Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the text
Encyclopedia
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
was a long and tortuous process, and the precise sequence of events which led the composer to embark upon such a vast undertaking is still unclear. The composition of the text took place between 1848 and 1853, when all four libretti
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
were privately printed; but the closing scene of the final opera, Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
, was revised a number of times between 1856 and 1872. The names of the last two Ring operas, Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
and Götterdämmerung, were probably not definitively settled until 1856.
Conception of the Ring
Mein Leben (Wagner)
Mein Leben is the title given by the composer Richard Wagner to his autobiography, covering the years from his birth in 1813 to 1864.-Origins:Wagner began dictating Mein Leben to his wife Cosima on 17 July 1865 in Munich...
– it was after the February Revolution that he began to sketch a play on the life of the Hohenstaufen
Hohenstaufen
The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...
Holy Roman Emperor
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope...
Friedrich Barbarossa
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick I Barbarossa was a German Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March, crowned King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155, and two years later in 1157 the term...
. While researching this work he came to see Friedrich as "a historical rebirth of the old, pagan Siegfried". Then, in the summer of 1848, he wrote the essay Die Wibelungen: Weltgeschichte aus der Saga (The Wibelungs: World History as Told in Saga), in which he noted some historical links (spurious, as it happens) between the Hohenstaufen
Hohenstaufen
The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...
s and the legendary Nibelung
Nibelung
The German Nibelungen and the corresponding Old Norse form Niflung is the name in Germanic and Norse mythology of the royal family or lineage of the Burgundians who settled at Worms....
s. This led him to consider Siegfried
Sigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
as a possible subject for a new opera, and by October 1848 the entire Ring cycle had been conceived.
This rather straightforward account of the Ring's origins, however, has been disputed by a number of authorities, who accuse Wagner of deliberately distorting the facts so as to bring them into harmony with his own private version of history. The actual sequence of events, it seems, was not nearly as clear-cut as he would have us believe. It was in October 1846 – some sixteen months before the February Revolution – that he first drew up a plan for a five-act drama based on the life of Friedrich Barbarossa. He may even have considered writing an opera on Siegfried as early as 1843, when he read Jacob Grimm
Jacob Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist and mythologist. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy...
's Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology), or possibly in 1844, when he borrowed several works on the Nibelung
Nibelung
The German Nibelungen and the corresponding Old Norse form Niflung is the name in Germanic and Norse mythology of the royal family or lineage of the Burgundians who settled at Worms....
s from the Royal Library in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. As for Die Wibelungen, it would appear that he only started work on this essay in December 1848 at the earliest, finishing it sometime before 22 February 1849, when he read it to his friend Eduard Devrient
Eduard Devrient
Eduard Devrient was a German baritone, librettist, playwright, actor, theatre director and theatre reformer and historian.Devrient came from a theatrical family...
.
Whatever the truth, Wagner was certainly contemplating an opera on Siegfried by 1 April 1848, when he informed Devrient of his plans.
Wagner was probably encouraged in these endeavours by a number of German intellectuals who believed that contemporary artists should seek inspiration in the pages of the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
, a 12th century epic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
in Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
which, since its rediscovery in 1755, had been hailed by the German Romantics
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
as their country's "national epic
National epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
". In 1844 the philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer
Friedrich Theodor Vischer
Friedrich Theodor Vischer was a German writer on the philosophy of art.Born at Ludwigsburg as the son of a clergyman, Vischer was educated at Tübinger Stift, and began life in his father's profession...
suggested that the Nibelungenlied would make a suitable subject for German opera; and in 1845 and 1846 Louise Otto-Peters
Louise Otto-Peters
Louise Otto-Peters was a German writer, feminist, poet, journalist, and women's rights movement activist. She often wrote under the pseudonym of Otto Stern. She is widely acknowledged as the founder of the organized German women's movement.-Life:Louise Otto-Peters was the daughter of a...
and Franz Brendel
Franz Brendel
Not to be confused with composer Franz Brendel .Karl Franz Brendel was a German music critic, journalist and musicologist....
penned a series of articles in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was a music magazine published in Leipzig, co-founded by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke...
inviting composers to write a "national opera" based on the epic. Otto-Peters even wrote a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for such an opera.
Wagner, as it happened, was already familiar with the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
. He had even drawn upon it for one of the scenes in an earlier opera, Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
, the text of which was written between July and November 1845. Act II, Scene 4, in which Ortrud interrupts the procession to the minster and confronts Elsa, is based on Chapter 14 of the Nibelungenlied, "How the Queens Railed at Each Other"; in the corresponding scene of Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
(also Act II, Scene 4), it is Brünnhilde who interrupts a stately procession and provokes a quarrel.
Wagner the writer
Wagner's libretti, which he invariably wrote himself, usually passed through four stages; with one or two minor qualifications, the libretti of the four Ring operas were no different. These stages are as follows:- Prose Sketch (Prosaskizze) – a brief outline of the dramatic action. Typically these sketches consisted of no more than a few paragraphs of prose, though Wagner sometimes added to them or modified them before proceeding to the next stage. This was the case with the sketches for the first three parts of the tetralogy. Exceptionally, however, Wagner (for reasons which will be explained later) never drafted a prose sketch for GötterdämmerungGötterdämmerungis the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
(or Siegfried's Tod, as it was originally called). The prose sketch for Act III of Die WalküreDie WalküreDie Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
has disappeared. - Prose Draft (Prosaentwurf) – an elaborate prose treatment of the opera, describing the action in great detail. These drafts were usually ten or more pages in length. They included a considerable amount of dialogue. Prose drafts survive for all four Ring operas.
- Verse Draft (Erstschrift des Textbuches) – a first draft of the final libretto, written in an archaic form of German alliterative verse known as StabreimAlliterative verseIn prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...
. Wagner created his verse drafts by versifying the dialogue already contained in his prose drafts – turning prose into poetry – or by creating new verse to replace those sections of the prose drafts for which he had not yet sketched any dialogue. He also added new elements not present in the prose drafts. For instance, the symbolic use of Wotan's spear and its engraved runes to embody the rule of law is not present in the prose draft of Das RheingoldDas Rheingoldis the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
: this idea only came to Wagner while he was working on the verse draft of Die WalküreDie WalküreDie Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
. It was also while developing the latter that he first thought of making LogeLokiIn Norse mythology, Loki or Loke is a god or jötunn . Loki is the son of Fárbauti and Laufey, and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. By the jötunn Angrboða, Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr. By his wife Sigyn, Loki is the father of Nari or Narfi...
a god of fire: in the prose draft of Das Rheingold he is merely a trickster and teller of unwelcome truths. While writing his verse drafts, Wagner also greatly expanded his stage directions (which, of course, were always in prose). - Fair Copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches) – a clean, carefully written verse libretto (or Dichtung, "poem", as Wagner liked to call his finished libretti), usually free of corrections and alterations. Punctuation and capitalization were regularized at this stage. The fair copies generally incorporated the final version of any passage of the corresponding verse draft for which Wagner has sketched two or more competing versions; in a few cases the fair copy has an entirely new variant. The fair copies, however, were not necessarily the final versions of the libretti, as Wagner frequently made slight – but sometimes telling – alterations to the text during the composition of the music. Furthermore, he sometimes made two, three, or even four fair copies, incorporating revisions as he did so, in which case the fair copies are called respectively Zweitschrift (des Textbuches), Drittschrift, Viertschrift, and Fünftschrift.
Siegfried's Tod
In drafting this prose scenario, Wagner drew upon numerous works of German and Scandinavian mythology, both primary texts (usually in contemporary German translations, though Wagner had some knowledge of Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
and Middle German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
) and commentaries on them. The most important of the former were the Völsunga Saga
Volsunga saga
The Völsungasaga is a legendary saga, a late 13th century Icelandic prose rendition of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan . It is largely based on epic poetry...
, the Poetic Edda
Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century...
, the Prose Edda
Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
, the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
and Thidriks saga af Bern, while the most important of the latter were Jacob Grimm's German Mythology and Wilhelm Grimm's The German Hero-Saga. In addition to these, however, Wagner picked up various details from at least twenty-two other sources, including a number of key philosophical texts that informed the symbolism of the Ring. Wagner contradicts his sources on various points – necessarily so as the sources don’t always agree with one another – conflates disparate stories into continuous narratives, creates some new, memorable characters by combining minor characters from different sources, etc. The final scenario is as much a unique recreation of the original myths as the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
was in its day.
Because Die Sage von den Nibelungen already contained a detailed account of the dramatic action of the proposed opera, Wagner neglected to make any prose sketches according to his usual practice. Instead, he immediately wrote a prose draft of the new work, which was to be called Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death), complete with "English" apostrophe! This apostrophe, incidentally, appears in all the textual manuscripts of the work and in the private imprint of 1853, but was dropped from the title in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of 1871–1873.
On 28 October 1848, Wagner read the prose draft of Siegfried's Tod to Eduard Devrient
Eduard Devrient
Eduard Devrient was a German baritone, librettist, playwright, actor, theatre director and theatre reformer and historian.Devrient came from a theatrical family...
, and following some critical comments by the latter on the obscurity of the subject, he drafted a two-scene prologue which filled in some of the background story. This new prose draft was cast almost entirely in dialogue, much of it already very close to the final verse form it would take. By 12 November the revised draft of Siegfried's Tod was completed, and by 28 November it had been turned into alliterative verse, becoming in the process a fully fledged libretto for a three-act opera with a two-scene prologue. The following month (presumably) Wagner prepared the first fair copy (Zweitschrift des Textbuches), but almost immediately the work was extensively revised and a second fair copy (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was drawn up to reflect these revisions. It was at this stage that the episode known as "Hagen's Watch" (the final section of Act I Scene 2) made its first appearance.
With its two-scene prologue and three-act structure, Siegfried's Tod was to all intents and purposes a draft text for what would eventually be the final part of the tetralogy, Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
(The Twilight of the Gods).
At this point, however, Wagner, it seems, began to doubt the wisdom of writing an opera on such an obscure subject. Even in Germany the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
was not very well known, and several of the other sources that he consulted were even more recondite. Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that having completed the libretto of Siegfried's Tod, Wagner then put the work aside and turned his attention to other matters. Between December 1848 and March 1850, he wrote several influential essays, some of them quite lengthy. He also spent much of this time working out detailed scenarios for several other operas on a variety of historical and mythical figures: Jesus Christ, Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
, Friedrich Barbarossa
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick I Barbarossa was a German Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March, crowned King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155, and two years later in 1157 the term...
and Wieland der Schmied
Weyland
In Germanic and Norse mythology, Wayland the Smith is a legendary master blacksmith. In Old Norse sources, Völundr appears in Völundarkviða, a poem in the Poetic Edda, and in Þiðrekssaga, and his legend is also depicted on the Ardre image stone VIII...
. None of these operas ever saw the light of day, though one musical sketch survives for Jesus von Nazareth.
Politics
It was also around this time that Wagner was most actively engaged in German politics. Dresden had long been known as a cultural centre for liberals and democrats; the anarchist newspaper Dresdner Zeitung was partly edited by the music director Karl August Röckel, and contained articles by Mikhail BakuninMikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, who came to Dresden in March 1849. Röckel also published the popular democratic newspaper Volksblätter. The activities of these radicals culminated in the May Uprising
May Uprising in Dresden
The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Germany in 1849; it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848.-Events leading to the May Uprising:...
of 1849.
The revolution was quickly crushed by Saxon and Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the leading revolutionaries, including Wagner. Röckel and Bakunin were captured and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Wagner, however, made good his escape, and with the help of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
he fled to Switzerland, from where he eventually made his way to Paris. In July he returned to Switzerland and settled in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, which was to be his home for the greater part of the next nine years.
There, in May 1850, he once again took up Siegfried's Tod. He prepared a third fair copy of the libretto (Viertschrift des Textbuches) for publication, which, however, did not take place, and by July he had even begun to compose music for the prologue. Of this music a sheet of preliminary sketches survives and a more detailed composition draft, which extends about one quarter of the way into the duet between Brünnhilde and Siegfried. Having reached this point, however, Wagner abandoned the work.
Trilogy
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
, dated 22 September, Wagner elaborated on this idea: now he was hoping to stage three performances of Siegfried's Tod in a specially constructed festival theatre, after which both the theatre and the score were to be destroyed: "If everything is arranged satisfactorily, I will allow three performances of Siegfried [i.e. Siegfried's Tod] to be given in one week under these circumstances: after the third performance the theatre is to be torn down and my score burned...."
Gradually the notion of a trilogy of operas culminating with Siegfried's Tod was beginning to form in Wagner's mind. The idea was not a new one. In 1847 he had read and been deeply impressed by Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
's Greek trilogy the Oresteia in a German translation by Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen was a German historian. His history of Alexander the Great was the first work representing a new school of German historical thought that idealized power held by so-called "great" men...
; and in 1849, after his flight from Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, he had read Droysen's reconstruction of the same playwright's trilogy the Prometheia
Prometheia
The Prometheia is a trilogy of plays about the titan Prometheus. It was attributed in Antiquity to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus...
, which includes the well-known tragedy Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca. 415 BC. Despite these doubts of authorship, the play's designation as Aeschylean has remained...
. It seemed only right that a similar trilogy of German tragedies, written by a latter-day Aeschylus, should be performed in its own dedicated theatre and as part of a "specially-appointed festival".
The idea of expanding Siegfried's Tod into a series of two or more operas would have been particularly appealing to Wagner, as he had now come to realize that it would be impossible to say all that he wanted to in a single opera without an inordinate number of digressions. The political events of the past few years and his recent discovery of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach had greatly enlarged the scope of ideas which he hoped to explore in his new opera. He also wished to incorporate various ideas that he had been mulling over in the works on Jesus, Frederick, Achilles and Wieland (all four of which had been effectively abandoned by now). These ideas ranged over the politics of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
and Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
and the philosophy of Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
and the Young Hegelians
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
.
In the winter of 1850–1851, while he was working on Opera and Drama, Wagner toyed with the idea of writing a comic opera based on a well-known folk-tale, Vor einem, der auszug, das Fürchten zu lernen (The Boy Who Set Out to Learn Fear), which he had come across in Grimms' Fairy Tales. "Imagine my surprise," he later wrote to his friend the violinist Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
, "when I suddenly realized that this youth was none other than young Siegfried!"
Within a week, in May 1851, he had drawn up some fragmentary prose sketches for a prequel, or "comic counterpart", to Siegfried's Tod, which he called Jung-Siegfried (Young Siegfried), later altering the title to Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried). A more extensive prose draft was completed by 1 June, and by 24 June this had been transformed into a verse draft. By August the fair copy of this verse libretto was finished and Wagner had even begun to set it to music. These efforts, however, never amounted to anything more than a handful of sketches, which were later used in the composition of Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
.
The earliest mention we have of a festival of three operas based on the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
is in the autobiographical work Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends), which Wagner originally wrote in August 1851: "I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas...."
Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod were now clearly envisaged as the second and third dramas of a trilogy. By October, however, Wagner had decided that this trilogy required a prelude – was he thinking again of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
and the ancient Greeks, whose trilogies were usually accompanied by a satyr play
Satyr play
Satyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to burlesque. They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology, and were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality , pranks, sight gags, and general merriment.Satyric drama was one of the three varieties of...
? – and the text of Eine Mittheilung was duly altered to reflect the change. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, "which will be preceded by a great prelude". Nevertheless, Wagner always referred to the Ring as a trilogy rather than a tetralogy. He envisaged it being performed as part of a three-day festival preceded by a preliminary evening. Thanks to Aeschylus and his contemporaries, the term trilogy had a certain cachet for Wagner which the term tetralogy never acquired.
In October 1851 Wagner drafted a short prose sketch for the preliminary opera which would precede the trilogy proper. He vacillated over the title of the work, trying out in turn, Der Raub: Vorspiel (The Theft: Prelude), Der Raub des Rheingoldes (The Theft of the Rhinegold) and Das Rheingold (Vorspiel) (The Rhinegold (Prelude)). The following month he drafted some prose sketches for the first of the three main dramas, Siegmund und Sieglinde: der Walküre Bestrafung (Siegmund and Sieglinde: the Valkyrie's Punishment). Between March and November 1852 he elaborated these short sketches after his usual practice, developing prose drafts from them, which he then proceeded to turn into verse drafts. By that time he had renamed the operas Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
and Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
respectively.
It is interesting to note that whereas the prose draft of Das Rheingold was written before that of Die Walküre, the verse draft of Die Walküre preceded that of Das Rheingold. So while there is some truth to the oft-quoted remark that the Ring cycle was conceived backwards, it is not completely accurate.
The original prose sketch for Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
consisted of just three paragraphs, each prefaced by a Roman numeral. It would appear from this that Wagner originally conceived it as a three-act opera in its own right, and this is confirmed by a letter he wrote in October 1851 to his friend Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
: "Great plans for Siegfried: three dramas, with a three-act prelude.". By 1852, however, Das Rheingold had become a one-act opera in four scenes. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for regarding the opening scene of the opera as a prologue ("The Theft of the Gold") to the main part of the drama ("Valhalla"). Thus, both Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
share the same prologue-plus-trilogy structure which characterises the Ring cycle as a whole.
As for Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
, the first act of this opera probably gave Wagner more trouble than any other act in the entire tetralogy. In his two prose sketches for it Wotan enters Hunding's house in his guise as Der Wanderer ("The Wanderer") and thrusts the sword into the ash tree, which Siegmund then withdraws only minutes later; the fully worked-out prose draft also brings Wotan onto the stage. It was only at a later stage in the evolution of the text that Wagner banished the Wanderer and his sword to the backstory which Sieglinde narrates to Siegmund. Now the sword is already embedded in the tree as the curtain goes up on Act 1 and Siegmund's withdrawal of it becomes a climactic piece of dramaturgy.
Opera and Drama
Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke was a British musician, musicologist and broadcaster.-Life:Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor and working class family; his father died when he was a child, but his mother was able to afford piano lessons. Cooke acquired a brilliant technique and began to compose...
(1979) has described as, "essentially a blueprint [for the Ring]". Wagner's principal theoretical work, Oper und Drama grew out of a draft of an essay on Das Wesen der Oper ("The Essence of Opera"), which, preparatory to the composition of Siegfried's Tod, he wrote in an attempt "to tidy up a whole life that now lay behind me, to articulate each half-formed intuition on a conscious level....". First mentioned in a letter to Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
on 20 September 1850, the work was begun by 9 October. Wagner, it seems, anticipated that it would be no longer than the other essays he had recently completed; but over the winter of 1850–1851, it grew into a book of some considerable size. Completed by 20 January 1851, just four months after Wagner conceived it, it was first published in 1852 by J. J. Weber of Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
. It was in the pages of Opera and Drama that Wagner's nebulous or half-conscious ideas on artistic method and the relationship between music and drama were first given concrete expression.
- Die Kunst und die RevolutionArt and Revolution"Art and Revolution" is a long essay by the composer Richard Wagner, originally published in 1849...
(Art and Revolution, July 1849) - Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art-Work of the Future, November 1849)
- Kunst und Klima (Art and Climate, March 1850)
- Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama, January 1851)
Der Ring des Nibelungen
It was in 1852 that Wagner finally settled upon the name Der Ring des Nibelungen for the complete cycle. Other titles that were considered and rejected included: Das Gold des Nibelungen (The Gold of the Nibelung), which appeared on the title page of the verse draft of Die WalküreDie Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
; and Der Reif des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), which was mentioned in a letter to August Röckel, dated 12 September 1852. On 14 October 1852, however, Wagner informed Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig
Theodor Uhlig was a German viola-player, composer and music critic.-Uhlig and Wagner:...
that he had finally decided that the title of the entire cycle would be Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Nibelung's Ring).
In November and December 1852, Wagner made extensive revisions to the libretti of Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. This was partly to accommodate the expansion of the cycle and the growing significance of Wotan
Odin
Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
, the protagonist of the first two parts of the tetralogy, and partly to reflect Wagner's reading of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (see below). The changes to Der junge Siegfried were entered into the first fair copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches), while those to Siegfried's Tod were entered into the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches). In each case several pages of the fair copy were replaced with newly written ones. The principal changes to Siegfried's Tod involved the opening scene of the prologue (the Norns scene), Brünnhilde's scene with Waltraute (which had originally included all nine Valkyrie
Valkyrie
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one of a host of female figures who decides who dies in battle. Selecting among half of those who die in battle , the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin...
s), and Brünnhilde's closing speech at the end of the opera.
Fair copies of Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
and Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
and a fourth fair copy of Siegfried's Tod (Fünftschrift des Textbuches) were completed by 15 December 1852 and the entire text was privately published in February 1853. Fifty copies were printed, most of which were given to Wagner’ friends. Over the course of four evenings (16–19 February 1853) Wagner gave a public reading of the complete text in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
's Hôtel Baur au Lac. This text, however, did not represent the final version, as Wagner often made changes to his libretti while he was setting them to music. In the case of the Ring such changes were duly entered into Wagner's personal copy of the 1853 printing; but not all of these emendations were incorporated in either the public printing of 1863 or the version in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of 1872, a situation which has caused unending problems for scholars, translators and performers alike.
Furthermore, it was probably not until 1856 that Wagner definitively changed the titles of the third and fourth parts of the Ring to Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
and Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
respectively. In 1863 the texts of all four Ring operas were published for the first time under their present titles.
The end of the Ring
The final scene of the Ring probably caused Wagner more trouble than any other. He rewrote the text for it several times and his final thoughts were never made absolutely clear. Six or seven different versions exist or can be reconstructed from Wagner's drafts:- Original Ending (early December 1848) – Wagner's first ending for the cycle was optimistic and confident. The ring is returned to the Rhine; Alberich and the Nibelungs, who were enslaved by the power of the ring, are liberated. In her closing speech, Brünnhilde declares that Wotan is all-powerful and everlasting; she gives up her own life and leads Siegfried to Valhalla, where he is reconciled with Wotan and order is restored. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are depicted rising above Siegfried's funeral pyre to Valhalla to cleanse Wotan of his crime and redeem the gods, rather as The Dutchman and Senta ascend above the clouds at the end of Der fliegende HolländerThe Flying Dutchman (opera)Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...
. A major difference between this draft and subsequent revisions is that there is no suggestion here that the Gods are destroyed. Brünnhilde's final oration stresses the cleansing effect of Siegfried's death:
"Hear then, you mighty Gods. Your guilt is abolished: the hero takes it upon himself. The Nibelungs’ slavery is at an end, and Alberich shall again be free. This Ring I give to you, wise sisters of the watery deeps. Melt it down and keep it free from harm."
- First Revision (before 18 December 1848) – the second fair copy of the libretto for Siegfried's Tod (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was made almost immediately after the first. It incorporates several revisions, most of which are quite minor, and none of which affects the ending. The only major change, as noted above, was the addition of the Hagen's Watch episode to Act I. After completing this fair copy, however, Wagner made two marginal alterations to Brünnhilde's closing speech. In the first of these she declares that the gods have now atoned for their misrule of the world, and she urges them to accept Siegfried as a new member of the Norse pantheon. This was clearly an attempt by Wagner to restore Siegfried's role as Christlike redeemer of the gods, taking their guilt upon himself and by his death atoning for their sins. The second alteration, added later, is quite different. Brünnhilde now admonishes the gods to "depart powerless", leaving the world to mankind;
"Fade away in bliss before the deed of Man: the hero you created. I proclaim to you freedom from fear, through blessed redemption in death."
- May 1850 Revision – in May 1850 Wagner made a third fair copy of the text (Viertschrift des Textbuches) in the hopes of having it published. Unfortunately this manuscript, which is presently in the Bayreuth Archives, is fragmentary, some of its pages having been discarded during the next revision, for which it was the source-text. Among the missing pages are the final few, so it is impossible to tell whether either of the marginal verses added to the final page of the second fair copy was incorporated into Brünnhilde's closing speech.
- Feuerbach Ending (November and December 1852) – by the time Wagner had completed the libretti for Das RheingoldDas Rheingoldis the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
and Die WalküreDie WalküreDie Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
, he had come to realize that the cycle must end with the destruction by fire of both ValhallaValhallaIn Norse mythology, Valhalla is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those that die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja's field Fólkvangr...
and the gods. This necessitated further and far-reaching revisions of both Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. The new ending of the latter was influenced by Wagner's reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose writing suggested that Gods were the construction of human minds, and that love had primacy over all other human endeavours. In this Feuerbach ending Brünnhilde proclaims the destruction of the Gods and their replacement with a human society ruled by love:
"The holiest hoard of my wisdom I bequeath to the world. Not wealth, not gold, nor godly splendour; not house, not court, nor overbearing pomp; not troubled treaties’ deceiving union, nor the dissembling custom of harsh law: Rapture in joy and sorrow comes from love alone."
- This ending was added by Wagner to the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches) of the work. Although the Feuerbachian lines were eventually dropped, the other significant change to the ending (viz. the substitution of the gods’ destruction for the liberation of the Nibelungs) was retained in all subsequent versions.
- Schopenhauer Ending (1856) – following his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur SchopenhauerArthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
and his growing interest in BuddhistBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
philosophy, Wagner once again changed the ending of the Ring. The Schopenhauer ending stressed self-overcoming, resignation and the illusory nature of human existence, in keeping with the notion of negation of the WillWill (philosophy)Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
. Brünnhilde sees herself redeemed from the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth; enlightened by love, she achieves the state of non-being, or NirvanaNirvanaNirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
. Wagner wrote out a prose sketch of this new ending in 1856 (WWV 86D Text VIIIb), but he did not set it to verse until 1871 or ’72, adding the text and its fair copy to his personal copy of the 1853 printing of the Ring libretti. Brünnhilde's new verses (which were intended to precede the passage beginning, "Grane, mein Ross") close with the words:
- Schopenhauer Ending (1856) – following his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer
"Were I no more to fare to Valhalla's fortress, do you know whither I fare? I depart from the home of desire, I flee forever the home of delusion; the open gates of eternal becoming I close behind me now: To the holiest chosen land, free from desire and delusion, the goal of the world's migration, redeemed from incarnation, the enlightened woman now goes. The blessed end of all things eternal, do you know how I attained it? Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end."
- Final Ending (1874) – when Wagner finally came to set the ending to music in 1874, he reverted to the 1852 revision, but shorn of its closing Feuerbachian lines. Although Wagner never set either the Schopenhauerian or the Feuerbachian lines, he did include them as footnotes in the final printed edition of the text, together with a note to the effect that while he preferred the Schopenhauerian lines, he declined to set them because their meaning was better expressed by the music alone. In other words, the ending he finally set to music is Schopenhauerian in its intention even though this is never stated explicitly in the libretto.
See also
- Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the musicDer Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the musicThe composition of the operatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung occupied Richard Wagner for more than a quarter of a century. Conceived around 1848, the work was not finished until 1874, fewer than two years before the entire cycle was given its premiere at Bayreuth...
External links
- The Richard Wagner Web Site
- Wagner's Prose Works
- Mein Leben: Volume 1 of Wagner’s autobiography from Project Gutenberg
- Mein Leben: Volume 2 of Wagner’s autobiography from Project Gutenberg
- Volume 1 of the Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt from Project Gutenberg
- Volume 2 of the Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt from Project Gutenberg Complete libretto
- Wagner's preliminary sketch of the complete Ring cycle (Opera Today)