RICHARD WAGNER arr.

Maazel The Ring Without Words

BORN: May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Germany
DIED: February 13, 1883, in Venice, Italy
WORK COMPOSED: 1853-74; 1987 (this arrangement)
WORLD PREMIERE: First complete Ring cycle on August 13, 14, 16 and 17, 1876, in Bayreuth, Germany, Hans
Richter conducting

Lorin Maazel and Der Ring ohne Worte (The Ring Without Words)

Lorin Maazel was a conductor, violinist and composer who was born on March 6, 1930, in
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France and died on July 13, 2014, in Castleton, Virginia. He joined the
Pittsburgh Symphony as a violinist and apprentice conductor at the age of eighteen. In 1960 he
became the first American conductor at the Bayreuth Festival, conducting Lohengrin and
returning in 1968-69 to conduct the Ring. He conducted many of the major symphonies around
the world including Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Vienna State Opera. With his wife he operated the
summer musical festival called Castleton Festival at his estate, Castleton Farms in Virginia.

During his conducting stint at the Bayreuth Festival in 1960 Maazel talked with Wagner’s
grandson Wieland Wagner. Wieland mentioned that the orchestral music of his grandfather
formed a subconscious ‘text behind the text’ of his operas and musical dramas. Years later
Maazel was preparing a production of the complete Ring in West Berlin and he realized that the
orchestral score, with all the leitmotifs, is really a coded version of the full cycle and its story.
Over the years this concept formed and developed into Maazel creating a suite that would allow
the orchestra to recount the vast drama. He set guidelines for himself that all the music would
appear in the correct order, that it would be through-composed without any stops, that there
would be only modest replacing of vocal lines with instruments and that every note would be by
Wagner himself.

Maazel created The Ring Without Words for the Berlin Philharmonic and recorded it with them
in December 1987. The 70-minute work takes the listener through many of the highlights of the
Ring cycle and contains some of the most beautiful and powerful music ever written.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), a 15-hour fusion of the
arts depicting the rise and collapse of civilizations, is one of the most monumental achievements
in our cultural history. The four operas that make up the Ring are: Das Rheingold (The
Rhinegold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)
and has its roots in mythology. Wagner drew from 13th century Icelandic myths found in the
Poetic Edda, the Völsunga Saga, and the Prose Edda; Das Nibelungenlied, an epic poem from
c1200 written in Middle High German; and Thidreks Saga af Bern, an old Norwegian tale
written c1260-70.

Wagner outlined a drama, dated October 4, 1848, which centered on Siegfried’s death and
concludes with Brünnhilde purging the guilt of the gods by ending her life in an act of self-
immolation. Her act allows the gods to reign in glory instead of perishing. In compiling a libretto
for Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried’s Death) it became clear to Wagner that there was a need to explain
what had happened earlier in the story. (If this is sounding familiar, think of the Star Wars
franchise. When Star Wars was released in 1977, now titled Chapter 4: A New Hope, there was a
sense that something had happened to bring us to this point and a back-story was needed to help
us understand how we got here.) Wagner followed Siegfrieds Tod with Der junge Siegfried, Die
Walküre and Das Rheingold, all completed in 1851-52. When he revised Der junge Siegfried and
Siegfrieds Tod, Wagner replaced Siegfried as the central character with Wotan and he altered the
ending so that Valhalla and the gods are all destroyed by fire. He retitled Der junge Siegfried as
Siegfried and Siegfrieds Tod as Götterdämmerung. Thus the libretti of the four parts of the Ring
cycle were written in reverse order, while the composition of the music was in the chronological
order of the cycle: Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried – Acts I & II
(1856-57) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74). Wagner stopped writing Siegfried in 1857 to write
Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger; he resumed work on Siegfried in 1869 when he
composed the third act.

Having already alluded to Star Wars, it would be remiss not to mention Tolkein’s The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings. The importance of Wagner’s Ring cycle is unmistakable in its
influence on both these epic creations. In respect to Tolkein’s epic and the Ring both stories
contain similar elements (described in a wonderful website by Eric Rawlins), which are also
hinted at in the Star Wars movies:

• A ring of power and the attempts of various people to acquire it (Star Wars: The
Force, Jedi knights)
• The ring carries with it a corrupting curse (Star Wars: The Dark Side, the Sith)
• An all-conquering sword, which is broken and later reforged (Star Wars: Luke?
Anakin (Darth Vader)?)
• A romantic partnership between a human hero-knight and a demigod female (Star
Wars: Luke – Princess Leia (Siegmund and Sieglinde are brother and sister and
they have a child, Siegfried); or Han Solo – Princess Leia?)
• A hero who fails and dies, but whose descendant, after a period of hiding, returns
to fulfill the quest (Star Wars: Darth Vader – Luke? Han Solo – Rey?)
• A wise old man with a staff that is more than just a stick of wood (Star Wars:
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda)

The similarities don’t end there; musically John Williams has followed Wagner’s lead by
creating leitmotifs for the different characters and moods. A leitmotif is a short musical phrase
that accompanies a particular character, idea, place, etc. Although Wagner did not invent the
concept of leitmotif, he did indeed perfect it. Throughout the Ring recurring leitmotifs help to
cement the story over the course of the full fifteen hours. Two of the most famous leitmotifs are
instantaneously known and now exist independently of the original sources: The Ride of the
Valkyries from Die Walküre and Imperial March from Star Wars. The former is most well
known outside of the opera from the movie Apocalypse Now and the latter probably best known
from the 2003 Super Bowl XXXVII when it was used as the intro theme for the Oakland
Raiders.

A Short Synopsis
As the first opera, Das Rheingold, opens there are three Rhinemaidens playing in the Rhine. A
dwarf, Alberich the Nibelung, lusts after them but is rejected. He gives up on love and steals the
Rhinemaidens’ gold to create an all-powerful ring and dominate the world. Wotan, leader of the
gods, descends to earth, kidnaps Alberich and the ring so he can pay off the two giants, Fasolt
and Fafner, who built the gods’ shiny new castle Valhalla. Alberich puts a curse on the ring that
dooms whoever touches it. The giants fight over it and Fafner kills Fasolt. The gods enter
Valhalla across a rainbow bridge while the Rhinemaidens lament the stolen gold.

The second opera, Die Walküre, finds Siegmund (Wotan’s son) running away from pursuers. He
comes upon a house where Sieglinde and Hunding, one of his pursuers, live. Hunding realizes
that Siegmund is the man he was after and tells him that they must fight in the morning.
Sieglinde gives Hunding a sleeping potion and urges Siegmund to escape. They then realize that
they are twins (Sieglinde is Wotan’s daughter) and he then pulls an ancient sword out of the tree
in the house and claims Sieglinde as his bride. Wotan asks Brünnhilde (a Valkyrie – warrior
woman) to protect Siegmund, but Wotan’s wife Fricka (the marriage goddess) appears and tells
him he has to protect Hunding instead or lose his powers. He relents and tells Brünnhilde that she
must protect Hunding, but when she meets Siegmund she is impressed by his bravery and
decides that she must help him and disobey Wotan. Hunding and Siegmund battle, Wotan
appears and breaks Siegmund’s sword and Hunding then slays him. Brünnhilde escapes with
Sieglinde and the broken sword. Wotan punishes Brünnhilde by putting her in a deep sleep
surrounded by fire, takes away her immortality and declares that she will be the bride of a hero
who is able to penetrate the fire and wakes her.

At the beginning of Siegfried, the third opera, Alberich’s brother Mime has been raising
Siegfried (Siegmund and Sieglinde’s son; Sieglinde died shortly after giving birth to Siegfried)
for 20 years in a cave in a forest. Wotan, in disguise as a mysterious Wanderer, arrives and tricks
Mime into coercing Siegfried to kill Fafner, who has transformed himself into a dragon and is
guarding a huge treasure. Once he convinces Siegfried to kill the dragon, he then plans to poison
the victorious Siegfried. Siegfried wins the ring when he kills the dragon Fafner in a battle and in
the process of pulling his sword out of the dragon, accidentally tastes the dragon’s blood, which
makes him able to talk to and understand the forest bird who attempts to talk to him before he
battles the dragon. Siegfried kills Mime after the bird has warned him of the dwarf’s plans. The
bird them tells Siegfried about a beautiful woman, Brünnhilde, high up on the rocks. He then
goes looking for her, breaks through the fire and wakes her with a kiss.

The final opera in the cycle, Götterdämmerung, picks up right where we left off. After they sing
about their love, they part and Siegfried sails down the Rhine seeking further adventures,
arriving at the Gibichung’s hall. He meets Gunther, his sister Gutrune, and their half-brother
Hagen (Alberich’s son). Hagen wants the ring, so he tricks Siegfried into drinking a love potion
that makes him fall in love with Gutrune and forget any other woman. Siegfried returns to
Brünnhilde wearing the Tarnhelm (magic helmet) to disguise himself as Gunther. He forces
Brünnhilde to return to the Gibichung’s hall and marry Gunther so that Siegfried can be free to
marry Gutrune. But, during the wedding Brünnhilde realizes that Siegfried has betrayed her and
she decides to seek vengeance. She tells Gunther that she is already married to Siegfried and then
she tells Hagen that Siegfried has a weak point on his back. Hagen hunts down Siegfried and
stabs him in the back, killing him, and then returns to kill Gunther after they fight about who will
get the ring. Brünnhilde realizes that both she and Siegfried have been betrayed. She returns the
ring to the Rhinemaidens in order to cleanse the earth of the curse, sets fire to Siegfried’s funeral
pyre, gets on her horse and leaps into the raging flames to commit suicide. Hagen jumps into the
Rhine after the ring, but the Rhinemaidens drown him and get the ring back. Valhalla bursts into
flames and the gods are destroyed as the Rhine overflows.

Wagner and the Ring’s Legacy

You may still be wondering what it is about the Ring that makes it such a tremendous
achievement. First of all is the aforementioned use of leitmotifs, which had an immeasurable
impact on music and opera. Before Wagner, operas mostly had a rather simple plot to follow that
was really a vehicle for the singers and music, and someone other than the composers almost
always wrote the libretti. The Ring is a complex story that evolves over the course of four operas
that last over fifteen hours, and Wagner himself wrote the story and libretto. He introduced the
concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art,’ where it isn’t just the music or the singing or
the story, but everything together in equal importance that creates a complete artistic product.
One impact of this concept was the disappearance of the traditional arias, as they were replaced
with a more constant, uninterrupted stream of musical ideas. Wagner had a special opera house
constructed, the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, specifically for the Ring cycle; since it opened in
1876 there is an annual festival of Wagner’s operas, including the Ring which is performed over
four evenings.

Numerous essays, books and dissertations have been written about the Ring cycle and not all
from a musical approach. There are psychological, philosophical, mythological and theological
approaches; essentially the Ring offers all sorts of avenues for most any field of study. Then
there is Wagner himself; he was one of the most polarizing figures of the 19th century. One can
find his autobiography and several of his essays available for purchase. The old adage that
everyone is entitled to their own opinion cannot be overstated in the case of Richard Wagner; not
only did Wagner have an opinion, he had many and made sure that everyone knew how or what
he thought about almost any subject. Because of his fervent anti-Semitic beliefs and writings his
music became the theme of Hitler’s Third Reich. This led Wagner’s music to be banned from the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra until a concert in December 1991 when a large portion of the
orchestra voted to set aside the ban and perform excerpts from Tristan and Isolde, The Flying
Dutchman and other operas. Prior to this concert the last time Wagner was performed in Israel
was in April 1938! In 1981 Zubin Mehta, then conductor of the orchestra, attempted to play the
prelude to Tristan and Isolde as an encore. This led to shouting matches and fist fights in the
audience and a walkout by several musicians. A few nights later Mehta tried a Wagner encore
again and got no further than a few measures before loud protests from the audience forced him
to stop.

Program Notes © Vincent Osborn, 2016