[Book review] The Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Ed. by Berry Mark and Vazsonyi Nicholas Cambridge Companions to Music

Abstract

There has been no lack of scholarly attention lavished on Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. And yet, commentary on the work has usually been geared towards a more general readership, and an enlightened, critical examination of Wagner has come about late and with resistance, especially on the part of musicologists. Scholarship on the Ring thus tends to fall between two stools: neither is it in the vanguard of vitally new research, nor does it quite enjoy the coherence of a body of scholarship that has won an assured place in the musicological canon. Albeit the latest in a long line of multi-author volumes on Wagner’s magnum opus, The Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a spirited response to the challenge of summarizing historical and ongoing commentary on the work for a broad readership.