An Initiative Study Of Wagner's Socoal Concepts In 《Der Ring Des Nibelungen》

Richard Wagner, a romanticism musician in the 19^th century, is a controversy composer, whose art values and social values in his musical works and books made a great influence on his fellows. His times was full of political changes and different art ideas, and he had colorful experiences, all of which gave him a special understanding to art. He called his own works - music drama, and put forward the Gesamtkunstwerk Theory, which represents his understanding to the essence of art. At the same time, he managed to show his own thinking about life in these works, so there are many philosophical ideas in them. It is important to understand these works that we do some research on features of his works and dig his philosophical ideas on life.Der Ring Des Nibelungen is his representative works, which took him 26 years and gave us a full understanding to his social values. He revealed the deep meaning of the opera through arranging different plots and deepen unseen social values through musical creation.This paper, based on its plots and music, seeks for the source of his ideas and deep meaning of the plots, combined with his life experiences and artistic creations.Chapter 1: an outline of Richard Wagner's artial creationsIt gives a brief introduction to his life experiences and creative routes, and gets to know the factors affecting his artial value and social value and its development; it dwells on his artial value on the whole and analyzes his features of the creations; it gets his basic principles and rules to create musics; simultaneously, compared with Gluck's opera, it tries to find out his continuation and creation from the traditions. Therefore, we can have a whole understanding to his features. Chapter 2 Power valuesThrough the analyses on the plots and the leitmotive music related to power , we can find the special meaning of speare, lease, and ring endowed by Wagner and the relations between power and money, and the relations between power and law. It understands and reflects fully to his power value with the help of his life experiences and his understandings showing in his works.Chapter 3 Hero valuesHe created several heroes including SiegFried, and endowed Notung with some connotations in his operas; moreover, through the descriptions on leitmotiv and music, he showed his definition to perfect hero and a strong desire to break the old and establish the new social norms. This chapter reveals the highest principle for pursuing the life with the noble, that is, his so-called " absolute freedom".Chapter 4 Love valuesHe had special love values because of his complicated marriage. This opera tells us four different love marriage, in which Wagner fully showed his attitudes 'to love, sex and marriage with the help of plots and music, that is, fighting against the traditional bound marriage and pursuing free love. This paper reflects his love values through research on the cultural environment and his life experiences.Chapter 5 Death valuesWagner showed the idea that death is the house for great love through the analyses on the plots and music,for example, Funeral March, especially the music for Brynhildr into the fire; the descriptions on the music of the world end tell us Wagner's death values that death doesn't mean death but rebirth.