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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

Donations Welcome

I would be grateful for donations of any size, small or large, to help defray the cost (1) of maintaining this website, (2) and to finance my past and present research which produced my book posted here, Volume One of "The Wound That Will Never Heal," and my forthcoming revision of Volume One (to be submitted for publication), and completion of Volume Two on Wagner's six other canonic operas and music-dramas. I sacrificed at least seven years of paid employment and incurred debts to complete this project, and am currently unemployed, so I thank you in advance for any financial help you can provide. Your friend, Paul Heise.

Siegfried: You gave me more, o wondrous woman, [[ #150 ]] than I know how to cherish [“wahren”: it can also mean “keep” or “guard”]: [[ #150 ]] [[ #149 ]] chide me not if your [[ #150 ]] teaching left me untaught!”

 

[[#149]] The muse Bruennhilde inspires Siegfried to undertake new adventures, i.e., to go our into the world to create Wagnerian music-dramas and present them to the public

(#149 is in the same family of motifs as #8, #23, and #93, which Cooke calls, only partially accurately, Woman’s Inspiration)

[See #148 for #149’s dramatic context]

 

[[#150]] Siegfried as unwitting – and therefore poor - guardian of Wotan’s repressed hoard of runes, the involuntary keeper of Wotan's unspoken secret, which Wotan confessed to Bruennhilde

(Cooke suggests that #150 is related to #143, i.e. the “Hoard of the World” Motif, but Dunning disagrees. However, both #143 and #150 are associated with the concept of Wotan’s Hoard of knowledge.)

[See #148 above for dramatic context.]

 

[[#151]] “Hagen” – Representative of our modern, secular, scientific age of skepticism and cynicis

Hagen is the instrument of Alberich’s curse on his Ring, the agent of Alberich’s intent to punish the adherents of the mytho-poetic (religious) phase of human history, who co-opted his Ring power in order to sustain the illusion of man’s transcendent value, and who therefore sinned against the truth, all that was, is, and will be. Just as Alberich discredited religious faith (creating Wotan’s self-doubt), so Hagen’s sole purpose is to discredit religion’s last refuge, the Wagnerian music-drama, by exposing its true source of inspiration to the light of day, so that Hagen can supplant man’s metaphysical longings with the will to power, power only to be obtained through loveless, objective knowledge.

(#151 is from the Family of Gibichung Motifs, which according to Cooke incorporate a characteristic interval drop. This family includes #155, #156, #171, and perhaps distantly #165, but curiously, not Gunther’s Motif #152.)