Friday, 18 November 2016

7.00pm-7.45pm     Discussion Group (Club Rm)
Facilitated by Annette Lowe
'The Need to Feel: trapped in a glass coffin 
from the book "Grief & Dreams" by Mary Symes, pp43-61

8.00pm                  Guest Speaker

Cosmogony and Apocalypse:
The Bookends of Wagner’s Ring Cycle

Richard Wagner’s great cycle of four myth-driven operas was based on Teutonic, Norse and Icelandic sources, inspiring him to create firstly the narrative texts and then the music. The Prelude to the first opera, The Rhine Gold, may be seen as a creation myth in sound, while the conclusion of the fourth, The Twilight of the Gods, is an archetypal representation in music of the end of the gods.
While the earth is inundated by the waters of the Rhine, the head of the pantheon Wotan and all the gods are consumed in the divine conflagration ignited by Loge, the god of fire. The mythic background will be discussed in detail, as well as the music examples and how they express the motifs. There will also be a brief introduction to the evolution of the Ring in Wagner’s creative output, and an outline of the psychological problem which generates the action of the cycle

Sunday, 20 November 2016

Workshop                  10.00am-4.00pm
Caulfield Park Pavilion   280 Balaclava Rd   CAULFIELD   3161

The Twilight of the God :
a Psychological View of The Ring

There is a flaw in the cosmic machinery which is causing the decline of the World Ash Tree, the axis mundi which supports the three parallel worlds of the Ring’s mythic geography. Wagner’s text sheets the blame for this home to Wotan, chief god and dominant personality in the cycle. This presentation views the cycle as Wotan’s tragedy: his continuous poor choices lead to his decline and fall, and therefore ensure the twilight of all the gods. The characters are considered not only as themselves but also psychologically as carrying projected parts of Wotan: his masculine and feminine, light and dark, action and inertia, power and love. They thus belong both to the light, airy world of conscious motivation, and also to the dragon-toothed subterranean world of the unconscious. Musical examples will illustrate.

Cost*  Members - $90 /  Non-members - $130 / Concession - $110     * lunch plus morning & afternoon tea

Or pay & register via Paypal - minimum 50% deposit option

 Note:  Ample parking /   Trams - Hawthorn Rd & Balaclava Rd

Sally Kester has had two parallel careers. For over four decades she was a part-time lecturer in the School of Music at The University of Western Australia, and for ten years was a professional music critic. Her doctoral thesis was on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. She has also been a Jungian analyst for over thirty-five year, twenty of which were spent as a training analyst for ANZSJA (The Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts).  In 1984 Sally lectured to the Jung Society on: The Myth of the Journey which was followed by a two-day workshop, Wagner’s The Ring of the Niebelung: The Music and the Myth.  This was followed in 1985 by the lecture: Mercurius; Archetype of Transformation, and the workshop: Symbolism of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Sally has also given presentations to the Richard Wagner Society in Melbourne and other cities.