Preliminary Encouragements

A few of these will be welcome to the ordinary citizen visiting
the theatre to satisfy his curiosity, or his desire to be in the
fashion, by witnessing a representation of Richard Wagner's
famous Ring of the Niblungs.

First, The Ring, with all its gods and giants and dwarfs, its
water-maidens and Valkyries, its wishing-cap, magic ring,
enchanted sword, and miraculous treasure, is a drama of today,
and not of a remote and fabulous antiquity. It could not have
been written before the second half of the nineteenth century,
because it deals with events which were only then consummating
themselves. Unless the spectator recognizes in it an image of the
life he is himself fighting his way through, it must needs appear
to him a monstrous development of the Christmas pantomimes, spun
out here and there into intolerable lengths of dull conversation
by the principal baritone. Fortunately, even from this point of
view, The Ring is full of extraordinarily attractive episodes,
both orchestral and dramatic. The nature music alone--music of
river and rainbow, fire and forest--is enough to bribe people
with any love of the country in them to endure the passages of
political philosophy in the sure hope of a prettier page to come.
Everybody, too, can enjoy the love music, the hammer and anvil
music, the clumping of the giants, the tune of the young
woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon music and
nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion of
simple melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short,
the vast extent of common ground between The Ring and the
ordinary music we use for play and pleasure. Hence it is that
the four separate music-plays of which it is built have become
popular throughout Europe as operas. We shall presently see that
one of them, Night Falls On The Gods, actually is an opera.

It is generally understood, however, that there is an inner ring
of superior persons to whom the whole work has a most urgent
and searching philosophic and social significance. I profess to
be such a superior person; and I write this pamphlet for the
assistance of those who wish to be introduced to the work on
equal terms with that inner circle of adepts.

My second encouragement is addressed to modest citizens who may
suppose themselves to be disqualified from enjoying The Ring by
their technical ignorance of music. They may dismiss all such
misgivings speedily and confidently. If the sound of music has
any power to move them, they will find that Wagner exacts
nothing further. There is not a single bar of "classical music"
in The Ring--not a note in it that has any other point than the
single direct point of giving musical expression to the drama.