Beyond Reason

The book centers on the four music dramas (Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal) Wagner created in the second half of his career. Two aims are pursued here: first, to penetrate the “secret” of large-scale form in Wagner’s music dramas, the secret the very existence of which was called into question by the composer’s critics, including the most perceptive of those, Nietzsche; second, to see the ideological import of Wagner’s dramas against the background of the worldviews that were current in his lifetime and, in particular, to confront his works with Nietzsche’s critique. What connects the two aims is my conviction that a grasp of Wagner’s large forms affords insights into the dramatic and philosophical implications of his works. The music dramas of Wagner’s later years registered and reacted to every major component in the complex ideological landscape that emerged during his century. Like a number of artists of his time, in his later years Wagner understood himself to be something more than just an artist; rather, he saw himself as a cultural prophet announcing and preparing better, more desirable forms of life for humanity. The specific content of his message never ceased to evolve, but his self-understanding as someone with a message to deliver remained constant. The confrontation with Nietzsche, a rival cultural prophet, takes a particular urgency in this context, since what was at stake in the philosopher’s objections to the artist was precisely the ideological import of Wagner’s works.