The master of all the gods was Odin, or Wotan, the lord of war and the hunt. Upon the field of battle he was followed by his Valkyrs, Wish-Maidens, choosers of the slain, who consecrated the fallen heroes with kisses and carried them away to Walhalla. There they ate of the feast of the blessed and waited to aid Wotan in his final battle with the powers of evil. The mother of the gods was Fricka, the wife of Wotan, the Juno of the Norse mythology. Freya was the goddess of Love, the Venus of the assembly. Iduna, another goddess, had care of the golden apples of endless youth, which the gods ate. Thor was the wielder of the mighty hammer, made for him by the dwarfs.
The story runs thus: Fear of the giants led the gods to desire to have the mighty burg Walhalla surrounded by a strong wall. By the advice of Loki they swore a great oath to give the goddess Freya and the sun and the moon to the builder of this wall, provided that he had it finished before the coming of summer. If the work was then incomplete, the contract was void. The builder, a Frost-Giant in disguise, asked only the aid of his horse Svadilfare, and this was allowed him. The horse carried such vast stones that the work was almost done several days before the time expired. The gods held a council, "and asked each other who could have advised to give Freya in marriage in Jothunheim (the giant's land) or to plunge the air and the heavens in darknessby taking away the sun and the moon and giving them to the giant; and all agreed that this must have been advised by him who gives the most bad counsels,—namely, Loki, the son of Lauffey,—and they threatened him with a cruel death if he could not contrive some way of preventing the builder from fulfilling his part of the bargain."[42]Loki changed himself to the guise of a mare the next night, and the giant's horse ran after the mare and did no work. The giant, seeing that he was to lose his bargain, resumed his natural form, and the gods called upon Thor, who slew him with his hammer. So, as the "Wala's Prophecy" in the Elder Edda says:
Thus did sin enter among the gods, and by the breaking of the oath they burdened themselves with guilt inexpiable. Evil portents came. Iduna sank with her golden apples of eternal youth to the lower depths, and could not be recalled. Baldur, the second son of Wotan, the holy one, into whose presence no impure thing might come, had terrible dreams. Hel, the goddess of the lower world and of death, appeared to him and beckoned him to come to her.
Now the last scenes begin. Wotan rides to the realm of shades and summons the Wala, who foretells the death of Baldur. Fricka begs all things living or inanimate to swear that they will not injureBaldur. She overlooks the mistletoe. Loki, noting the omission, makes a dart of this wood and gives it to Hödur, the blind god. He in sport shoots the dart at Baldur, who is supposed to be safe from harm, and the bright one falls dead. The death of Baldur is the foreshadowing of the end of the gods, and the dissolution of the universe. Sin has entered among the gods, and they and all else must pay the penalty. Then comes Ragnarök, the German Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods. The hostile forces assemble for the last great battle. The sons of Muspel, led by Surtur with the flaming sword, gallop from the south. The Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Snake are loosed. Wotan leads the gods in battle. A mighty conflict ensues, and all are slain. Surtur's flames burn the world, and from the ashes arises a new one, purified by fire. A youth and a maiden, Lif and Lifthrasir, come out of the wood of Hoddmimir, where, in the innocence of childhood, they have slept through all the battle, and they begin the population of the regenerate world. And the gods themselves, purified by the fire, reappear and dwell in eternal peace on the plain of Ida, on the site where once stood the mighty Walhalla.
We may now briefly review the four dramas of "Der Ring," and trace the connection of their incidents. "Das Rheingold" is the prologue of the whole, and it is essential that we should thoroughly understand its story, for it lays down the basis, the motive, of the entire tragedy. We see the Rhinemaidens sporting around the Rhine gold at the bottom of the river. They are interrupted by the appearance of Alberich, the Nibelung, who comes up from the nether regions of Nibelheim, and is at once overcome with the desire to possess one of the maidens. The rising sun lights up the gold. Alberich's curiosity in regard to it brings out the story of its nature. Here enters Wagner's first original and highly poetic touch. Only one who renounces love can make the ring of gold by which power is to be obtained. That idea is not found in the old legends. Alberich, failing in his attempt to win one of the maidens, forswears love and snatches the gold from its resting-place.
One of the maidens tells us that their father had warned them of a foe to come from the bottom of the river, but we never learn who was that father. Nor is any light thrown on the origin of the gold itself. In the Volsunga Saga we find it in the water, the possession of Andvari. In the "Nibelungen Lied" Siegfried wins the gold from two brothers, Schilbung and Nibelung, who brought it forth from a cave. It had been stored there for centuries. In the Thidrek Saga Siegfried wins it from a dragon, which he kills. But none of the versions account for the origin of the gold. All agree that it finally returned to the Rhine, and that may have been the source of Wagner's idea. Nor is there any slightest foundation for the proclamation that only he who forswears love will be able to profit by the gold. Wagner has simply allowed his fancy to work with the old maxim that money is the root of all evil, and to represent the gods themselves as ignorant of the power of gold and innocent ofwrong till they acquired a knowledge of this power. Wotan, in his desire to save Freia, is ready to yield to the tempter, and his temptation and fall form the subject of the second scene.
In order to get at the full meaning of these Nibelung dramas we must keep ever in mind Wagner's intent to follow in a measure the methods of the Greek dramatists. Æschylus, the greatest of the Greek tragic writers, excelled in showing the inexorable workings of Fate, which in the Greek mind corresponded to the modern conception of the inevitable punishment for sin. Wagner is purely Æschylean in his method of constructing his tragedy, and he sets forth the inflexible processes of Fate with the same high purpose. But as he addressed himself to a modern audience he offered to it that conception of Fate with which it was familiar, namely, the absolute certainty of punishment for transgression of the moral law. That he found in the old Norse legend a foundation for this idea was fortunate. It simplified his work, yet left room for him to introduce striking original matter. The rape of the gold by one who has renounced love is original with Wagner.
In the second scene of the prologue, then, we find Wotan and Fricka before the completed castle of Walhalla, which Wotan salutes in a speech of majestic dignity. Fricka at once reminds him of the price to be paid. When Freia enters, calling upon Wotan to release her from the giants, we quickly learn that it was Loge who devised the bargain and who is depended upon by Wotan to find a way out of it. The giants demand their pay. Wotan tells them they cannot have Freia. Then even the "stupid giant," ashe calls himself, warns the god of the consequences of violating the faith by which he rules. Loge arrives in the height of the discussion and at once shows the evil, cunning, flickering nature of his character. The arch-enemy of the gods, trusted only by Wotan who confesses to a lack of cunning, Loge has planned a temptation to work the downfall of the Aesir. He tells the story of his wanderings. In all the earth none values aught more than the worth of woman—save one, black Alberich alone, who has forsworn love, stolen the Rhine gold and made from it a ring to give him the mastery of the world. Donner exclaims that such a ring may make Alberich master of the gods themselves, and Wotan cries that he must have the ring. But the giants have also heard, and they offer to accept the Nibelung hoard, the stolen Rhine gold, in ransom for Freia, whom they carry off till such time as Wotan is ready to pay. Here we see that Wagner has followed none of the original material exactly. In the Eddas the giant is not allowed to complete the burg, and the hoard does not enter into the matter at all. In the Volsunga Saga the gold is paid in ransom for the gods held by Hreidmar for the murder of Otter. The connection of the Rhine gold with the entry of sin among the gods, as narrated in the Eddas, is Wagner's own work, and it adds immeasurably to the strength and poetic beauty of the drama.
Wotan and Loge in Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs, is the next picture. Alberich has welded the ring and is the master of his race. Mime has made for him the Tarnhelm, which is to be the instrument of much evil. He prates of the power whichis yet to be his, and even threatens the gods. The dwarfs and the giants are alike hostile to the Aesir. Tempted by Loge's cunning to show the magic of the Tarnhelm, Alberich changes himself first to a serpent and then to a toad, and in the latter form the gods make him a captive and drag him away to the surface of the earth before Walhalla. Then they demand of him as ransom the Nibelung hoard. He gives it, for with his ring he can get more. They call for the Tarnhelm. He gives that, too. Then they demand the ring. Alberich warns Wotan not to rob him of it.
The dwarf, like the giant, knows what must be the consequence of the infraction by the presiding god of the law above all gods. But Wotan tears the ring from his finger. Then Alberich curses the ring. It shall deal out death, not power. It shall bring misery, not gladness. But this curse is, after all, only a piece of stage property. It makes a theatrical effect, and it marks a climax for the auditor. The real curse already exists the moment Wotan stains himself with crime. The thought of the Norse mythology, as set forth in the Eddas, but lost by the maker of Volsunga Saga, is preserved by Wagner in the prophecy of Alberich. The law will do its own work; but the curse has an external and incidental value in the construction of the drama. Alberich puts into words the inevitable operation of the law.
The prologue now moves swiftly to its end. The giants return with Freia, and it is arranged that they are to receive for her enough gold to hide her. This is Wagner's adaptation of the incident of the filling of the otter skin in the Volsunga Saga. The hoard proves insufficient, and the Tarnhelm goes to swell the heap. Fasolt, the giant who is smitten by the charms of the goddess, still sees the glorious glance of her eye, and demands that Wotan put the ring on the pile to stop this last cranny. Compare Hreidmar's discovery of the muzzle-hair with this poetic idea! The haughty god refuses. The giants declare the bargain off, and start away again with Freia. Loge's plan is working perfectly. He never loses any opportunity to fasten more firmly upon Wotan his burden of guilt. When the giants demand the ring, Loge interposes, saying that the gods must retain that because Wotan means to restore it to the Rhine maidens. Wotan at once falls into the trap, and says:
When Wotan has flatly refused to give the ring to the giants, Erda, the embodiment of the earth itself, the impersonation of primeval elements, arises in pale light and mystery. She warns Wotan to flee the curse of the ring. She declares herself to be the all-knowing prophetess, and says:
This brief scene, so charged with dramatic and musical potency, is Wagner's use of the prophecy of the Wala, as contained in the Elder Edda. That prophecy foretells the end of the gods, but its situation in the story is similar to that of the Erda scene in "Siegfried." It comes near the end of the tragedy. Nevertheless from it Wagner obtained the character of Erda and the prediction made by her in "Das Rheingold." The prophecy of the Wala in the Edda does not touch upon the sin of the gods, but it sets forth in detail the story of Ragnarök, as I have already given it. Wagner, however, connects the Wala's utterance with the ethical basis of his tragedy. Wotan, impressed by the prediction, gives up the ring and ransoms Freia. The curse at once begins to operate. The giants quarrel over the division of the hoard and Fafner kills Fasolt. In the Volsunga Saga, from which this incident is adapted, Fafner slays his father, while his brother Regin plays the part allotted by Wagner to Mime in "Siegfried," as we shall presently see. Fafner goes off to the forest with his hoard, and there, as in the saga, becomes a dragon, by the aid of the Tarnhelm, and lies guarding the hoard, which he does not know how to use, for he is too stupid to employ the power of the ring.
Donner raises a thunderstorm to clear the air after the murder, and when the rain is gone a rainbow is seen spanning the valley of the Rhine. The new castle stands forth in all its glory, and Wotan, inviting Fricka to enter with him, for the first time calls it Walhalla.The goddess asks the meaning of the name, and Wotan replies:
The thought in Wotan's mind is that of raising up a race of free heroes who shall perform vicariously the expiation denied to him. One of them shall of his own volition rescue the ring and restore it to its rightful owners, thus satisfying the demands of the law and removing the curse. The conception of the hero in the mind of Wotan is made known to us only by the orchestra, which intones the Sword motive here for the first time. In recent years, with the sanction of Mme. Wagner, a new idea has been introduced into this scene. In the hoard is the sword, which is discarded by Fafner as valueless. When Wotan conceives the hero-thought, he picks up this sword and raises it aloft while the trumpet peals out the motive. This was not Wagner's idea, but it is not an unpardonable concession to the demands of the theatre. It was just a little too much for Wagner to expect that his auditors would carry the Sword motive in their minds from "Das Rheingold" to the first act of "Die Walküre," and remember when hearing it in the latter how it was used in the former and thus find out what it meant there.
Over the rainbow—Bifröst, as it is called in the Eddas—the gods enter Walhalla, the Rhine maidens vainly pleading from the valley below for the return of their ring, and Loge gloating over the end to which, as he says, the Aesir are even now hastening. Andthus ends the prologue, to which I have devoted much space because it contains the foundation of the tragedy. It presents to us the hero foredoomed to destruction, the crime, and the certainty of its inevitable punishment. That is the subject-matter of the propositional part of a classic tragedy. We are now ready to observe the workings of Wotan's futile plans.
With the passage from "Das Rheingold" to "Die Walküre" we enter upon the struggles of the innocent human beings who have been created by Wotan to work his will. The beautiful drama in which Wagner sets forth the events leading to the birth of Siegfried and the slumber of Brünnhilde on the mountain is built from mere hints in the Volsunga Saga. Volsung is no longer the great-grandson of Wotan, but is Wotan himself. Siegmund and Sieglinde are Sigmund and Signy of the saga, twin children of Wotan. The name Sieglinde is that of Siegfried's mother, according to the "Nibelungen Lied." It is Hunding, not Siggeir, who marries Sieglinde. The fight between Hunding and Siegmund takes place, not because of the former's rejection by the maid, but because of the latter's flight with her. The mysterious one-eyed man strikes the sword into the tree at the wedding-feast, and on his spear the sword of Siegmund is broken in the fight. Siegmund Wagner substitutes for the warrior whom Brünnhilde in the saga once struck down, contrary to Wotan's wishes, and when she is put to sleep on the mountain it is for protecting, not slaying, the wrong man. We find that she is surrounded by fire at her own request, that Wotan rules that she shall marry only the hero who will know no fear and can pierce the fire, and that this hero is to be the offspring ofSiegmund and Sieglinde—Siegfried, the full-blooded Volsung, in whose veins flows the blood and in whose heart, freely and unconsciously, works the impulse of Wotan. Let the reader review the story of the saga, and compare it with that of "Die Walküre."
The first act of the drama is taken up with the mutual recognition of Siegmund and Sieglinde, their strange love for one another, the reception of the sword by the hero for whom it was struck into the tree, and the flight of the lovers. Then comes the deeply significant opening scene of the second act. The Valkyr Brünnhilde, revealed to us in all the glory of her divine beauty and strength, starting to the field, is warned not to carry Hunding to Walhalla. To Wotan now comes Fricka, stirred to the bottom of her nature by the deep affront in the action of Siegmund and Sieglinde to her dignity as the goddess of marriage. She demands the punishment of the erring pair. Wotan vainly pleads that the gods need the aid of a hero working of his own free will in their defence. Fricka brushes aside this plea with the declaration that heroes have no powers which are denied to gods. She tells Wotan that it is he who breathes courage into Siegmund, that it was he who struck the sword into the tree, devised the need into which Siegmund should fall, and guided him to the house of Hunding. She stands upon her dignity as the celestial queen and demands that the outrage of her especial laws shall be punished. Wotan must not protect Siegmund in the coming fight and he must forbid Brünnhilde's doing so. By hard-wrung oath she binds her spouse to abandon his own plan and submit to the demands of the inexorable moral law.
Brünnhilde returns to his side only to learn the story of her sire's grief. He tells her the history of the rape of the gold, of the endless scheming of Alberich for the downfall of the gods, of his own plan to fill Walhalla with defenders, of his search for Erda, and her becoming Brünnhilde's mother. If Alberich recovers the ring Walhalla is lost, for only he who forswore love can work evil with the circlet of Rhine gold. The ring must be taken from Fafner, but Wotan dare not take it himself because to do so would be a violation of faith and bring more suffering upon him. Only the free hero can accomplish this end. But Fricka has unmasked the truth. Siegmund is but the slave of Wotan's will. And in his final outburst of grief and impotent rage the god sums up his misery:
How Wagner builds upon his material! Hagen, the hatred-born son of Alberich, offspring of gold, shall cause the downfall of the gods. He, the child of evil, shall be the instrument of law! And all this is original with Wagner. To mere hints in the sources he adds the details of a complete poetic story, and always the development of the fundamental ethical thought on which the whole tragedy rests is his. Yet these scenes, in which the god is revealed to us as so intensely human, are the ones to which the average attendant at Wagner performances give the least thought.Wagner was much concerned about this scene, and indeed about the whole act. On October 3, 1855, he sent the first two acts to Liszt and wrote to him thus:
"I am anxious for the weighty second act; it contains two catastrophes, so important and powerful that there would be sufficient matter for two acts; but then they are so interdependent and the one implies the other so immediately, that it was impossible to separate them. If it is represented exactly as I intend, and if my intentions are perfectly understood, the effect must be beyond anything that has hitherto been in existence. Of course it is written only for people who can stand something (perhaps in reality for nobody). That incapable and weak persons will complain cannot in any way move me. You must decide whether everything has succeeded according to my own intentions. I cannot do it otherwise. At times, when I was timid and sobered down, I was chiefly anxious about the great scene of Wotan, especially when he discloses the decrees of Fate to Brünnhilde, and in London I was once on the point of rejecting the whole scene. In order to come to a decision I took up the sketch and recited the scene with proper expression, when fortunately I discovered that my spleen was unjustified, and that, if properly represented, the scene would have a grand effect even in a purely musical sense."
"I am anxious for the weighty second act; it contains two catastrophes, so important and powerful that there would be sufficient matter for two acts; but then they are so interdependent and the one implies the other so immediately, that it was impossible to separate them. If it is represented exactly as I intend, and if my intentions are perfectly understood, the effect must be beyond anything that has hitherto been in existence. Of course it is written only for people who can stand something (perhaps in reality for nobody). That incapable and weak persons will complain cannot in any way move me. You must decide whether everything has succeeded according to my own intentions. I cannot do it otherwise. At times, when I was timid and sobered down, I was chiefly anxious about the great scene of Wotan, especially when he discloses the decrees of Fate to Brünnhilde, and in London I was once on the point of rejecting the whole scene. In order to come to a decision I took up the sketch and recited the scene with proper expression, when fortunately I discovered that my spleen was unjustified, and that, if properly represented, the scene would have a grand effect even in a purely musical sense."
The remainder of the drama is taken up with the development of what has been prepared. Brünnhilde's mind is distracted. She feels that Wotan, against his own inclinations, is about to sacrifice Siegmund to the wrath of Fricka. Presently the fleeing and guilty lovers approach. Sieglinde, overcome with shame and terrified at the prospect of Hunding's attack, sinks senseless in the arms of Siegmund. Brünnhilde appears, and in the beautiful scene, usually named by its German title, the "Todesverkündigung," announces to Siegmund his coming death. He passionately refuses to die or to go to Walhalla withouthis bride, and Brünnhilde, overcome by his pleading, promises to aid him in the fight. She does so, and Wotan thrusts his spear between the combatants, so that Siegmund's sword is shattered upon it. Hunding slays Siegmund and is himself stricken to death by the sword of Wotan. Brünnhilde flees to the Valkyr's rock with Sieglinde, gives her the pieces of the broken sword, foretells the birth of a son, whom she names Siegfried, and sends Sieglinde to secrete herself in the forest to the eastward, where Fafner lies brooding on the hoard. Wotan arrives in hot pursuit of his disobedient daughter, drives off her frightened, pleading sisters, and sentences her, as already told. And all this Wagner has evolved from a few scattered lines in the saga. The marvellous beauty of the scene between Wotan and his beloved child cannot be described.
But let the reader remember that the punishment inflicted on her is not solely because of her disobedience of a command, but also and chiefly because the salvation of Siegmund would have violated Wotan's oath to Fricka and thus have increased the burden of guilt already upon the conscience of this unfortunate and very human god. Again the ethical basis of the tragedy comes to the front, and the moral law, operating as Fate, demands a victim. Brünnhilde becomes the Sleeping Beauty, so familiar to us in the fairy tales, and waits for her prince to wake her, a prince who shall be without fear, and who shall see no terrors in the point of All-Father's dread spear. This hero will be free, "freer than I, the god," as Wotan tells us, while the majestic pealing of the young hero's motive by the orchestra reveals, what the text does not, that Siegfried will be the awakener.
None of the sagas or legends in any way connect Brünnhilde with the fate of Siegfried's parents or the birth of the hero. Wagner's invention is here truly dramatic. He has welded separate incidents into a sequence of beautiful poetry and immense dramatic significance. In doing so he has greatly increased the splendour of the character of Brünnhilde. He has enlarged the aspect of her divinity, and has painted with the hand of a master the strange commingling in her of godhood and womanhood. Her sympathy with the doomed pair is wholly womanly, and it leads to her becoming entirely a woman when Wotan, in the enforcement of the demands of law, kisses the godhood from her. None of the old poems suggest such a Brünnhilde as Wagner's. She is a creation as distinct as Shakespeare's Juliet, as great as his Hamlet. In all dramatic literature there is no more majestic female figure than the Brünnhilde of "Die Walküre" and "Siegfried." In the final drama she diminishes in stature, by reason of the loss of her virginity. Then she is only a weak woman, except in the last scene, when she rises once more on the wings of grief to the proudest heights of self-sacrifice.
And so we pass to the next drama of the trilogy, the second act of the tragedy. The story of this is simple. Few ethical questions arise. All is concerned with the acts of the free hero, working without knowledge of Wotan, while the Nibelungs vainly strive to divert the results of the action to their own benefit. Again we meet with the warring forces,—gods, giants, and dwarfs,—but the gods are passive. Wotan, disguised as a wanderer, watches the progress of events, but does not interfere in it. The first act takes placein the cavern occupied as home and smithy by Mime,[43]no longer subject to his crafty brother, but now in business for himself and scheming to make the young Siegfried his instrument for the recovery of the gold and the ring. Sieglinde died in childbirth in Mime's cavern, and the dwarf, knowing well who she was, has taken good care of her son. Mime is an infinitely more picturesque character than the Regin of the saga, and the cavern a far more romantic home for the nurture of a forest hero than the Court of the Danish King. Wagner keeps clear of historical surroundings and conventionalities and presents to us a primal, elementary youth, a being whom we cannot fail to love. For Siegfried is the free, untrammelled youth of all time, the young man rejoicing in the strength of his youth, and arriving at the fundamental laws of life and love by observation, introspection, and the mighty workings of natural passion. He is a type, freed from every convention of clothes-philosophy and custom, from every condition of time or place. Siegfried is Young Manhood. His every utterance demands of the impersonator a largeness of conception far and away beyond the requirements of the ordinary operatic rôles. These are the petty puppets of libretto machinists, who cut and fit more or less dramatic stories according to the specificationsof the Meyerbeerian plan. But Siegfried must be conceived along the lines of Brünnhilde's apostrophe:
"O Siegfried! Lordly one! Shield of the world! Life of the earth! Smiling hero!" He must be big in every way—big in the brawn of his brandished limbs, big in the bursts of his blithesome enthusiasm, and big in the beauty and bloom of his song. For Wagner, in his "Communication," tells us how, in the endeavour to discover what it was that drew him to the heart of the sagas, he drove into the deeper regions of antiquity,
"where, at last, to my delight and truly in the utmost reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young form of Man in all the freshness of his force. My studies thus bore me through the legends of the Middle Ages right down to their foundation in the old Germanic Mythos; one swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus, at last, to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw was no longer the figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside, but the real, naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion; the type of the true human being."
"where, at last, to my delight and truly in the utmost reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young form of Man in all the freshness of his force. My studies thus bore me through the legends of the Middle Ages right down to their foundation in the old Germanic Mythos; one swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus, at last, to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw was no longer the figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside, but the real, naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion; the type of the true human being."
It was the recognition of Siegfried in his perfection, not as belittled in the "Nibelungen Lied," that made Wagner conceive him as the hero of his drama. That conception, once formed, was not lost in the subsequent development which made Wotan the real protagonist. Siegfried, in the first drama in whichhe appears, stands as the type of the utmost freedom of human impulse and action, the complete foil to the far-seeing, law-constrained god. He represents the complementary element in the ethical basis of the tragedy. He is the pure one, over whom Fate, in the shape of the inexorable moral law, has yet no control. He is himself. He makes his own deeds. He is the free agent for whom the despairing god has yearned.
Thus, then, we see him in the first act of the drama,—an impulsive, discontented youth, eager for larger fields of action, moved by strange emotions which he does not comprehend, and for whose meaning he vainly questions the cunning dwarf. A sword he needs, but none which the dwarf makes will bear the force of his blow. At last he wrings from Mime the true story of his birth, and the pieces of the broken sword, which Siegmund in his hour of need christened "Nothung" ("Needful"), are produced as evidence. These shall Mime weld, declares Siegfried, and then the free youth will make his home in the wide world. But weld that particular sword, the sword which Wotan struck into the tree Branstock, is just what Mime cannot do. Wotan, in his wanderer's guise, comes to prophesy to Mime that only one who never knew fear shall accomplish the task. To him is forfeit the head which Mime has staked on answering Wotan's questions.
The scene of the questions between Wotan and Mime was probably suggested to Wagner by the "Vafthrudnersmal," one of the poems of the Elder Edda, which shows Odin holding a similar conversation with the omniscient giant, Vafthrudner. Odinappears as a poor traveller named Gangrader, and engages in a contest of knowledge with the giant. Gangrader, in answer to Vafthrudner's questions, tells the names of the horses that carry Day and Night across the sky and of the river which divides Asgard from Jotunheim (Riesenheim, the giant's land) and the field where the last battle is to be fought. The giant tells the origin of the earth, the story of the creation of the gods, what the heroes do in Walhalla, what was the origin of the Norns, who will rule after the world had been destroyed and what will be the end of the father of the gods. Finally the god asks: "What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son before he ascended the funeral pile?" The giant recognises Odin by this question, and says, "Who can tell what thou didst whisper of old in the ear of thy son? I have called down my fate upon my own head when I dared to enter on a strife of knowledge with Odin. All-Father, thou wilt ever be the wisest." We are not told whether the giant lost his head, but we are led to believe that the whispered word was "Resurrection."
When Siegfried returns, Mime vainly endeavours to teach him the meaning of fear, for he would save his head. Siegfried laughs at the conception, and forthwith forges anew the broken blade of Nothung, cleaving in twain the anvil and shouting in the joy of his strength. As for Mime, he now sees that Siegfried will surely slay Fafner, of whom he has told the youth. Yet the dwarf is in terror, for if Siegfried does not learn fear from the dragon, then the dwarf dies; and if he does learn it, who is to rescue the hoard from Fafner's grasp?
To the forest, then, in the second act, we follow theyouth and his scheming preceptor.[44]Alberich lies in watch outside Fafner's cave, and Wotan comes to warn the giant that his fate draws near. Alberich listens, wondering, while Wotan addresses the dragon in his lair. Anon Mime conducts Siegfried to the spot and leaves him. Alone the hero muses on his life, his birth, his mother's death, his own lack of a mate. He hears the song of a forest bird and thinks, could he but understand it, it might tell him of his needs. He fashions a reed pipe wherewith to talk to the bird, but his effort is futile. The scene is one of strange beauty, the orchestra imitating the weaving of the forest leaves and shadows in a wondrous tone-poem, the "Waldweben." Despairing of success with the reed, Siegfried winds a blast upon his horn, and Fafner, the dragon, emerges from his concealment.
Siegfried attacks and slays the monster. Dying, the giant tells him to beware of Mime. Plucking his sword from the beast's heart, the youth wets his finger with the blood and cleanses it with his lips. At once he understands the language of the bird. And here we meet with one of Wagner's dramatic makeshifts, which has often been ridiculed. Before the hero understands the bird its tones are represented by the clarionet; afterward it sings German text in a soprano voice. This is Wagner's plan for conveying the language of the bird to the audience. It is awkward, but there was plainly no other way to let the hearer into the secret. One needs the help of his imagination here, and must bear ever in mind that he is listening to one of the world's fairy tales. The birdsends Siegfried to get the helm and the ring and warns the youth to be wary, for Mime is treacherous.
And now comes another makeshift. Mime approaches, knowing that Siegfried has slain the dragon and obtained the helm and the ring. The dwarf plans to sink the youth in sleep by a potion, slay him, and secure the treasure. But as he would prattle of his love and fidelity, he unconsciously reveals the inner workings of his mind, and to do this he has to utter them aloud. Siegfried and the audience hear them. It is clumsy, but again there seemed no other way. Siegfried slays Mime, and again lays himself down under the linden tree. The "Waldweben" is heard again, and once more the bird sings to the hero, this time to tell him that Brünnhilde sleeps on the fire-girt rock, where only he who knows not fear can reach her. Siegfried springs forward on the path, the bird showing him the way. The whole structure and fancy of this beautiful act are original with Wagner. The saga gave the dramatist only the facts of the slaying of the dragon and the understanding of the language of the birds, which warned the hero of the dwarf's treachery and told him of the sleeping beauty. The treatment and development in the drama are infinitely more poetic than in the original story.
The third act opens with an interview, suggested by the Elder Edda, between Wotan and Erda at the foot of the Valkyr's mountain. Wotan once more consults the Wala, but she tells him naught of value. The god, now ready to resign the empire of the world and prepared for the ending of the Aesir, awaits the hero's coming. Siegfried, led by the bird, confronts him, and with the sword Nothung smitesthe opposing spear in twain. I have seen it asked why this sword, which was shattered upon the spear in "Die Walküre," now cleaves the runic haft. The ethical basis of the tragedy explains this. Siegmund was doomed to expiate his crime, a victim to Fricka, the avenger, and to the law behind her. But, welded anew by the hand of a spotless hero, the sword is resistless.[45]The law has no hold upon it. Crying "In vain! I cannot stop thee," Wotan disappears from the tragedy. We hear of him, but see him no more till the flames of Walhalla reveal him to us in the blazing sky.
Siegfried penetrates the fire, and finds the sleeping beauty. He cuts the byrny from her bosom, as in the saga, and wakes her with a kiss. She sings her hymn to the sun and the light and the earth, and proclaims herself Siegfried's from the beginning. One last struggle for her maidenhood, and she yields herself. The union is made. The old order is done. The new race is to come and rule the world. The drama closes with a duo of passionate beauty, and we are ready for "Götterdämmerung," the last act of "Der Ring des Nibelungen."
No doubt the legend of Sigurd's penetration of the flames was taken from the old story of Freyr, the sun-god, who rode through a hedge, guarded by fierce dogs, and a flame-circle within it, to win Gerda for his bride. In the later form of the legend, as told in the Elder Edda, Freyr once saw Gerda afar off and fell in love with her. He pined, and his son told Skirnir,his faithful servant, of this. Skirnir took Freyr's horse and magic sword, rode through the flames, and conquered the unwilling Gerda by means of runes. Among the things she refused before he employed the runes was the magic ring which the dwarfs had made. From it eight new ones dropped each ninth night. Thus we see that the myth is related to both of Sigurd's exploits,—that in which he penetrated the flames for himself, and that in which he represented Gunnar. The ring made by the dwarfs, of course, became in the saga tale the ring of Andvari, carrying its curse, and was given to Brünnhilde after the hero had won her.
The last drama of the series opens with a scene taken directly from the Norse mythology. On the Valkyr's rock sit the three Norns, weaving their rope of runes and peering into the events of the past, the present, and the future. For such is their vocation. They are the Fates of older legend. In the Scandinavian mythology they were called Urd, who looked into the past; Verdandi, who surveyed the present, and Skuld, the youngest, who gazed into the future. Wagner does not use the names, nor does he discriminate in the occupations of the three. Indeed, the scene has no close dramatic relation to the drama about to be enacted, but is rather a pictorial and musical mood tableau, designed to fill the mind of the auditor with portents. In the narrative of the first Norn we hear how Wotan lost his eye, selling it for a draught from the fountain of knowledge, and how he broke a limb from the great ash Yggdrasil itself to fashion his spear. These are incidents in the old mythology. The ash tree was watered daily from Urd's fountain, and it could not wither till the lastbattle was about to be fought. From the first Norn's tale we learn that the tree has withered and the fountain dried. This is a portent of the end.
From the stories of the other Norns we learn that as soon as Siegfried had broken Wotan's spear the god summoned his heroes to the world's ash tree and cut it down. From it were hewn fagots, and these were piled high in Walhalla. Wotan and the heroes sit in state, waiting for the flames which shall consume their abode. The dusk of the gods is at hand. While the Norns are trying to fathom the outcome of the curse on the ring, their rope breaks. With frightened cries they sink into the earth, declaring that the world shall no more hear their wisdom.
Siegfried and Brünnhilde, in the dawn of the new day, come forth from their cavern home. The young hero has matured into a man. He is clad in Brünnhilde's armor and wears her cloak. How long they were together on the mountain no one knows. It was long enough for the youth to become a man, and to learn all Brünnhilde's wisdom. She is sending him forth to new exploits, fearing only that she may not hold his heart in absence. She has taught him all her runes, and surrendered to him her maidenhood's strength. What these runes were we can learn from the Lay of Sigdrifa in the Elder Edda, but they have no bearing upon the story of Wagner. The statement that Brünnhilde has lost her maiden strength is of importance, for it helps to explain why Siegfried is afterward able to snatch the ring from her. With her maidenhood, departed the last vestige of her divinity, her strength. Henceforth she is all woman. The decree of Wotan is fulfilled. She says:
Siegfried gives her the ring with a casual and insignificant remark that he owes all his strength to it. Brünnhilde gives him her steed, Grani, which has lost its magic powers together with her. Compare this with the saga story of Sigurd's choice of a horse. The hero now sets forth, and as the scene changes we hear his horn echoing down the Rhine valley, and the orchestra paints his journey. The second scene shows us the interior of the home of Gunther, the son of Gibich, who is seated at a table with his sister, Gutrune, and his half-brother, Hagen. Gunther is the Gunnar of the saga, but Wagner uses the name from the "Nibelungen Lied" because it is German. The name of Gibich is obtained from the "Lex Burgundionum" of Gundohar, a Burgundian king of the fifth century, who in it names, as one of his ancestors, Gibica. The word is derived from the same root as Giuki, the name used in the Volsunga Saga. Wagner gets the character of Gunther from the "Nibelungen Lied," where he is represented as a weak person, usually under the influence of others. Gutrune is the Gudrun of the saga, the daughter of Grimhild, who employs magic to win Siegfried for her child's spouse. In the "Nibelungen Lied" Chriemhild is Gutrune; the two personages have been moulded into one and the magic eliminated. Wagner, as we shall see, identifies the characters ofGutrune and Chriemhild as the Lied does, but retains the magic, which is wielded by Hagen in furtherance of the Nibelung's plan to recover the ring. He also retains the fact that Grimhild was Gunther's mother. She was also the mother of Hagen, having been overcome by an elf—an idea which Wagner borrowed from the Thidrek Saga.
This idea was essential to his plan of making Hagen appear in the drama as the son of Alberich. It does not consist with Wotan's statement that the Nibelung had won a woman with gold, but that discrepancy is unimportant. The point is that Gunther's half-brother is a Nibelung, and has been entrusted by his father with the task of bringing about the downfall of Siegfried. Wagner has developed the character of Hagen according to this idea, and not according to the original sources. In the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied" Hagen is represented as a crafty villain, while in the Volsunga Saga he is of noble nature and will have naught to do with the plot against Siegfried. In the other two poems he has no motive but malice, while Wagner raises the character to a high tragic plane by giving Hagen the purpose of the Nibelungs' revenge.
The second scene opens, then, with Hagen telling Gunther that he is too long unwed, and that there sleeps on a mountain surrounded by fire the woman who should be his bride. But she is to be reached only by him who never knew fear. This leads to a narration of the exploits of Siegfried, suggested by the narrative of Hagen in the "Nibelungen Lied," when he sees Siegfried approaching the Court of Gunther. Neither Gunther nor Gutrune learns what Hagen hasalready been told by Alberich, that Siegfried has wed Brünnhilde; and so they readily fall in with his suggestion that Gutrune administer a magic potion to bind this great hero's heart to her. Siegfried arrives at the castle, and is welcomed by Gunther, who in the mediæval style says in effect: "All that I have and am is yours." Siegfried answers that he has nothing but his good limbs and his home-made sword to offer in return. Hagen immediately asks him where the Nibelungs' hoard is. The hero replies that he deemed it worthless and left it in the cave, except the Tarnhelm, which he has with him, but does not know how to use. Hagen thereupon explains the virtue of it, and inquires where the ring is. Siegfried says it is worn by a woman, and Hagen mutters, "Brünnhilde." Gutrune proffers the magic draught. Siegfried drinks to Brünnhilde and—forgets her. For the drink, artfully prepared by Hagen, was one of forgetfulness. And here we come upon a weak spot in the drama. The drink does not, as we shall see, make Siegfried forget all the incidents leading up to his winning of Brünnhilde, but only their relations. The only plea that can be entered here is that if we accept a magic drink at all, we must not put logical limitations on its powers.
Siegfried now falls in with Hagen's plan. He agrees to go through the fire and get Brünnhilde for Gunther, provided he, in return for the service, receives the hand of Gutrune. There is no talk of a futile attempt on the part of Gunther to penetrate the flames. Siegfried and Gunther swear blood-brotherhood, and the two start for the Valkyr's rock, where, with the help of the Tarnhelm, they are to exchangeshapes, as in the saga. Hagen, left alone, gloats over the fact that Siegfried will bring him the ring. Once more the scene changes to the Valkyr's rock, and we meet with an episode in the story entirely original with Wagner, an episode of great beauty and significance. Brünnhilde hears once again the sounds of the passage of a wind-horse, a Valkyr steed. A moment later her sister, Waltraute, is clasped in her embrace. Why has she broken Wotan's command against visiting Brünnhilde? Waltraute says she has fled hither from Walhalla in anguish. "What has befallen the eternal gods?" asks Brünnhilde, in fear. Then Waltraute gives a majestic description of the last gathering of the gods in Walhalla, as already narrated in the Norns' scene. Deep dismay has fallen on the gods. Wotan has sent his ravens out to seek for tidings. This, according to the Eddas, he did daily. Waltraute, weeping on her father's breast, has heard him say:
This is why Waltraute has come. Wotan dare not act, does not dream of doing so; for the atonement must be the work of a free agent. But a Valkyr is a wish-maiden, Wotan's will, and so Waltraute, like Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre," strives to realise her father's wish. Will Brünnhilde give back the ring? But Brünnhilde is no more a virgin Valkyr, a mere daughter of the gods. She is a beloved and loving woman. The ring is Siegfried's bridal gift. Perishthe world; perish the eternal gods; but the ring shall not leave her finger where love kissed it into place. Even as Brünnhilde speaks, the orchestra sings the motive of Renunciation, for, as Waltraute flees in despair, the fire springs up in defence of Brünnhilde and the beguiled Siegfried comes in the Tarnhelm, wearing the face and form of Gunther, to wrest the ring from her and make her the bride of the son of Gibich. This is tremendous tragedy; tenfold more tremendous than anything that entered the minds of the sagamen or the fashioners of the "Nibelungen Lied." The Waltraute scene, accentuating, as it does, Wagner's connection of the Nibelung ring with the burden of guilt resting on the gods, presents in a powerful light the human tragedy leading to the restoration of the ring to its rightful owners. Furthermore, the scene is essential to a complete understanding of the character of Brünnhilde in the final drama of the series. The last despairing appeal of Waltraute for the Aesir meets with an answer which fully exhibits the change wrought in Brünnhilde. When Wotan put her to sleep, saying, "So küsst er die Gottheit von dir," he was the familiar Wotan of the trilogy, planning, but seeing only half the issue of his plan. When Siegfried laid the kiss of human love upon the virgin lips of the Valkyr, he it was who truly kissed the godhood from her, and left her with a wholly human disregard for the fading Aesir. All she has given for love, and now comes a second claimant for her. Stricken with horror and shame, she is driven into the cavern. Siegfried, following, announces that his sword shall lie between them.
The second act brings us back to the castle ofGunther. Hagen, still watching, is visited by Alberich, who urges him to persistence. Alberich's speeches impress upon us two important points, namely: that the curse cannot fall upon Siegfried, because he is ignorant of the powers of the ring, and therefore does not use them; and, secondly, that if he should give the ring back to the Rhine maidens no art could fashion a new one. Both of these ideas are Wagner's. The first is a natural outgrowth of the ethical basis of the drama; the second was doubtless suggested by the old legends, which always finish the story of the hoard by returning it to the waters. Siegfried returns and announces his success, quieting the fears of Gutrune by telling her that his sword lay between him and Brünnhilde. Here we have an alteration of the original stories to suit modern taste. In the legends there was no question of the relations of the disguised Siegfried and Brünnhilde, and they existed with the consent of Gunther. But in Wagner's drama it is made plain to us that Siegfried was loyal in the modern sense, though he used an ancient symbol of honour, the sword.
Gunther arrives with Brünnhilde, and she, seeing Siegfried there with Gutrune, at once suspects treachery. She perceives the ring on Siegfried's finger, and demands an explanation as to how he came by the circlet which Gunther had wrenched from her hand the previous night. This episode of the ring is entirely different, as the reader will note, from those of the Volsunga Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied." But it had to be so, because Wagner had already omitted the incident which, in the sources of his story, led to Siegfried's presenting the ring to his wife. Brünnhilde's questions about the ring evoke no satisfactoryanswers, and she bursts out with the charge that not Gunther, but Siegfried married her. "He forced delights of love from me!" she cries. Siegfried avows that his sword lay between them. But Brünnhilde is talking of a night long previous to that just passed, a night of which only she and Siegfried should know, but which he, under the influence of the drink, has forgotten. Brünnhilde knows that her hearers are ignorant of that night, but she is bent upon implicating Siegfried, and she lets the assembly believe that she is speaking of the night just passed. Much good ink has been spilled over this scene, one party contending that Brünnhilde was guilty of deceit, and the other that Siegfried had been false to his trust. The intent of the scene is, it seems to me, perfectly plain, but to quiet all doubts we may go to Wagner's own sketch, "The Nibelung Myth as Sketch for a Drama." He describes this point thus:
"Siegfried charges her with shamelessness: faithful had he been to this blood brothership,—his sword he laid between Brünnhilde and himself:—he calls on her to bear him witness. Purposely, and thinking only of his ruin, she will not understand him."
In a speech of double meaning, she declares that the sword hung in its scabbard on the wall on the night when its master gained him a true love. Siegfried swears to his truth on the point of Hagen's spear, calling upon it to pierce him if he is false. This is a purely theatric touch. This spear does pierce him, yet was he not false. Brünnhilde swears upon the same spear that Siegfried has committed perjury. Thereupon Siegfried lightly says that she is daft, and bids the guests to let the festivities proceed. Brünnhildenow suspects some deviltry, but her runic wisdom is gone and she cannot fathom it. But she can and does confide to Hagen that she had made her hero invulnerable, except in the back. Gunther discerns that he has been dishonoured, yet he is loath, for his sister's sake, to be revenged upon Siegfried. This makes Brünnhilde all the more furious, and she readily assents to Hagen's proposition that Siegfried must die. The vacillating Gunther is overcome. Hagen shouts in triumph; the ring and the power will soon be his.
The last act shows the Rhine maidens sporting on the surface of the water in a little cove of the river. Siegfried, hunting and strayed from his party, appears on the rocks above them. They beg him to return the ring, and he is almost on the point of doing so when they warn him of its curse. He refuses to be scared into parting with it. This meeting with the Rhine maidens is not found in any of the old stories, because the ring which causes the trouble in "Götterdämmerung" is not in any way associated in the legends with the end of the gods. In both the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied," Hagen is warned of an evil by mermaids, and this may barely have suggested this scene, which so accentuates the immediately succeeding tragedy of Siegfried's death.
The hunting party arrives, and to cheer the gloomy Gunther Siegfried volunteers to tell the story of his youth. All this is original with Wagner. The hero narrates the incidents of the drama "Siegfried" to a wonderful epitome of its music, up to the slaying of Mime. Then Hagen administers an antidote to the drink of forgetfulness, and the hero reveals his discovery of Brünnhilde. Gunther is shocked as herealises Hagen's perfidy. Wotan's ravens fly past, and Hagen calls on Siegfried to interpret their tones. As the hero turns his back, Hagen drives the spear into it. Siegfried dies apostrophising his Valkyr love. To the strains of the great funeral march, the body is borne back to the home of the Gibichs, and laid at the feet of Gutrune, who is told, as in the Thidrek Saga, that a wild boar slew her lord. She accuses Gunther, who promptly denounces Hagen. The Nibelung demands the ring; Gunther opposes him; they fight, and Gunther is slain. Hagen reaches for the ring, but the dead hand of Siegfried rises in solemn warning, and sends him staggering back in terror. At this juncture Brünnhilde, who, as we vaguely learn from the text, has heard the truth from the Rhine maidens, enters the hall, a picture of outraged majesty.
After informing Gutrune that she was never the real wife of Siegfried, Brünnhilde sums up the dénouement of the entire tragedy in a speech which must be carefully read by anyone desiring thoroughly to understand Wagner's design. She perceives the whole of Wotan's plan, and upbraids him for throwing on a guiltless man the curse of his own crime. Let the ravens tell Wotan that his plan is accomplished. And let the weary god have rest. She takes the ring from Siegfried's finger, and places it upon her own. When she is burned with him on the funeral pyre, the Rhine maidens may get the ring again. And now fly home, ravens. Pass by the Valkyr's rock and bid the flickering Loge once more visit Walhalla, for the dusk of the gods is at hand, and with this torch will the bride of Siegfried fire the towers of Asgard. Then she addresses the wondering retainersand bids them, when she is gone, to put aside treaties and treacherous bonds as laws of life, and in their place to let Love rule alone. With her steed, Grani, she mounts Siegfried's funeral pyre. The flames rise to heaven. Upon the Rhine are seen the three maidens, one of them holding aloft the ring. Hagen madly springs into the water after the accursed bauble, and is drawn under by the maidens and drowned. The sky blazes and we see the assembled gods, as described by Waltraute, sitting in the burning Walhalla. It is the "Götterdämmerung."
So ends the tragedy. Nothing in the final scenes closely resembles the original legends except the burning of Walhalla. In the legends the gods are destroyed in battle with the powers of evil. Here they die in solemn atonement for sin. And their punishment, which is their release, is accomplished by the voluntary sacrifice of a woman through love. Brünnhilde, wiser in the end than Wotan himself, perfects and completes his plan. The death of the hero, innocent and unoffending, was not enough. The intentional sacrifice, hallowed by love, accomplishes what all Wotan's schemes failed to achieve. The ethical plot of the drama is finished. "The eternal feminine leadeth us upward and on."
This glorious Brünnhilde of Wagner is a grander figure than any conceived by the sagamen. Dimly, indeed, may her sacrifice be connected with the death of Nanna, the wife of Baldur, the bright one, who could not outlive her husband. But that death was merely from a broken heart. This one is a magnificent atonement.
Baldur's horse, fully caparisoned, was led to hismaster's pyre. Wotan placed on the pile his ring, Draupner, which every ninth night produced eight other rings. But none of these incidents have the enormous significance of Wagner's final scene. His reconstruction of the story of the end of the gods, of their release from the burden of sin by a voluntary, vicarious sacrifice, raises the poetic issue of his drama to a plane far above the conceptions of the old Norse and Teutonic skalds. With "Der Ring des Nibelungen," in spite of its defects, Wagner set himself beside the Greek dramatists.
In "Der Ring des Nibelungen" the leitmotiv system is found at its best. In this gigantic and complex drama it provides a musical aid to an understanding of the intent of the dramatist. It is a running commentary on the action, a ceaseless revealer of inner thoughts and motives. And, owing to the development of plot and character, the musical device of thematic development is employed with admirable effect in this work. Unfortunately for the credit of Wagner, the typical handbook of these dramas, and the fashionable "Wagner Lecture," which consists of telling the story and playing the principal motives on a piano, have gone far to convey wholly erroneous ideas of this unique musical system. The hearer of the lecture and the reader of the handbook are led to suppose that the score consists of a string of disconnected phrases, arbitrarily formed and capriciously titled, and that this is the whole result of the system.
The truth is that the score becomes symphonic inscope. The various motives are invented with a profound insight into the philosophy of musical expression and are repeated or developed according to the principles of musico-dramatic art formulated in the mind of Wagner when he had fully elaborated his theory of the organic union of the text and the music. Reading the handbooks or hearing the lectures and afterward recognising the motives as they appear in the dramas, even when their significance is known, is not all that Wagner asks of one who attempts to understand his system. It is necessary to study the scores very thoroughly, to note the intimate union of text and music, to observe the changes which motives undergo when new shades of meaning are to be expressed, to grasp the treatment of rhythm and tonality and the formation and expansion of themes, and generally to follow the composer through the various ramifications of the most elaborate plan for dramatic expression in music ever invented.
On the other hand, none of this study is essential to a mere enjoyment of these dramas. For that, only a perfect comprehension of the text is necessary; if you know what the characters are saying and doing, the music will do its own work. It will create the right mood for you, though you do not know the name of a single leading theme. But the thematic system is there, and to understand it will add enormously to your intellectual and artistic pleasure and give Wagner a far higher position in your estimation than he would otherwise occupy. Only, if you intend to study it, do not treat it as if it were nothing more than a thematic catalogue. What I am about to put before the reader cannot claim to be more than some pertinent hints.An exhaustive study of these scores would fill a volume.
Let the reader refer to the classification of motives given inChapter III.of "The Artistic Aims of Wagner" (page 193), and apply it to the themes now to be considered. He will find in these scores all the classes there enumerated and will note that they are used and developed with extraordinary skill.
After the preliminary measures of the introduction to "Das Rheingold," we hear the first guiding theme of the drama, the motive of the Primeval Elements:
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PRIMEVAL ELEMENTS.
This motive plays an important part in the trilogy. When Erda rises from the earth in the last scene of the prologue we hear this same theme in the minor mode, and we at once perceive that by this simple process of musical development Wagner associates her with the primeval elements (earth, air, and water), but emphasises the sadness of her character and her peculiar office in the tragedy as a prophetess of woe. When she utters the words, "Ein düst'rer Tag dämmert den Göttern" ("A dismal day dawns for the Aesir"), we hear her motive first in its natural form, and then inverted, and we then learn that this inversion has an especial meaning, the end of the gods, the "Götterdämmerung":
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A—ERDA. B—GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.Ein düst'rer Tag dämmert den Göttern
Now let us turn to the scene in which Waltraute comes to tell Brünnhilde how Wotan has had the ash cut down, hewn into faggots, and assembled the gods to wait for the end. In the accompaniment to her words appears the Erda theme, originally that of the Primeval Elements which surrounded the Rhinegold, transformed into a stately progression of octaves. Presently over these we hear the Walhalla theme, and then the octaves descend in a new development of the "Götterdämmerung" theme:
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WALTRAUTE.
Turn next to the last scene of all, to the entrance of Brünnhilde. We find that the music is this:
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Brünnhilde has come to fulfil the prophecy of Erda; the dusk of the gods is at hand. And so when she commands the retainers to erect the funeral pyre, which is kindled at Walhalla, we hear once again the "Götterdämmerung" theme as it was introduced to us in the Waltraute scene:
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This is an excellent demonstration of the leitmotiv system in its fullest expansion, and it should warn the reader against accepting these themes as merely arbitrary labels. Let him always seek for their musical philosophy and their relations to one another.
When the Rhine maidens appear swimming around the rock in which lies the gold, they sing these cabalistic words and this melodious music:
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RHINE DAUGHTERS.
Presently, as narrated in the story, the gold discloses itself, and we hear the ascending theme of the Appearing Gold:
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THE APPEARING GOLD.
But when the maidens burst into song in its praise, they sing this:
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THE GLEAMING GOLD.
Rheingold! Rheingold! Leuchtende Lust, wie lachst du so hell und hehr!Rheingold! Rheingold! Lust'rous delight, thou laughest in radiance rare!
The first measures of this melody are employed throughout the drama to signify the gold. Examination will show that the words "Rheingold! Rheingold!" are sung to precisely the same melodic form as "Weia" at the beginning and the end of the phrase quoted from the Rhine daughters' music. Here, again, we see how Wagner persists in preserving the musical associations of allied themes, and of deriving one from the other in the symphonic style. In the last act of "Götterdämmerung," when the maidens warn Siegfried of coming evil, they sing his name to the Rhinegold theme in the minor mode. The significance of this is unmistakable.
At the first mention of the ring, we hear the Ring theme:
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THE RING.
This theme is subjected to so many developments that they cannot be enumerated in a work of this kind. A single glance, however, will show the reader how closely related it is to the "Götterdämmerung" motive. In certain passages, as in the scene between Brünnhilde and the disguised Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung" this theme and the Walhalla theme are combined, by an ingenious use of the rhythm and melodic sequence of the one with the melody andharmony of the other, to identify Brünnhilde's personality with possession of the ring. Other important motives introduced early in the "Rheingold" are the following:
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RENUNCIATION.
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