Table Of ContentTREACHEROUS BONDS AND LAUGHING
FIRE: POLITICS AND RELIGION IN
WAGNER'S RING
nI memory of Daisy Dunnington and Sybil Pentith
Treacherous Bonds and Laughing
Fire: Politics and Religion in
Wagner's Ring
MARK BERRY
University of ,egdirbmaC United Kingdom
First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Berry, Mark
Treacherous bonds and laughing fire: politics and religion in Wagner's Ring.
l.Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883. Ring des Nibelungen 2.Wagner, Richard, 1813-
1883-Political and social views 3.Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883-Religion
I.T itle
782.1'092
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berry, Mark, 1974-
Treacherous bonds and laughing fire: politics and religion in Wagner's Ring I
Mark Berry.
p.cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7546-5356-0 (alk. paper)
1. Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883. Ring des Nibelungen. 2. Wagner, Richard,
1813-1883-Political and social views. I. Title.
ML410.W15B58 2005
782.1---dc22
2005013237
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5356-1 (hbk)
Contents
Music examples Vll
Preface and acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Problems and opportunities 1
1 The intellectual and biographical background 17
2 Musical drama 43
3 The natural world and its despoliation 57
4 Property, capital, and production 79
5 Law, government, and the state 111
6 The strength and weakness of religion 145
7 Power or love 173
8 Revolution 209
9 Renunciation 237
10 Annihilation, redemption, and augury 255
Index 275
Music examples
2.1 The eternal Rhine 50
2.2 Consciousness develops 51
2.3 Erda 51
2.4 Twilight of the gods 51
2.5 The ring 52
2.6 The curse 52
2.7 Valhalla 52
2.8 Opening of Gotterdammerung 55
2.9 Alberich's role 55
3.1 Opening of Beethoven's Tempest Sonata 61
3.2 Gold fanfare 63
3.3 Alberich 64
3.4 Perversion of gold fanfare 66
3.5 Rhinegold 67
3.6 Rhinegold during Loge's narration 67
3.7 The Rhine in Gotterdammerung 68
3.8 Cutting the spear's shaft 70
3.9 A companion for Siegfried? 75
4.1 Hom-echo ofRhinegold 82
4.2 Giants as builders of Valhalla 83
4.3 Fafner the dragon 84
4.4 The Tarnhelm 88
4.5 Nibelheim's screams of gold 92
4.6 Freia's love motif 92
4.7 Gold worth more than Freia 93
4.8 Anvils 96
4.9 Old Nibelheim 96
4.10 Gold fanfare in Nibelheim 101
4.11 Servitude 102
4.12 Alberich's ongoing threat 109
5.1 The spear and state-formation 113
5.2 The spear in Das Rheingold 114
5.3 Erda indicts Wotan 119
5.4 Wotan's 'great idea' 124
5.5 'Wotan's frustration' 126
5.6 Remnant of 'Wotan's frustration' 126
5.7 'Wotan's frustration' inverted 127
5.8 Froh tries to protect Freia 135
5.9 Froh's variant of the golden apples motif 136
5.10 Freia's golden apples 136
viii Treacherous bonds and laughing fire
5 .11 B rlinnhilde' s a wakening 138
5.12 Foreboding fanfare 139
5.13 Siegfried's 'mature' heroism 139
5.14 Hagen's Watch 140
6.1 Wotan greets his castle 147
6.2 The rainbow bridge 149
6.3 'Falsch und feig' 150
6.4 The gods' mortality 159
6.5 Destructive craving for immortality 161
6.6 The Wanderer 164
6.7 Loge 169
7.1 Alberich's turmoil 174
7.2 Foreshadowing the first sighting of the gold 175
7.3 From the ring to Valhalla (I) 177
7.4 From the ring to Valhalla (II) 177
7.5 From the ring to Valhalla (III) 178
7.6 'Ubiquity of power' 179
7. 7 The spear distorted 182
7.8 Renunciation of love 196
7.9 Alberich's curse 197
7.10 'Holiest love's highest need' 197
7.11 W altraute questions Brlinnhilde 201
7.12 Gutrune rejoins Siegfried 202
7.13 Bridal procession in La muette ed Portici 202
7.14 Hagen undercuts the bridal music 204
8.1 Hagen 224
8.2 Siegfried 226
8.3 Siegfried's horn-call heard by Hagen 232
8.4 The Volsungs 235
9.1 World-inheritance 245
10.1 Benediction 258
10.2 'To redeem ... god and world' 259
10.3 The curse's sting ready to be drawn 259
10.4 The final theme from Gotterdammerung 261
Preface and acknowledgements
I am delighted to thank all of those who have helped me at various stages
throughout the research for and composition of this book. It is something of a
truism to declare that one's obligations are too manifold all to be acknowledged,
yet it is a truism worth repeating, not least on account of the community of
scholarship without which such research would come to naught. The debts incurred
towards friends and family are both too numerous and too profound to permit due
acknowledgement in such a context. There remains, however, a number of cases
deserving of especial mention.
I am grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
to the Cambridge University Press for Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's music
,samard tr. Mary Whittall (1979), Charles Fourier, ehT theory of eht four
movements, tr. Ian Patterson, eds Gareth Stedman Jones and Ian Patterson (1996);
to Dover Publications Inc. for Arthur Schopenhauer, ehT world sa lliW and
representation, tr. E.F.J. Payne, 2 vols (1966); to HarperCollins Publishers Ltd for
Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (eds), amisoC Wagner's ,seiraid tr.
Geoffrey Skelton, 2 vols (1978-80); to Stewart Spencer for Selected srettel of
Richard ,rengaW tr. Stewart Spencer, eds Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington
(London, 1987); to Lawrence Stepelevich for ehT gnuoY Hegelians (Cambridge,
1983). In addition, it should be noted that material from Chapters 1 and 2 was first
published in an article entitled 'Richard Wagner and the politics of music-drama,'
in ehT Historical Journal, 47 (2004): 663-83. The curious reader may wish to be
informed that some material in the article does not appear in this book.
Support for the doctoral thesis in which guise this book started out was
provided by a studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Board.
Thereafter, I must register my gratitude towards the Master and Fellows of
Peterhouse, for electing me to a Research Fellowship of that college and thereby
furnishing me with the requisite means, as well for the body as the soul, with
which to think, to write, to criticise and to be criticised. Likewise must I thank, for
assistance during the final stages of preparation, the British Academy for my
election to a Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Faculty of History in the University of
Cambridge has generously given financial assistance for the typesetting of musical
examples.
A great deal of the curiosity driving me to disregard traditional disciplinary
boundaries I owe to my late music teacher, Sybil Pentith, and her tireless nurturing
of my intellectual endeavours. It is to her memory and to that of my late
grandmother, Daisy Dunnington, a constant source of selfless encouragement
throughout my life, that this book is dedicated.
I have benefited greatly from proof-reading and general criticism on the part of
Michael Bentley, Tim Blanning, James Stevens Curl, John Hughes, Gavin Kelly,
and Alice Wood (twice over, in the final case). To Tim Blanning I owe a particular
debt: as my doctoral supervisor, his patience and encouragement from the time of
