Richard Wagner's

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG

An Introduction, Notes, and Musical Examples

Part 4: Twilight of the Gods

By Dr. Larry A. Brown

Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Please email comments: larry.brown@lipscomb.edu

Introduction    Rhinegold    Valkyrie    Siegfried    My home page

 

Overview of the major themes of the four music-dramas:

 

Numbers in the notes are to pages in the Andrew Porter translation (Norton publishers 1977), unless otherwise noted as SS, which indicates a quote from the translation by Stewart Spencer (Thames & Hudson 1993).  See the bibliography at the end of all the notes for further reading.

Note: the musical MP3 files are somewhat large, so it may take a few seconds to load them.

 

Mythological background

Norse mythology is unique in that it includes a narration of future events, the end of the gods in a great battle. Ragnarok means "fate or doom of the gods" which in German becomes Gotterdammerung, "Twilight of the Gods."

The great battle is preceded by three year-long winters and general moral decay. Ominous signs appear: wolves that eat the sun and moon, and the stars fall. At Ragnarok, Loki escapes his chains (his punishment for plotting Balder's death), captains the ship Naglfar (made of dead men's nails) to attack Asgard along with the frost giants, riding on tidal waves created by the loosing of Jormungandr, the world serpent, from the ocean bottom. Fenrir the giant wolf breaks his bonds, and Surt and the fire-demons attack from the south.

Heimdall, guardian of the Rainbow Bridge (Bifrost), who never sleeps and sees and hears everything, sounds his trumpet as warning, but it's too late to avoid the final battle. In the battle all the gods meet their end: Odin is swallowed by Fenrir, who in turn is torn asunder by Odin's son Vidar. Thor kills Jormungandr but dies of its venom. Loki and Heimdall kill each other. Surt kills Freyr, then destroys the world by fire.

Some things manage to survive Ragnarok: Valhalla itself, Thor's hammer and his two sons, Odin's favorite son Balder returns to life, and two humans, protected under the World Ash Tree Yggdrasil, who repopulate the world.

Wagner's innovation was to link the story of the gods' end (modified to suit his purposes) with the death of Siegfried and Brunnhilde.

 

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS (Gotterdammerung)

Synopsis:

 
The opening scene depicts the Norns, daughters of Erda, weaving the threads of fate at the base of the World Ash Tree. They see glimpses of things to come involving Siegfried before the thread mysteriously breaks. The scene shifts to the mountain where the two lovers are saying their farewells before Siegfried leaves in search of adventure. Siegfried gives the ring to Brunnhilde for safe-keeping as a symbol of their love. Traveling down the Rhine river, Siegfried arrives at the hall of the Gibichungs. In a dream Alberich incites his son Hagen to help him regain the ring, which Hagen does with the unwitting aid of his half-brother and sister, Gunther and Gutrune. Hagen gives Siegfried a drugged drink, causing him to forget his relationship with Brunnhilde, and he falls in love with Gutrune instead. Meanwhile, one of Brunnhilde's sisters arrives at the mountain to tell her that Wotan has cut branches off the World Ash Tree and has surrounded Valhalla with them, intending to set himself and the gods on fire. She asks Brunnhilde to return the ring to Wotan but she refuses. Siegfried then appears but has transformed himself into the guise of Gunther with the help of the tarnhelm. He forcibly takes back the ring and kidnaps Brunnhilde for the real Gunther to marry. On discovering Siegfried's treachery, Brunnhilde betrays him to Hagen, revealing how Siegfried may be killed by striking him in the back, the only place that she has not covered with a protective spell. Hagen promptly slays him during a hunt. Learning too late that Hagen has tricked them both in order to regain the ring, Brunnhilde orders Siegfried's funeral pyre to be lit and she rides her horse into it, forgiving Siegfried and uniting them in death. Wotan and the other gods are consumed by the flames that destroy Valhalla. Hagen is drowned in the rising waters of the Rhine, as the Rhinedaughters repossess the ring; its curse is lifted when it is returned to nature.

 

Notes:

Prologue

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

 

Conclusion: Ring Transformations

 

Introduction    Rhinegold    Valkyrie    Siegfried    My home page

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aberbach, Alan. The Ideas of Richard Wagner. 1988.

Barzun, Jacques. Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage. 1958.

Bentley, Eric. The Cult of the Superman. 1969 ed.

Cooke, Deryck. I Saw the World End. 1979.

Culshaw, John. Reflections on Wagner's Ring. 1975.

Dahlhaus, Carl. Richard Wagner's Music Dramas. 1979.

Donington, Robert. Wagner's Ring and its Symbols. 1963, 1974.

Ewans, Michael. Wagner and Aeschylus. 1982.

Garten, H. F. Wagner the Dramatist. 1977.

Gutman, Robert. Richard Wagner: the Man, his Mind, and his Music. 1968.

Holman, J. K. Wagner's Ring: A Listener's Companion. 1996.

Kitcher, Philip, and Richard Schacht. Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring. 2004.

Lee, M. Owen. Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round. 1990.

Magee, Bryan. Aspects of Wagner. 1988.

McCreless, Patrick. Wagner's Siegfried. 1982.

Rather, L. J. The Dream of Self-Destruction: Wagner's Ring and the Modern World. 1979.

Shaw, Bernard. The Perfect Wagnerite. 4th ed. 1922.

Spencer, Stewart [SS]. Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung (translation). 1993.

Spencer, Stewart, and Barry Millington. Selected Letters of Richard Wagner. 1987.

Spotts, Frederic. Bayreuth. 1994.

Stein, Jack. Richard Wagner & the Synthesis of the Arts, 1960.

 Stone, Monte. The Ring Disc: an Interactive Guide to Wagner's Ring Cycle. 1997. 

 

Page created 1999, latest revision April 2013 by Larry A. Brown