Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen

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This is a wonderful 2-CD set in which musicologist Deryck Cooke lays out the few basic musical themes of the Ring Cycle and gives a very clear exposition of how Wagner develops them over the course of the Cycle. This approach really added to my appreciation of the Ring Cycle and also Wagner's genius in developing and blending his themes. For me the highlight of the disk comes at the end when he presents 2 great orchestral passages from the Ring -- the Prelude to Act III of Siegfried and the very end of Gotterdammerung. After a quick review of the relevant themes, he uses these 2 excerpts to illustrate how multiple themes are brought together and really give us the ideal of "music-drama."

This is a great set that anyone interested in the Ring should have; it really adds to the appreciation of the music of the Ring. This is an item that needs six stars to rate!

A good companion to these CDs is the Ring Disc software which has a full recording of the Solti Ring on 1 CD (!) and has the feature of identifying musical themes as they are played, with a "click-here" approach to following them through the score. This really brings the sort of analysis Cooke gives to each single moment of the Ring.

Wagner's Ring Cycle is arguably the most complex musical work in existence. This CD set is a commentary on and explication of Wagner's basic method in constructing the Ring Cycle. This set was originally a BBC broadcast aimed at educating a broad audience. Cooke's explanations are lucid and organized well. This set is accessible to any interested individual of any level of musical sophistication.
Wagner's basic method was to develop an extensive set of musical themes, leitmotivs, associated with important characters, plot elements, objects, and motivations in the Ring Cycle, The leitmotivs are esthetically and psychologically appropriate to the things to which they are associated. The leitmotivs exist in families with many derived from a basic set of themes that reify the underlying intellectual and psychological themes of the plot. Cooke explicates a large number of leitmotivs and shows how they are related and transformed in the course of the action of the Ring cycle. He concludes with a number of examples demonstrating how Wagner combined leitmotivs in musical actions that parallel the action of the plot and reflect the underlying themes of the Ring Cycle. This gives a nice introduction to the remarkably complex architecture of the Ring cycle. Beyond its pedagogical intent, Cooke's presentation is also a nice introduction to Wagner's incredible achievement in matching the formal architecture of the music, the dramatic action, his presentation of the underlying themes, and all in powerful and often wonderful music.

This may look an intimidating, daunting and dull prospect - a 2+ hour lecture on the motifs in the Ring. Don't be put off. Whether you're a relative novice to the Ring and want to find out what it's all about, more experienced with a desire to understand the composer's methods better or an afficionado who thinks he knows it all inside out, there is great pleasure as well as elucidation to be had from this set. Originally made to accompany the Decca Solti Ring, it contains a multitude of musical illustrations taken from those recordings as well as some specially recorded by Solti just for this Introduction.

It wasn't the first time this has been tried. The famous HMV sets from the late 20's also included recorded examples of over 100 motifs. (These, by the way, are available as part of the Pearl reissue of those wonderful HMV recordings). What that set lacked was the wonderful insights as well as the approachability of the talk by Deryck Cooke. Cooke was a great and much missed musicologist - a Mahler expert responsible for the performing edition of the Tenth Symphony still most played today, a fascinating explorer into the nature of music's basic building-blocks in his excellent book, The Language of Music, and an inspiring and elucidating critic of Wagner's work as shown by the fascinating book he left unfinished at his death, I Saw the World End.

On these CDs he does much more than list the leitmotifs and identify them as calling-cards. He shows the amazingly integrated and organic growth of the musical material that Wagner uses throughout his vast work. He demonstrates how motifs can change their sense and meaning as they evolve through the drama. And he shows how the complex combinations of motifs can radically advance both the musical and the dramatic narrative of the piece. There are even places where he corrects the misinterpretation of some of the motifs that had become ingrained from early commentators' false labels.

This set should engage and enlighten anyone with an interest in Wagner's huge and inexhaustible tetralogy. Do give it a try - no matter how far down the road to Wagnerianism you are.

This set analyses the motifs used in the Ring and especially emphasizes their inter-relationships. It describes "families" of related motifs, and also shows how certain themes are altered as the work as a whole progresses. It is the most useful preparation for listening to or seeing the Ringthat I know, short of a study of the score itself, but it requires no technical musical knowledge or ability to read music.

Deryck Cooke's lecture series upon THE RING is almost as much a classic by now as the Solti RING cycle, with which it was originally issued on LP, and from which it derives its musical examples. The difference is that whereas the Solti RING has been continuously in print ever since it was completed, and was among the first opera sets to benefit from the CD revolution, the Cooke analysis was for long almost totally unobtainable. Now we have it back. It should be welcomed: it is a classic. Cooke's mellow, deep voice with the hint of a Celtic burr - which made him ideal on BBC radio - patiently explains Wagner's melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic metamorphoses to such good effect that if you own this recording, you really require no other RING analysis. (A pity about the abrupt beginnings and endings of too many vocal and orchestral illustrations, though.) Musicology lost a fine, sensitive thinker with Cooke's premature death in 1976.

If all you want is dilettantish baby food, there are plenty of dumbed-down Wagner commentaries on the market, stretching from Anna Russell's famous monologue (which doesn't pretend to be anything other than a parody aimed at morons) to the latest standard-issue "Wagner-was-a-Nazi-boo-hiss" feuilleton (which, unfortunately, does). Without reasonable score-reading skill you will find Cooke useless, however diligently you have ploughed through Marx, Jung, Freud, or other gurus purportedly relevant to THE RING. Cooke expects you to use your brains and your musical sense. Quelle horreur. At today's BBC his "elitism" would render him unemployable.

My love for the Ring was forged, like Nothung, by the Solti Siegfried about 6 months after its first release. The Solti Ring is still the definitive recorded Ring cycle...It is not perfect, but it is very likely the single greatest recording of the twentieth century. I have owned the Cooke Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen on vinyl since its release. It is an absolutely essential recording for anyone who cares about Wagner's Ring.

I found this two CD set extremely helpful in guiding me towards a fuller appreciation of the Ring Cycle. At the first listen I missed about 70% of what Mr. Cooke was talking about. But after about six or seven attempts I appreciated the beauty of Deryck Cooke's exposition.

If you are even remotely interested in Wagner operas this CD set is a must. I would recommend that you first familiarize yourself with the opera plots BEFORE listening to this set.

An absolute essenital to any music lover.

In order to understand Wagner's ring you may simply listen to his work, about 15 hours, but some explanation can be of great help. And that is the purpose of these CD's, where a narrator uses short music examples (motifs) to give an insight of how it all fits together. In books, you often get only written music scores, and the author expects you to understand them. Here, the music itself is used. Again, this is a spoken book on 2 CD's presenting and explaining some of the ring's music themes. It was a great help for me.

When Georg Solti and John Culshaw approached Deryck Cooke with a request to do an analysis of the various leitmotifs of Wagner's Ring cycle, the first completed recording of which they had recently completed for Decca, they agreed it would be a complex project. The idea that it would occupy a single LP record was quickly discarded due to the fact that Cooke would have to constantly retrace his way through the jungle of motifs and show their interrelatedness and so on. Eventually the form (which took up 2 1/2 LP's and the remainder was filled out by the Solti recordings of the Siegfried Idyll [in its original version] and the seldom-heard Kinderkatechismus -- get it if you can find it!) it took on was the most logical, with motifs grouped according to family resemblances and how they evolved one to another -- Ring family, Spear family, Nature family etc. It is now available on CD although the booklet that came with the LP version showed notated examples of every last motif and only some are shown with musical notation here. A small complaint for a magnificent set. If you love the Ring cycle, this makes an essential companion of which I believe Wagner would have approved.

This is a marvelous exposition of the relationship of many of the main musical motives from Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas. It is broken down into families of related motives and so is easy to listen to small parts at a time. The narrator shows how one motive is constructed out of another and explains how the same motive can take on different meanings in different parts of the operas. He discusses the motive and then you hear it played/sung as part of a regular production. In a few cases where the motive might be hard to discern in the midst of a complicated musical portion, the motives are recorded separately to make them more clear. It is valuable for both total novices and those who already have exposure to the material.

It is not a substitute for a libretto, since the story lines and characters are mentioned, but the motives are not played in anything like a chronological order. But the familiarity it gives to the meanings and relationships of the musical motives serves to greatly enrich experience of the operas.