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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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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.

breaking off of the World-Ash Tree’s most sacred branch, to make his spear of divine authority engraved with the social contract, withers and kills the World-Ash. This is a concrete illustration of religious man’s sin of world-renunciation, Wotan’s sin against all that was, is, and shall be.

(#146 is generally regarded as a rhythmic variant of #53, but it may contain #20 harmony; if it is a variant of #53 then this links it with #1, #2, and #57b, and also with the family of heroic motifs stemming from the last three notes of #53, namely, #71, #77, #88, #92, #95, and perhaps #152.)

[[#147]] The Norns sing the song of Fate

While the Norns spin Mother Nature’s (their mother Erda’s) self-knowledge, all that was, is, and will be, including Alberich’s curse on his Ring, they sing their song of Fate, the history of the world that was, is, and is yet to be. Their objective knowledge of the world they spin is Fate, natural necessity, because – as Wotan himself admitted to Alberich in S.2.1 and to Erda in S.3.1 – the knowledge they spin can’t be altered.

(#147’s motival links, if any, not yet ascertained; the actual motif representing the Norns’ Spinning is a diminished inversion of #3, which is sometimes combined with the Ring Motif #19; is #147 a variant of #15?)

[[#148]] Siegfried’s mature horn call

Representing Siegfried’s fully attained status as an unconsciously inspired artist, successful wooer of the muse of art, Bruennhilde

(#148 is a harmonically enriched variant of #103, which places #148 in the family of diatonic nature arpeggios which includes #1, #12, and #56.)

[[#149]] The muse Bruennhilde inspires Siegfried to undertake new adventures, i.e., to go out 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)

[[#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.