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Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring

Introduction


References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

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completely with her Valkyrie’s great steel shield. Slowly he turns away, before turning round again with a sorrowful expression. #20c; #97; #98; #87)

 

(With solemn resolve he then strides to the center of the stage and directs the point of the spear towards a large rock. #21)

 

Wotan: Loge, listen! (#34 Vari) As I found you at first, a fiery glow, as you then disappeared, as a will-o’-the-wisp, just as I bound you, (#21) I tame you today! (#35; #33b) Arise, you flickering flame, enfold the fell with fire! (During the following, he strikes the stone three times with his spear.) Loge! Loge! Come hither!

 

([[ #100: ]] A stream of fire springs from the rock, gradually increasing in intensity until it becomes a brilliant fiery glow. Bright flickering flames break out. Flickering wildly, tongues of lambent flame surround Wotan, With his spear, he directs the sea of fire to encircle the edge of the rock; it immediately moves towards the back of the stage, where it now continues to burn, enclosing the mountain in flames. #98)

 

Wotan: (#92) He who fears my spear-point shall never pass through the fire!

 

(He stretches out his spear as though casting a spell. [[ #99 ]]; #92, #98, #87, #34; [[ #100 ]]:He then gazes sorrowfully back at Bruennhilde, turns slowly to leave and looks back once again before disappearing through the flames. The curtain falls.)”

 

[[#100]] Loge’s protective ring of “Magic Fire” with which Wotan protects Bruennhilde from all wooers except the fearless Siegfried

Loge’s protective ring of fire around Bruennhilde represents the veil of Maya (illusion), or Wahn, with which man in the mytho-poetic phase of human history (the religious phase) hides the unbearable truth from himself (that he is merely a product of nature, subject to its laws and to egoistic impulse, with no divine spark), and substitutes for this truth the illusion that he has transcendent value, an illusion held to be the truth

(#100 is a variant of #35; it is thus from the family of #35-generated motifs which include #42, #43, #154, and #48 which is a part of this same family)

[See #99 for #100’s dramatic context]