Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche
- Author: Berger, Karol
it is the textual-critical interpretation of Wagner’s works that is most satisfying in Beyond Reason. Berger’s freshly imagined and vividly expounded narratives have most in common with such...
Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche
- Author: Berger, Karol
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it is the textual-critical interpretation of Wagner’s works that is most satisfying in Beyond Reason. Berger’s freshly imagined and vividly expounded narratives have most in common with such...
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Beyond Reason relates Wagner’s works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career: Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal. Karol Berger seeks to penetrate the “secret” of large-scale form in Wagner’s music dramas and to answer those critics, most prominently Nietzsche, who condemned Wagner for his putative inability to weld small expressive gestures into larger wholes. Organized by individual opera, this is essential reading for both musicologists and Wagner experts.
Contents
- Preface
- Prologue: Beyond Autonomy
- The Uncanny Grace: A Gloss on Kleist’s Marionettes
- Reason
- Beyond Reason
- History
- Nation
- Will
- Religion, the Enlightenment, the Counter-Enlightenment: The New Configuration
- part one
- 1. The Secret of Music-Dramatic Form: Music Drama as Opera
- 2. Der Ring des Nibelungen: The Anarchist Utopia
- Das Rheingold: The Fall
- Die Walküre: How One Becomes Human
- Act 1: Becoming Wagner
- Act 2: Becoming Brünnhilde
- Act 3: Waiting for the Hero
- Siegfried: How One Becomes a Hero
- Act 1: Getting the Sword
- Act 2: Using It
- Act 3: The Awakening
- Götterdämmerung: The Apocalypse
- Prologue: The Past and the Future
- Act 1: The Entrapment 1
- Act 2: The Entrapment 2
- Act 3: Death and Transfiguration
- The Myth of Revolution
- part two
- 3. Tristan und Isolde: The Erotic Utopia
- The Lyrical Axis
- The Narrative Axis
- The Orchestral Strand
- The Music-Dramatic Form
- The Myth of Will
- Postscript
- 4. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Politics after Tristan
- Act 1: The Knight’s Failure
- Act 2: The Clerk’s Failure
- Act 3, Part 1: A Lesson in Poetics
- Act 3, Part 2: The Shoemaker’s Triumph
- The Myth of Nation
- 5. Parsifal: Ethics after Tristan
- The Communion Sequences of Acts 1 and 3
- The Monologues of Acts 1 and 3
- Act 2: The Kiss of Self-Knowledge
- The Music-Dramatic Form
- Eros and Agape
- The Myth of Redemption
- Epilogue: Wagner contra Nietzsche
- Wagner and Nietzsche: A History of the Relationship
- Becoming Nietzsche
- Nietzsche contra Wagner, Wagner contra Nietzsche
- Appendix 1. Das Rheingold: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 2. Die Walküre: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 3. Siegfried: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 4. Götterdämmerung: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 5. Tristan und Isolde: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 6. Die Meistersinger: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Appendix 7. Parsifal: The Music-Dramatic Plan
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Notes
- Works Consulted
- Index
Awards and reviews
The Wagner Journal
it is the textual-critical interpretation of Wagner’s works that is most satisfying in Beyond Reason. Berger’s freshly imagined and vividly expounded narratives have most in common with such appreciative readings, of a predominantly literary character, as those published in recent years by Richard H. Bell, Paul Dawson-Bowling and Roger Scruton….Berger deploys his chosen terminology with confidence, and argues for his interpretations with eloquence and unflagging commitment
Wagner Spectrum
The author develops his new interpretative perspective with so much mastery and such highly reflective circumspection that he is sure to convince even some inveterate Nietzscheans. ... Karol Berger has written a great and momentous book, and only now the work begins. What more could one wish from the contemporary Wagner research
