Finding an ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring.(Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring)(Book Review)

Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring by Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht Oxford University Press, 238 pp. $26

There have been as many books on Wagner as on any composer in history. Although a fair number of them have been at least "interesting," far fewer have been as rewarding as spending an equivalent amount of time studying the scores. Finding an Ending, closely argued and cleanly organized, happily turns out to be one of those few. Reading it by coincidence during the Met's recent series of Ring broadcasts and a viewing of the Bayreuth centennial Ring on DVD, I was just as eager to return to it as 1 was to the performances.

Kitcher and Schacht wisely set out to discuss one aspect of the Ring in a thorough way, rather than giving us a flimsy overview. The title refers to Wotan's situation, his search for a "stable and admirable order" that he realizes almost immediately will be doomed to failure. His task then is only to influence the manner in which the gods will fall and find the lessons to be learned from it, rather than attempt to avert the inevitable end. He already knows this in Das Rheingold, the authors argue (though Loge knows it earlier), and their conception of the character is tilted toward the human side. The Ring thus is about Wotan's quest for a meaningful life, so a tragic end can still be an achievement. It is Brunnhilde's betrayal of Wotan that eventually leads to a meaningful end, the replacement of a divine order with a human one. ...