Wagner's Ring - Turning the Sky Around [Paperback]

 

 

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This well known and fascinating little book by M. Owen Lee contains a wealth of thought-provoking insights into Wagner's 'Ring', perhaps the most monumental work of art in human history. As Lee observes, 'The Ring' uses "external nature to tell us about our inner selves...it takes place outside of time, in the human imagination and memory. On the landscape of your soul, as you listen." It is about evolution, writes Lee, but is "as far in advance of Darwin's theory than myth has always been in advance of science."

To give an example of Lee's insight, he points out the similarities between the opening scene of 'Das Rhinegold' and the 'Forest Murmurs' scene from 'Siegfried', with the forest taking the place of the water as a symbol of the unconscious. The song of the woodbird even echoes the same melody as that of the Rhine Maidens. I must have been blind not to see this before Lee pointed it out! It's so obvious!

Lee is to be congratulated for writing such a deep and philosophical, yet highly accessible book. From reading reviews of opera DVDs on Amazon, it would appear that most lovers of classical music these days no longer wish to understand music with their blood. To them it is just beautiful, highly sophisticated sound, but with no deeper meaning. Wagner would have despised these soulless cretins, or 'cultured philistines' as Nietzsche called them.

Although Lee's interpretation of Wagner becomes too 'psychological' at times, rather than spiritual (even stooping to Freudian theories in a couple of places), it IS fasincating to learn that Siegfried's maturation process matches EXACTLY the three archetypal forces Jung held that a male must face before achieving wholeness (i.e. the attainment of the Self - and after Siegfried has faced these forces, he must then confront Wotan, who tells him "I am your Self").

All of the musical Leitmotifs in the Ring can be divided into two categories: those connected with unconscious nature, and those connected with conscious man. The opening song of the Rhine maidens ("Weia, Waga! Woge du Welle," etc.) can be seen as a kind of 'baby talk', where consciousness arises from the depths and learns to order things for the first time. The Rhinegold itself is the light of consciousness, hidden in the dark waters of the unconscious. With the light of consciousness comes the free choice between what is good and what Father Lee calls 'evil', although Nietzscheans may prefer 'degenerative' or some similar word. Alberich "steals away the golden eye and uses it for evil", yet "a noble, unforgettable theme" sounds when he does so. Lee thinks this is because although "the wresting of consciousness from nature is associated with guilt, the step had to be taken if the human race was to break its bond with mothering nature, the bond that kept it unaware, unthinking, merely intuitive like the animals." This breaking away brought with it knowledge, but also the awareness of death.

In Lee's interpretation Wotan's sacrifice of an eye gives him perfect outward vision, but means he can't see inwardly into his own soul. This is where Brünnhilde comes in. The ending signifies "the transformation of Brünnhilde, Wotan's Wiile (will), into what the whole of Wagner's Ring is striving to create - a new world. It is Wotan's will that the world of Wille (will) be destroyed and transformed into something newer and purer."

The ending of the Ring is not a "return to the beginning", it is a transformation. If it was a return, then Wagner would have brought it back to its original key of E flat, but instead after "a series of awe-inspiring chord progressions", it ends in D flat. So the consciousness of Wotan yields to "the next evolutionary development in human nature." As to what that development will be, Lee's guess is as good as yours or mine.

No Wagnerian should miss out on this book, which also contains an annotated list of further reading, and transcriptions of the most significant musical motifs in the cycle.

Father M. Owen Lee, who is known for his erudite commentaries on Metropolitan Opera broadcasts has recently published another book about the Wagner's Ring Cycle, called "Athena Sings. Wagner and the Greeks." Father Lee is a Classics scholar, so it should be no surprise that the Greeks also inhabit "Wagner's Ring: Turning the Sky Around." This book is only 120 pages long, but like Wagner's Ring it seems to inhabit the whole human experience from the birth of consciousness to the death of god.

If ever a book should published in an audio version, it is this one. 'Turning the Sky Around' stemmed from a series of talks that the author gave during Met broadcast intermissions, and while an 'Index of Musical Themes' might be okay for those who have a piano handy, how wonderful it would be if the book could simply 'play' them for the rest of us. I wonder if the original talks were taped and are lying about in a Met Opera warehouse somewhere---probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Even opera lovers who have every reason to dislike Wagner the man (especially the blatant anti-Semitism of Mime's character and death) will gain insight into the astonishing scope of the Ring from this slender book. As Father Lee puts it: "The subject of Wagner's Ring is not much less than the world itself, the world projected in myth and music."

This book's title is taken from an epiphany experienced by the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, who wrote about the first time he saw Arthur Rackham's illustrations for Wagner's Ring: "The sky had turned round...Pure 'Northernness' engulfed me; a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight..." Father Lee chides those directors who attempt to remove the Ring from nature and make it into a Marxist ideologue, or clutter it up with Chicago gangsters and machine guns (a Covent Garden production). But he also argues that the Ring is outside time and nature, and certainly has less to do with the twelfth-century "Nibelungenlied" than it has to do with our own inner lives---with "...man's inner struggle with his own destructive impulses...of the emergence in him of new ideas, and the dying in him of transforming deaths."

Please read this book, even if you think you don't like opera. It is intuitive and passionate commentary on one of Western Civilization's greatest works of art.

A must-read for Wagner lovers, and those who want yet another
book on "The Ring" cycle. It is brief yet insightful. Enjoy!

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5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to the Ring.
This was the book that first taught me to appreciate Wagner's Ring cycle. Before reading this book, I had tried to watch the Met telecasts and listen to the music, but I confess... Read more

Published on Nov 22 2001 by Geoff Guth

3.0 out of 5 stars Too superficial for my tastes
I've heard comments about Lee--praise for his academic expertise and resentment for his referring to Wagner as "that terrible man" in another book. Read more

Published on Sep 2 2001 by Timothy P. Scanlon

5.0 out of 5 stars Wagner's Ring
Enthralling! An analysis that makes the music all that more meaningful in terms of ideas and emotions in addition to its already intrinsic beauty.

Published on Jun 2 2001 by Paul J. Nagy

5.0 out of 5 stars Wagner's Ring
Enthralling! An analysis that makes the music all that more meaningful in terms of ideas and emotions in addition to its already intrinsic beauty.

Published on Jun 2 2001 by Paul J. Nagy

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Helpful Introduction to the Ring
I bought a copy of this book from the Metropolitan Opera Shop just before seeing the Met Ring last Spring. Read more

Published on Dec 26 2000 by Janice F. Rosen

5.0 out of 5 stars Brief but interesting and insightful
Is there a better writer on opera today than Father Owen Lee? This book provides five essays on The Ring (an introduction plus an essay on each individual Ring opera) which are... Read more

Published on May 17 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful vademecum for a tour of Wagner's Ring
M. Owen Lee is a genial fixture on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and a professor of Classics at St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto. Read more

Published on Jan 28 2000

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