Teutonic Legends - In the Nibelungen Lied and the Nibelungen Ring #268737

The Nibelung legends as presented by Rich ard Wagner are treated in the Argument and Sources of the Nibelungen Ring. Brief com parison is there made of the drama with the epic and the sagas. This feature of the book must materially assist in making the reader fa miliar with the varying forms of the myths and of the proper names involved. It should be of service to all students of German legends,whether they aim primarily at Wagner's music or at German literature. Music cannot be fairly criticised or fully appreciated without taking into account its adaptation to the thought that it is designed to convey or impress. The operas of the Ring are the translations by a musical genius of the crude imaginings of an infant race into these harmonies which to a more advanced civilization express, if not the same ideas, at least the better development of the same themes.