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.

About the Author

Karol Berger is Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts, Emeritus, Department of Music, Stanford University. His award-winning books include Musica Ficta; A Theory of Art; and Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow.

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

Reviews

"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?"
— Wagnerspectrum

"This is an exceptionally clear and accessible book on topics on which it is traditionally difficult to be clear and accessible: the origin, genesis, and nature of Wagner's achievement in his ‘music dramas’, and the evaluation of these dramas in terms of their impact on German culture from a philosophical point of view. . . .Musicologists will have a feast with this work, as Berger surprisingly shows the origin of Wagner's musical forms in Italian operatic models, and also shows how superficial and incorrect was Nietzsche's later, spiteful criticism of his former master and idol. . ."
— The Heythrop 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.”
— The Wagner Journal

"This study is Wagnerian in its ambition and achievement. Karol Berger makes several astonishing claims: Wagnerians from Nietzsche through Dahlhaus have misunderstood the musical forms; Wagner derived his forms from Italian operatic models; and Nietzsche was wrong about the ideological import of the music dramas. Revisionist history at its very best."—Christopher Alan Reynolds, author of Wagner, Schumann, and the Lessons of Beethoven's Ninth

“For the first time in decades, Karol Berger is going back to the fundamental question of musical and compositional dramaturgy in Wagner. Now, in opposition to the discredited work of Alfred Lorenz and the important studies of Carl Dahlhaus, he finds a way to discuss compositional dramaturgy within intellectual history—defining Nietzsche not as a counterpart of Wagner but rather Wagner as a counterpart of Nietzsche. Beyond Reason is full of new and unexpected insights, and without doubt outstanding in every respect. Highly original and intellectually brilliant, it is a milestone in Wagner research."—Laurenz Lütteken, Chair of Musicology at the University of Zurich and editor of Wagner-Handbuch

Awards

Otto Kinkeldey Award 2018 2018, American Musicological Society

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews

Awards