Treacherous Bonds and Laughing Fire: Politics and Religion in Wagner's Ring

Mark Berry is a Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

'Wagner's Ring emerges from this book as the great sceptical work of the nineteenth century in the sense that it deliberately raised more profound questions about the human condition than it could answer. In greater detail than anyone before him, Mark Berry uncovers the intellectual roots of Wagner's radical ideas about the role of music and drama in the world of early and mid-nineteenth century Europe, where religious belief and the politics of revolution had already reached an impasse. He also shows how, at every stage of its vast structure, the Ring continues vividly to confront other conundrums of human behaviour that exist to this day, among them our increasingly opaque horizons of genuine freedom and incomprehensible despoliation of the natural world. For anyone wanting to understand more exactly why Wagner's summum opus still holds the fascination it does for modern audiences, this book is indispensible.' John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music, King's College London and co-author with Carl Dahlhaus of The New Grove Wagner. '... Berry's exploration of the philosophical and political ideas that inspired the drama marks a step forward... Berry is an academic historian, a specialist in the history of ideas. But he has read widely in philosophy and literature, and is musically literate, able to illustrate his argument from the score... Berry's account is detailed and scholarly, and it is impossible to do justice to its subtleties in a short review.' Literary Review '... [an] absorbing and challenging study. It deserves a prominent place in Wagner literature.' Music and Letters ’The thoroughness of this investigation is impressive. Not only is it new to Wagner studies; it is doubtful whether any standard work on the Vormärz goes further in its range of erudition or uses its sources to better effect... one of the book's greatest assets is the prodigious array of documentation cited in its footnotes... [a] remarkable new book...'’The Wagner Journ

• Music examples, Preface and acknowledgements, Abbreviations, Introduction: Problems and opportunities, 1 The intellectual and biographical background, 2 Musical drama, 3 The natural world and its despoliation, 4 Property, capital, and production, 5 Law, government, and the state, 6 The strength and weakness of religion, 7 Power or love, 8 Revolution, 9 Renunciation, 10 Annihilation, redemption, and augury, Index