values ofheroism and virtue that seemed to have vanished intheir own industrial age. Intellectual and moral valueshad declined, and modern civilization was perceivedas transformed into a society of philistines in whichthe ideals of refinement and polished manners hadsurrendered into a sinister decadence. Those in powerwere considered deficient in maintaining order, andinstead of resisting the impending collapse ofcivilization and social degeneration they embracedthem feebly and without vigor.

Romanticists became preoccupied with theconflict between nature and human nature.Industrialization and modern commerce haddestroyed the natural world: steam engines andsmokestacks were viewed as dark manifestations ofcommerce and veritable images from hell. Naturalman, uncorrupted by commercialism, was ennobled.Romanticism sought escapes from civilization’shorrible realities: it appealed to strong emotions, thebizarre and the irrational, and in many instancesglorified instincts of self-gratification, the search forpleasure, sensual delights, and monstrous egotism.Ultimately Romanticism’s ideologically posed theantithesis of material values by striving to raise


consciousness to higher emotions and aestheticsensibilities; for the Romanticists, the spiritual pathto God and salvation was fulfilled through idealizedhuman love and freedom.

Feuerbach and iconoclasm

Much of Wagner’s thinking during hisrevolutionary period was influenced by thephilosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) to whomhe dedicated The Art-Work of the Future (1849).Feuerbach set forth his iconoclastic theories in DasWesen des Christenthums, in which he deemed allreligions, including Christianity, as anthropomorphic:God did not exist, and his supposed attributes merelyrepresented humanity’s imaginary projections of hisown attributes, or his collective unconscious. As such,religion was simply myth-making and consequentlythe supposed “divine fallibility” of church and statewas pure illusion: therefore, tyrannical authority couldno longer claim respect and was ripe for destructionand replacement by a new social order that was basedfirmly on the principles of human justice. Karl Marxhailed Feuerbach as the unwitting prophet of the socialrevolution.

Wagner fully agreed with Feuerbach’s prognosesand believed that church and state authority had aninherent unnaturalness and inhumanity thatconditioned man away from his natural humaninstincts of creativity. He also believed that manpossessed an instinctive need for mutual love andfellowship, and a need to explain himself in relationto nature; thus, man created myths, religion and art.The great myths were projections of humanity’shighest ideals and aspirations, but religion hadbecome an arbitrary system of rigid dogmas thatultimately served and supported the state: the enemyof man was the authoritarian state that opposed naturaland instinctive needs and the freedom to love.

It was Freud, who later postulated in Civilizationand its Discontents, that there was a perpetual battlebetween humanity’s instincts for life – and love –that were being destroyed by his instincts ofaggression and self-destruction: authoritarianism wastherefore a byproduct of aggression. As such, in man’s


struggle for survival the weak ceded to the strong andhis aggression repudiated humanity’s nobleraspirations: in aggression-bred authoritarianism thestrong subjected the weak and man became exploitedand abused by a privileged few who imposed theirwill on the many. But it was considered natural forinstinctive man to live in a free society, and unnaturalfor man to live in a law-conditioned, authoritarianstate whose rule was a crime against human nature,and therefore against nature itself.

Rousseau wrote: “Man was born free, andeverywhere he is in chains”, a conception thatnurtured the ideal of the “noble savage” that impliedthat “natural man” possessed virtues that had becomecorrupted by the evils of civilization. Nevertheless, itwas Feuerbach’s denunciation of authoritarianism -the tyrannical church and state, as well as man’snatural instincts for love - that receives profoundexpression in Wagner’s Ring; if anything, they areallegorically represented as the forces that opposehuman instincts and its yearnings and desires.

Cultural nationalism and myths

Essentially, Romanticists yearned for a world ofidealized spiritualism that replaced mundane values.In Germany, in particular, those desires weremanifested in volkish ideology, a prideful form ofcultural nationalism that ennobled the spirit of itspeople. Germans specifically worried thatindustrialization would displace the cultural core oftheir society: the farmers, artisans, and peasants. Theybelieved that their people possessed the esteemedvolksseele, or “folk’s soul,” which represented aspecific ethos that was shared by kindred Germansand united them through customs, arts, crafts, legends,traditions, and superstitions passed on fromgeneration to generation.

In an anthropological sense, Germans believedthey possessed a unique, if not superior Kultur;spiritual achievements in art, literature, and historythat made their volk heritage different from the restof Europe in terms of their identity, communalpurpose, and organic solidarity. Early GermanRomantics, such as J. G. Herder (1744-1803), the


author of Ideas on the Philosophy of History andMankind (1784), proposed that the volk had produceda living “folk culture,” that, despite its humblebeginnings among peasants and artisans, representedthe seedbed of German Kultur; it possessed an exaltedpersonality that was portrayed in their art, poetry, epic,music, and myth. As such, German culture wasindividual, unique, and different: it represented theirVolksgeist, “folk spirit,” and their Volksseele, “folk’ssoul.”

German’s conception of their Kultur wassynonymous with their cultural nationalism that wasthe antithesis of Zivilization: the latter, first coinedby the French, represented the world of politenessand sophistication, but also the constantly changingworld of commerce, urban society, materialism, andsuperficiality. From a nationalistic point of viewGermans were seeking a cultural renaissance and ayearning for independence from their perceivedslavish adherence to alien intellectual and culturalstandards: in particular, those French cultural valuesand their philosophes that imposed their literary andartistic values on their culture.

Romanticist Germans returned to their culturalpast by awakening their powerful mythology thatchronicled their roots and represented their vastspiritual history: Germans were a people who mayhave been divided politically into separate states butwere united by language and culture. Schiller invokedthe German cultural renaissance: Schöne Welt, wo bistdu?, “Beautiful world, where are you?” German’shistorical culture was raised to national consciousnessby writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians whorevived their neglected ancient literature, sagas,ballads, and fairy tales, believing that this vast heritageof their “folk soul” possessed virtues of naturalness,a depth of knowledge, and spiritual human valuesthat they deemed more profound than those in theirpresent material world.

Most notable were the Grimm brothers whodevoted their energies to recovering the pagan pastof the German and Teutonic peoples. At the same time,the 12th century Nibelungenlied was first translatedinto modern German, considered a spiritual epic, orGerman Iliad, that captured their ancient cultural soul.


Wagner, like many of his contemporary intellectuals,considered the Nibelungenlied saga’s central themeabout the curse of gold synonymous withcontemporary Europe’s power-madness andmaterialism. Ultimately, the Nibelungenlied wouldbecome the primary foundation for Wagner’s epicRing. Wagner envisioned that Goethe’s Faust, up tothat time their national poem, would yield its exaltedplace to his Ring that would represent the new spiritualessence of German culture.

For their cultural revival, German Romanticistsand national culturists envisioned a national theaterlike that of the ancient Greeks that would dramatizetheir spiritual and mythic heritage. Greek theater wasa form of ancient opera in which the drama wasunderscored with the emotional power of music. Thus,Wagner envisioned his music dramas as a nationalart-form that would recapture the humanisticaspirations of Greek tragedy: the national opera wouldbecome a consecrated temple of German art, aritualized form of theater that would preserve theglories of their cultural heritage, elevate spiritualvalues, redeem those who erred, and exorcise thedemons from their society. Through the greatness andprofundity of the universal themes of Teutonic myth,Wagner would restore greatness to the German spiritand soul, and his epic Ring that would be rituallyperformed at Bayreuth, would recapture the Germanvolkseele: art and politics would stride side by side.

Myths and allegory

In 1848, defeated and exiled in Zurich, Wagnerwas ready to express his personal Sturm und Drangin musico-dramatic format. He was in turmoil anddistress at the world’s deceit and treachery, that theroot of evil in all men was there lust for power, andthat humanity had become loveless: to remedy man’saggressive power-lust a total transformation of humannature was necessary and he had to destroy the oldchurch-state authoritarianism in an apocalypticcataclysm that would be redeemed by allowing the“man of the future” to emerge; a man free to satisfyhis instinctive need for mutual love and fellowship.

The Ring became an idealistic prophesy of a


possible future in which man’s aggressive power-lustwould gradually surrender to love, not necessarilyidealized sexual love or a feeling of affectionatebenevolence, but love that would become an activesocial force possessing compassion, self-sacrifice, andcreativity; humanity’s survival and salvation wouldbe achieved through a new consciousness of attitudes,beliefs, and practices.

Myths and legends represent the history ofpeoples. Although to many people myths and legendsare interchangeable, there is a distinction rooted inthe respective origins of the two phenomena. Legendsemanate more closely and more directly from recordedhistory and basically enshrine heroic deeds and events.But myths derived the moment humanity broke frominstinctive nature and rose to consciousness: the mythsexplained unexplainable internal and externalphenomena and forces that man was unable torationally understand; they became man’s attempt tointerpret “God,” creation, existence, or the mechanicsof natural phenomena for which there was noscientific explanation. Through myths, or thecollective soul of peoples and cultures, ethical andmoral foundations of societies were established.

Early Greek philosophers, as well as the OldTestament writings, speculated on the nature of theuniverse through myth, or in allegorical or symbolicterms. The vast Greek mythology contains archetypalsituations that explain the cosmos in symbolic formthat merged into religion or were ritualized to ensureremembrance; their messages were usually encodedin a cloak of causality that used occult manifestationsof charms, spells, talismans, genies, and magic rites.In Christianity, human dilemmas are likewisepresented through the conflicts of personifiedabstractions; the symbols of virtue, vice, or satan. Andfrom time immemorial men have created symbols ofglory and victory in the form of religious imageryand monuments such as sacred icons and paintings,and triumphal arches. In myths, people, things, andevents are clothed in allegory and symbolism thatachieve their effects by providing multiple layers ofmeaning.

Wagner believed that myths represented “thepoem of a life-view held in common.”; humanity’s


intuitive expression of the ultimate truths of its ownnature and destiny in symbolic form. In the RingWagner presents his pageantry of misdirectedhumanity within the framework of the classic Germanand Norse myths whose symbolism, allegory, andarchetypes represent universal human themes thatWagner noted were “true for all time”; the “distilledessence of human experience from untold generationsbefore us.”

Nevertheless, the essence of myth is the evocativepower of its symbolism. Wagner believed strongly inwhat he called “the suggestive value of myth’ssymbols” which provide the means to arrive at “thedeep truths concealed within them”: therefore, mythsprovide psychological insights and the means fromwhich to bring the unconscious part of human natureinto consciousness and awareness.

As Wagner did in Tannhäuser and Lohengrin,Tristan und Isolde, and later Parsifal, he scoured thepowerful German myths and legends where he foundthe symbolic representational sources for his Ringstory that were deeply ingrained in the Germancollective unconscious. Wagner’s purpose was not todramatize old myths for their own sake, but to interpretthrough his art the elements of their meaning that hebelieved had relevance in his own time. Therefore,he reinterpreted and adapted the myths in accordancewith his own conceptions and creative purposes,provided meaning when he thought it was lacking, ormodified them when contradictory. Ultimately theRing became a dramatic synthesis of the complexmythology of Northern Europe, but it incorporatedthe destructive social and political evils of Wagner’scontemporary society that he resolved with a hopefulprophesy for a new world order.

The ancient poets conveyed their symbolismthrough verbal imagery, and the later dramatists addedvisual imagery. Wagner’s art form would ritualizemyth’s symbolism through the addition of music.Words provoke thought but music evokes and invokesfeeling: Wagner’s theater would provide sight andmusical sound, and the mythological symbols wouldbe interprested through musical leitmotifs.


Story Development

Between 1848 and 1852 Wagner poured overTeutonic and Norse mythological sources for the Ring:the Norse Thidrek Saga and Eddas, and the GermanVölsunga and Nibelungenlied sagas. Discountingunfortunate historical overtones, “Teutonic” is not aracial but a linguistic term that identifies peopleswhose languages belong to one particular group ofthe Indo-European family: Icelandic, Norwegian,Swedish, Danish, Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, German –and English.

The Ring itself became the central allegoricalsymbol and energetic impulse of his music drama. InViking and Norse mythologies, magic Rings wereconsidered potent symbols of power, fortune, andfame, as well as symbols of destiny; in their adverseform, if corrupted by greed, they were perceived asomens of tragedy and doom.

In the sagas, three villainous forces, Gods, Giants,and Dwarfs, are locked in eternal combat, rivalsstriving for mastery over the others and ultimatelyworld domination. The Gods, Giants, and Dwarfs aredecadent and corrupt, and in the Ring, they aresymbolic representation of classes within Wagner’s19th century contemporary society.

First, a race of Giants exists. They are symbols ofthe bloated bourgeoisie of Wagner’s contemporaryworld who are incapable of rising above the lowestform of materialism, but are too indolent and toostupid to aspire to world-mastery; they desire only tolive their lives in the protection and safety of theirwealth.

Second, there is the evil Alberich, a force ofunmitigated material lust who is obsessed with theacquisition of wealth and power. It is the NibelungDwarf Alberich who renounces love and steals theGold in which riches and power are hidden. With hissuperior intelligence and cunning, he fashions the all-powerful Ring from the Gold, enslaves the Nibelungs,and forces them to amass his immense NibelungHoard; with his new-found power Alberich intendsto master the world and defeat Gods and Giants. Heis the incarnation of all forces of materialism for whichmoney is power, and he strives to become the wielderof infernal power.


Third, there are the Gods. They are the loftierspirits who bear the responsibility of rescuing theworld from the two evils that threaten it. The Godsare the incarnation of corrupt contemporary politiciansor rulers of modern states; Wotan was supposedlymodeled on the King of Saxony, Frederick AugustusI. The Gods are ordained to use their power tomaintain order and benefit the world: to “bind theelements by wise laws and devote themselves to thecareful nurture of the human race.” But the Gods (themetaphorical politician or ruler responsible for theinjustices in the world) are morally flawed, unethical,and unscrupulous, achieving peace not byreconciliation and persuasion, but by force, cunning,and deceit. Their higher world order that is intendedto evoke moral consciousness, becomes absorbed inthe evil against which they fight, and the Gods becomeas despicable and immoral as their enemies,continually elevating self-interest above conscience.

The central theme of the original Nibelungenliedis lust and greed, a universal theme of humanity.Although Wagner’s ancient sources vary slightly intheir story, certain aspects were common to all ofthem. Alberich, a Dwarf, steals the Hoard of Goldfrom the Rhine maidens, forges a Ring of power, andby upsetting the world’s balance of power, incites theGods and Giants to suppress him. The Giants, Fafnerand Fasolt, demand the Ring, Hoard, and Tarnhelmin payment for building Valhalla for the Gods, andcarry off the Goddess of love, Freyja, as ransom. Theyouthful hero, Sigurd (Siegfried), slays Fafner, whohad used the Ring’s power to transform himself intoa Dragon; Sigurd acquires the Ring and the Hoard,but with it, its dooming Curse.

Sigurd falls in love with the Valkyrie, Brynhild,winning her from the fire that protected her enchantedsleep. But Grimhild, a sorceress and Queen of theNibelungs, bewitches the hero into betraying Brynhildso he can to marry her daughter, Gudrun. Brynhildseeks revenge and the return of her honor, but is slainby the envious Nibelung dwarf brothers who seekthe Gold, Ring, and Hoard.

In those myths, curses, magic, and sorceryrepresent powerful forces of doom and destiny: heroeslike Sigurd are blessed with magical weapons and


arcane wisdom, and the God-head, Odin (Wotan), isan arch-sorcerer who wanders the world disguised asa vagrant to gather information about world events.In early sagas the Valkyries were dark angels of death,or sinister spirits of slaughter who soared over thebattlefield like birds of prey to gather chosen heroesand bear them away to Valhalla, the heavenly fortressof Odin. In later Norse myth, the Valkyries wereromanticized as Odin’s shield maidens, virgins withgolden hair who served the chosen heroes mead andmeat in the great hall of Valhalla. In the Volsung andNibelungenlied sagas, the heroine Brynhild isidealized as a beautiful, fallen Valkyrie, morevulnerable than her fierce predecessors, and in manyepisodes, she falls in love with mortal heroes. In thelater myths, the tragedy of lovers rather than heroicdeeds are highlighted; as the hero Sigurd died, hecalled to his beloved Brynhild.

Thus, the Norse and German legends and mythsprovided Wagner with his underlying thematicstructure for the Ring: he would retain their allegoricalsymbolism, but would humanize their characters tomake their story of lust, greed, and power a metaphorfor his times. Nevertheless, in many instances, Wagnerwas creating a new myth. His most classic innovationsto his story were Alberich’s renunciation of love inorder to learn the secret to fashion the Ring from theGold, and the introduction of Erda, the omniscientearth mother who awakens Wotan to his guilt.Nevertheless, Wagner’s original intent in Siegfried’sDeath, which ultimately became the final work, TheTwilight of the Gods, was that the sky god, Wotan,would receive the hero in Teutonic heaven (Valhalla)after redeeming the world by transforming it into aclassless society. However, it became Brünnhilde, anarchetypal Wagnerian heroine, who redeems the worldthrough her sacrificial suicide, eliminates the Curseon the Ring, and provides the prescription for a newworld order.

Prose Sketch

In 1848, Wagner began to write a Prose Sketchentitled The Nibelungen Myth as Scheme for a Drama,publishing it privately in 1853. By its final


transformation, the tetralogy comprised the librettoand scenario for four music dramas: the title becameThe Nibelung’s Ring, “Der Ring des Nibelungen,”and the four music dramas became The Rhinegold,“Das Rheingold,” The Valkyrie, “Die Walküre,”Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods,“Götterdämmerung.”

Wagner wrote his four texts in reverse order,beginning with Siegfried’s Death, now Twilight of theGods, and in working backwards to explain earlierevents he created the Young Siegfried which becameSiegfried; eventually, The Valkyrie and the Prologue,The Rhinegold were added. Wagner himself calledhis epic a trilogy: a Prologue followed by three musicdramas.

The music for Rhinegold was begun in 1853, TheValkyrie in 1854, and Siegfried in 1857. But halfwaythrough the second act of Siegfried Wagner laid downhis pen for nine years, writing to Liszt: “I have ledmy Siegfried into the beautiful forest solitude. ThereI have left him under a linden tree and, with tearsfrom the depths of my heart said farewell to him: heis better there than anywhere else.” Wagner hadwritten himself to a standstill and needed stimulationfrom a totally different project: Tristan und Isoldeand Die Meistersinger were composed during theinterim. It is significant that when Wagner returnedto Siegfried’s third act, his gear change is reflectedwith a blazing new creative energy; metaphorically,perhaps it represents Siegfried’s – and to an extentWagner’s - rise to consciousness and awareness.

New impulses: music drama

Between 1848 and 1853, as Wagner contemplatedand penned the libretto for his Ring saga, he wrote anumber of prose works, chief among them were Artand Revolution, The Art-Work of the Future, Operaand Drama, and A Communication to my Friends. Inthose literary works, and particularly Opera andDrama, which essentially became the blueprint forthe Ring, Wagner vented his struggle withcontemporary opera’s structure and architecture.Ultimately, he theorized new artistic impulses thatdrove him toward a new conception of opera: opera


was to become a new form of music “drama”; aglorious fusion of the power of words with theemotional power of music. (Wagner never used theterm “music drama,” a designation applied to histheories by successors, critics, and scholars.)

Specifically in Opera and Drama (1850-51)Wagner basically embellished ideas about operaticstructure that were propounded earlier by Monteverdiand Gluck. Nevertheless, he was conceiving a newtype of opera that would return to the Greek drama ashe understood it: the expression of human aspirationsand sensibilities in allegorical and symbolic form, withmusic integrated to provide the full dramaticexpression of the action. Thus, Wagner envisionedthe disappearance of the old type of opera that wasstructured with “set pieces” or “numbers” that werecreated out of purely musical forms and wereseparated by recitative.

Wagner told a friend in 1851, “I will write nomore operas”; he was announcing that as he struggledto compose the music for the Ring he was forced tobreak from traditional forms. His challenge was tolet drama run an unbroken course without holdingup the action with purely musical “forms.” As such,he envisioned a complete fusion of drama and musicin which the drama would be conceived in terms ofmusic, and the music would freely work according toits own inner laws with the drama assisting but notconstraining the music. The words had to shareequally with the music in realizing the drama and theirinflections would sound ideally in alliterative clusterswith the vocal line springing directly out of the riseand fall of the words. The voices were to give theimpression of heightened speech, or “sung drama”:what the sung words could not convey, the orchestrawould convey through ever-recurring musical themes;what Wagner called “motifs of memory” that werelater termed leifmotifs.

In the Ring Wagner attempted to put theory intopractice. His drama did not adapt to conventionaloperatic forms, such as self-contained numbers, solos,duets, and choruses, and his scenario was acontinuously flowing drama whose lines werefocused, rhymeless, and often irregular in length, allseemingly formless and unrhythmical: much of hiswriting favored the Stabreim technique which was


an ancient device from German and English poetrywhich featuring assonances that provided a similarityof sounds in vowels or word-syllables.

His extensive use of Narratives also precludedstandard operatic structures. The Narrative becamean important organic part of the drama that served toelucidate and expose the plot: they were introspectivemonologues that provided flashbacks, recollections,and explanations And most significantly, theemotional temperature would be raised throughsymphonic development of those forward-reachingand backward-glancing musical “motifs of memory”;those thematic ideas, or leitmotifs, that would bealtered and varied for psychological and dramaticimpact and reach their full expression through awoven symphonic texture.

Leitmotifs and counterpoint

Leitmotifs are translated in most musicalguidebooks as “leading motives”; they are short, fairlysimple musical phrases that describe or identifycertain ideas, characters, or objects, whether seen,mentioned, or thought about. Leitmotifs act as musicalsymbols that become engraved in the listener’smemory and serve to explain, narrate, or providepsychological insight. Most significantly, when a firmrelation between the leitmotif and its meaning hasbeen established in the listener’s mind it becomes asymbol that is recognized quickly and almostunconsciously through the power of association; thus,they provide important information which words andaction alone could not possibly convey. In Wagner’snew musico-dramatic architecture, the musicalleitmotif became the essential means to conveyelements of the story; Wagner himself called themHauptmotiv, or principal motive. The use of leitmotifsdid not spring entirely from Wagner, but he broughtthe technique to its fullest flowering.

Counterpoint, or polyphony, defines one or moreindependent melodies or a combination ofindependent melodies that are integrated orjuxtaposed into a single harmonic texture. Theessential ideal of the leitmotif technique was to jointhe themes contrapuntally, and in Wagner’s particular


case, present them with symphonic grandeur.Nineteenth century Romantic composers, such asWagner, Liszt, Mendelsohnn, and Brahms, reveredthe earlier counterpoint techniques of Palestrina andBach. But their true inclination was towardcombinations of leitmotifs; Franz Schubert’s liedersongs, and those of Hugo Wolf, were highlyinnovative because their motivic accompanimentscontrapuntally interacted with the vocal parts. InWagner’s new music drama style he was strivingtoward an ideal of “sung drama,” or the imitation ofspeech through music; in its perfect manifestation itwas “speech-song,” or Sprechgesang, that wouldbecome contrapuntally balanced with motives in theorchestral accompaniment.

The great virtue of leitmotifs is that they work onmultiple levels: they not only foreshadow the future,but by evoking the past they provide the present withan infinitely greater immediacy. As an example, inTwilight of the Gods, Siegfried does not recall hislife before his death, but afterwards. The entirepanorama is revealed in the Funeral music: while thevassals carry him to the Hall of the Gibichungs, theentire Ring saga seems to pass in review. Thus,through already familiar musical motives Wagnerrelives all the important moments of Siegfried’s life,urging the listener through music to remember theVolsungs, the race of free men who were to resolvethe wretched dilemma of the Cursed Gold, Siegmundand Sieglinde’s love and its bitter pain, the divineSword which Wotan had driven into the tree forSiegmund to claim in his moment of need, andremembrances that Siegmund and Sieglinde producedSiegfried, the hero whose destiny it was to wed theomniscient Brünnhilde. The contrapuntal fusion andskillful harmonic interweaving and variation ofleitmotifs convey powerful emotions: it ultimatelybecomes the orchestra that develops these“reminiscences” in accordance with the expressiveneed of the dramatic and psychological action, andWagner ingeniously achieved the full embodiment ofthe leitmotif technique in the Ring.

The Ring’s four music dramas are united byrelated musical material; some two hundred leitmotifsrepresent a massive vocabulary of musico-dramaticsymbols and associations. By the time of the final


episode, Twilight of the Gods, the listener can virtuallyfollow the dramatic narrative by interpreting themeaning of its musical leitmotif symbols without thebenefit of visual or verbal clarification. As such,Wagner’s orchestra functions like a massive Greekchorus that narrates and comments on the action. Inthe Ring Wagner became both quintessential musicaldramatist and symphonist: The Rhinegold’s scenetransitions and the Rainbow Bridge finale, TheValkyrie’s Ride of the Valkyrie and Fire music,Twilight’s Rhine Journey and Funeral music, and afterBrünnhilde’s Immolation, the orchestral depiction ofthe downfall of the gods.

Allegory denotes symbolic representation. TheRing’s leitmotifs are symbols, but they are musicalsymbols: through the emotional power of the musicallanguage they convey sublime and metaphysicalresponses so that the drama’s characters, elements,and events become part of a complete mythographywhose inner allegorical symbolism, in both words andmusic, provide intensely profound understanding andlevels of meaning. Whereas in myths, symbolismrepresents intuitive rather than rational elementswithin the human psyche, Wagner’s musical leitmotifsbecome those same symbolic images that often revealinner thoughts and emotions. Ultimately, leitmotifsprovided Wagner with the organic structure for hismusic drama, enabling him to replace verbal or visualsymbolism with musical leitmotifs.

Schopenhauer and Will

The Ring consumed Wagner for 26 years. Wagnerwas a man possessing profound intellectual curiosityand was a voracious reader; his huge library of booksthat he abandoned at the time of his 1848 exile remainsin Dresden. Inevitably, over this vast period of theRing’s creation, he altered his ideological conceptionof the work. Initially, Wagner’s sole intent was toexpress his moral outrage at the evil values of hiscontemporary society: in metaphorical or allegoricalform, he would parade all the decadent, degenerate,and philistine protagonists of his contemporarymaterialistic world and ultimately destroy them in acataclysmic apocalypse of fire and water; the hero,


Siegfried, would ultimately succeed to Valhalla afterre-creating the world into a classless society. ButWagner had evolved from the wide-eyed revolutionaryof Dresden and had now become convinced that notonly Germany and Europe were in decline, but thatall humanity was laboring under a curse from whichthere seemed to be no escape. Thus, intuitively andrationally, the Ring began to develop a philosophicaland metaphysical context beyond Sturm and Drang.

The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer,had come under the spell of Orientalism when earlyin life he stumbled into a French translation of theIndian Upanishads and became enthralled with Hinduand Buddhist doctrines regarding renunciation. In TheWorld as Will and Idea (1818), he pitted Easternmystical conceptions of wisdom against theEnlightenment’s faith in reason, science, andcivilization. Although his book remained unread for40 years, the ultimate disillusionment after 1848brought him a new and willing audience.

Schopenhauer directed his radical views aboutthe renunciation of human will to both Enlightenmentand Christian ideology. In his conception, theEnlightenment had created a false optimism with itsempty faith in reason and progress; Christianity, likethe Enlightenment, urged men to strive for salvationin this world either through scientific rationalism, thenation-state, or adherence to religious law, the latterposing the illusion of “will as idea” by striving tochange or alter the world to fit a set of religious andmoral preconceptions such as the laws of God.Schopenhauer reasoned that the ultimate reality wasthe exercise of human will that possessed no purposeor aim and was neither reasonable nor rational: willwas simply a blindness that urged man to strive formeaningless goals that ultimately cause anguish; alustful striving for money, love, and power.

Schopenhauer posed that in order to escape fromthe sickness and curse of will, or man’s prison ofdesire, he must abandon, withdraw, renounce, andextinguish those urges: therefore, man would achievesalvation through philosophic knowledge,compassion, and sympathy for others. In particular,Schopenhauer was envisioning a new way ofunderstanding the world that was immune from theremorseless desires of the ego and the “world as will.”


Therefore, through aesthetic experience, such asviewing a painting or listening to a symphony, onecould not only experience the world in a new way,but obtain a momentary release from life’s curse ofdesire: art and music could provide moments of purecontemplation, uncorrupted by contact with the grossmaterialism that surrounds humanity.

In 1854, while Wagner was setting the music tothe second act of The Valkyrie, he was portrayingWotan’s agony and torment that he knew intuitivelywas caused by the frustration of his will.Simultaneously, Wagner became immersed in the spellof Schopenhauer, who proposed that all humananxiety and conflict derived from their self-imposeddesires, or their will. Wagner began to realize thatWotan’s inner conflicts, his suffering and turmoil,derived from the frustration of his will; Wagner hadintuitively sensed the reasons for Wotan’s dilemmabut could verbalize its philosophical or psychologicalcause. Wagner immediately became a convert toSchopenhauer’s philosophy, realizing that his earlierThe Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser, revolvedaround Schopenhauer’s central idea that the world ofhuman activity was one of suffering from which thesoul yearned to be freed. Later, Wagner’s Tristan undIsolde (1863) became a testament to Schopenhauer’sphilosophy, and simultaneously, he was contemplatingthe opera, Der Sieger, a story centering on a discipleof Buddha.

Schopenhauer concept that music allowed humanbeings to transcend, albeit temporarily, the will’srelentless grip, coincided with Wagner’s belief thathis music dramas could provide relief for restlesssouls. Wagner had already documented his theoriesabout the holy unity of art in the Gesamtkunstwerk,or “complete work of art” that proposed combiningmusic, drama, poetry, and the plastic arts, butSchopenhauer added intellectual profundity toWagner’s intuitive conceptions. Now Wagner becamemore convinced than ever that his music dramaswould become a consecrated art form, and that theideological messages in his revolutionary Ring wouldliterally redeem his corrupted contemporary worldthrough a combination of emotional catharsis,transcendent musical experience, and mythic ritual.

Through Schopenhauer’s philosophical


justifications the Ring was no longer just acondemnation of degenerate contemporary society,but had evolved into a conception of an entirely newworld order. Wagner now concluded thatindustrialized Europe would never escape or findrelease from its struggles: “I saw that the world wasNichtigkeit, a nothingness or an illusion.” Thus, theRing’s political power conflicts represented elementsin the world’s evolution, but the cause of the evil wasspecifically humanity’s blind will. Therefore it wasnecessary to destroy Wotan and the order herepresents; the ruler of the world by his will. Wagnercommented about the fall of the Gods: “The necessityfor the downfall of the Gods springs from ourinnermost feelings, as it does from the innermostfeelings of Wotan. It is important to justify thenecessity by feeling, for Wotan who has risen to thetragic height of willing his own downfall.”

The Ring is a drama about ideas, one of whichbecame the Schopenhaurian “renunciation of thewill.” Ultimately, Wagner created a landscape ofhumanity’s evolutionary progress through variousstreams of consciousness: in the Ring’s conclusion,Brünnhilde’s suicide and act of purifying the Ring’scurse is pure Schopenhauer; an acceptance of fatethat finally releases humanity from its endless cycleof desire, rebirth, and death.

Redemption

In the pure Schopenhaurian sense, Wotan, drivenby his insatiable will, is the tragic character in theRing drama. But Brünnhilde is the true heroine, asynthesis of the Romantic era’s ideals of love, wisdom,sacrifice, and redemption.

Romanticists were seeking an alternative to theChristian path to salvation. The philosopherImmanuel Kant (1724-1804) strongly influenced earlyGerman Romanticism when he scrutinized therelationship between God and man, ultimatelyconcluding that man, not God, was the center of theuniverse. Following Kant was David FriedrichStrauss’s very popular Life of Christ thatdeconstructed the Gospel; and finally, Nietszche, whopronounced the death of God. Theologically and


philosophically, German Romantics believed in theexistence of God, but they were not turning toChristianity for salvation and redemption, but ratherto the spiritual heaven and bliss provided by humanlove.

Romanticists, and particularly Wagner, believedthat man’s most profound desire was to desperatelyseek human warmth and affection, and to give loveand be understood through love: love was deemedthe noble spirit that sustained the world andilluminated every human soul. The keystone of allWagner’s operas is that man is ultimately redeemedthrough human love, an alternative path to humansalvation and redemption that, like religiousspirituality, raises consciousness to greater emotionaland aesthetic sensibilities. Thus, it was Goethe’sennobled “holy woman” whom the Romanticistssought in their passionate pursuit of man’s love-ideal:it was Goethe’s glorification of the “eternal female”at the ending of Faust, das Ewig-weibliche zieht unshinan, “the eternal feminine draws us onward,” thatbecame German Romanticist’s tribute as well asobsession to possess that intuitive, sacrificing womanwho would provide understanding, wisdom, and theonly path to man’s ultimate redemption.

Goethe’s eternal female became Wagner’s“woman of the future,” or femme eterne, who, likeBeethoven’s Leonora in Fidelio, became his idealizedheroines such as Senta, Elisabeth, Brünnhilde, andIsolde. These sacrificing women essentially provideunquestioning and unconditional love; as such, theyredeem and heal man from his narcissism, ego,loneliness, isolation, desires, needs, and yearnings.Ultimately, the German Romanticists - andparticularly Wagner - believed that man may strivethrough art or reason toward a synthesis of humanexperience, but it was woman’s love alone that wouldlead him to achieving life’s ultimate fulfillment. So,for Wagner, woman’s unqualified, sacrificing lovebecame the ideal: in The Flying Dutchman, thecondemned, egocentric, almost ByronesqueDutchman is redeemed through Senta’s love,compassion, and ultimately, her sacrifice; inTannhäuser, the errant and tormented minstrel isredeemed not through his Pope, but through the loveand sacrifice of Elisabeth.


The ultimate “sin” in the Ring is not necessarilyWotan’s duplicity, but Alberich’s renunciation of love- as well as that of Wotan’s; nevertheless, the entiredrama concludes with the affirmation of the healingpower of love. Brünnhilde becomes the glorifiedheroine of the Ring: the idealized eternal female or“holy woman” whose insight, wisdom, and loveredeem the world by cleansing it from its curse ofevil.

Brünnhilde is that heroic force that catalyzes thattransformation of values. Through her love andwisdom she energizes Siegfried and raises him toconsciousness: she alone reconciles the conflictthrough her sacrifice. In the finale of the Ring, thesacrificial consummation of her sacred marriage is amagical moment of noble spiritual ideas: Brünnhildecalls out to her magic steed, Grane: “Do you knowwhere we are going together? Does the fire’s light onSiegfried draw you to it too? Siegfried, Siegfried, seehow your holy wife greets you!”

It is a shattering moment that represents theworld’s purification and rebirth which Wagnerportrays relentlessly through musical modulations thatsurge toward its towering prophesy of the world’stransformation: Siegfried’s triumphant music fuseswith the motive of the Fall of the Gods, and the motiveof Redemption by Love provides the finaltranscendence. The Rhine banks flood, the flames ebb,and Hagen, whose monomania remains undaunted,plunges into the Rhine to seize the Ring, but theRhinemaidens drag him into the Rhine’s depths.Before the Rhinemaidens disappear and the waterssubside, they hold up the Ring that they haverecaptured from Brünnhilde’s ashes; it has nowbecome purified from its Curse. Above Valhalla isablaze, and in its interior Wotan waits quietly for thetransforming fires to destroy his old order.

It is the end of a cycle of humanity, but a glimmerof hope suggests that a new cycle will be stirred bylove and compassion.

What the Ring says

Wagner’s Ring relates a passionate story aboutthe crisis within the human soul as it portrays that


eternal conflict between nature and human nature.Man is the maker of myths, and the Ring is Wagner’smyth: in myths human nature is ambivalent; man isboth great and flawed as he, struggles with hisdestructive impulses, recognizes his limitations,resists new ideas, but also expresses his capabilityfor goodness, heroism, and the beauty and joy of love.The Ring primarily portrays humanity’s lust and greedfor money and power: the root of all humanity’s evil.But the Ring’s ultimate grandeur is its idealization ofthe nobility of love.

The Gods in the Ring acted to possess rather thanprotect, to conquer rather than defend. They wereordained to protect the world against evil, but whenmalevolent forces stole the secret of the Ring’s powerthat could master the world and threaten their ownpower, they became flawed, toppling the moral andethical scales by becoming as deceitful andtreacherous as the evil they pretended to control. Thepeace that they presumed to have maintained was notachieved by persuasion and reconciliation, but bycriminal acts involving force and guile; ultimately theysacrificed their morality for their own self-servingneeds. Wagner cited their hypocrisy in his ProseSketch, “The purpose of their higher world order ismoral consciousness, but the wrong against whichthey fight attaches to themselves.”

The conflicts portrayed in the Ring are universaland timeless: they address with almost Biblicalgrandeur almost every conceivable aspect of humannature; avarice, greed, duplicity, fear, treachery andbetrayal, incest, murder, hatred, and compassion andlove. Nevertheless, those profound issues areexpressed not in words but in music: the Ring’slandscape of profound human emotions and passionstranscend the power of descriptive words, and itsgreatness lies in its music which evokes indefinableresponses that awaken and arouse emotions that manyhave repressed in their dark unconscious.

In the final moments of Twilight of the Gods,Wagner the poet was in conflict with Wagner themusic dramatist, and ultimately, he relied on his musicto convey what the poet was trying to express inwords. In the Immolation, the omniscient Brünnhildeutters a profound ode to love, but it is Wagner’sconcluding music that ultimately speaks about the


binding forces in the world: his musical languageconveys humanity’s eternal strife between its Godsand governments, but love and compassion redeemman from the timeless world of tyranny; theirpurifying power providing the hopeful remedy todissolve evil.

The Ring speaks on many levels of meaning, butWagner’s primary underlying message about thestruggle for moral maturity is visionary andenlightened: the abusive powers in the world, theGods, must be replaced for civilization to progressand survive; and in their place there must be auniversal religion whose ideal is love and compassion.The new order must elevate conscience and containthose enduring ideals of wisdom, character, humility,courage, civility, and justice; the ultimate values forhumanity’s survival.

“Every human being must be capable of feelingthis unconsciously and of instinctively putting it intopractice.” (Opera and Drama 1850-51)


Prologue to The Prologue

In The Rhinegold, its first 136 measures suggestthe world’s creation by portraying a primordialwasteland of water in which surging arpeggios suggestthe water’s flow and unceasing rise. Wagner was saidto have remarked to Franz Liszt that his opening forRhinegold was like “the beginning of the world.”

But Wagner’s Teutonic and Norse sources indeedcontained a “genesis,” and by establishing how theGods, Giants, and Dwarfs came into existence, theentire story of the Ring contains a contextual logic.

With minor variations, those mythologicalcreation stories explain that in the beginning therewas neither sea nor shore, nor heaven nor earth, butonly Ginnungagap, a vast “yawning abyss” or“emptiness” which lay between the realms of fire andfreezing cold. After fire melted the ice, and warm airfrom the south collided with the chill from the north,drops of moisture began to fall into the gaping chasmof Ginnungagap. Over time, the drops quickened andhardened, formed a mass, and then the first life formevolved: Audhumla, the primeval cow.

From Audhumla’s tears “flowed four rivers ofmilk” that nurtured Ymir, the first frost Giant whobecame the implacable enemy of the Gods. Audhumlasurvived by licking the salty ice that ultimatelyreleased Borr, or Buri, the ancestor of the Gods. Borrmarried Bestla, the daughter of a frost Giant, and hadthree sons, Odin (Wotan), Vili, and Ve, who battledagainst the Giants until they slew Ymir and threw hisbody into the center of the Ginnungagap.

Ymir’s flesh became the earth, his bones formedthe mountains, his teeth formed the rocks and stones,his hair formed the trees, and his blood turned intothe lakes and seas. His skull formed the sky, and fourDwarfs, Nordi, Sudri, Austri, and Westri, held thecorners of the world; the Dwarfs were formed frommaggots in the rotting flesh of the slain giant andwere condemned to a life underground. Ymir’swounds flooded the land and drowned all his frostchildren, except his grandson, Bergelmir, who escapedwith his wife and continued the race of Giants andtheir hatred of the Gods.

From Ymir’s body the fierce-eyed Wotan mademan and woman from splinters of wood found floating


in the water; all of these descendents of the humanrace inhabited the Midgard. But wars raged acrossthe birthing world, and Borr’s sons, led by the chiefGod, Wotan, struggled against the Giants. Wotanloved battle, and was the esteemed “father of theslain,” his name akin to “fury” or “madness.” Heinspired men into battle transforming them into afrenzied rage that caused them to fear nothing andfeel no pain. Wotan and his race of Gods raised aHall of the Valiant, Valhalla, to which Valkyries wouldtake the bravest human warriors after they were slainin battle. In Valhalla, the one-eyed God presided overthe “glorious dead.”

Ragnarok was the feared doom of the GermanicGods, a final struggle between the Gods and the forcesof evil that ended in a cosmic apocalypse; a “twilightof the gods.” The catastrophe of the Ragnarok wasunpreventable but was not the end of the cosmos: anew world was destined to rise again because twohumans had taken shelter in Yggdrasil, the sacred treeof wisdom and knowledge; they emerged afterwardsto repopulate the earth.

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