given the penalty of mortality by her father. The duet in the last act of the opera between Wotan and Brünnhilde is one of the most moving sequences in all Wagner.

The Ride of the Valkyries is an excerpt from the music which leads into Act III, made into a concert piece by Wagner himself. A great rock dominates the scene in the opera. It is the Valkyr Rock where now the maidens are gathering. Fully equipped in shining mail, carrying spears and shields, they ride swiftly through the storm. At the curtain’s rise only four of the maidens are discernible on the stage. The others may be heard announcing their entrance with the exultant Valkyr call. The music surges to great heights of sound, wild, untrammeled, passionate, driven relentlessly by powerful rhythms.

A Siegfried Idyl

In a letter dated June 25, 1870, Wagner wrote of his wife Cosima, “She has defied every disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation. She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful boy, whom I call boldly Siegfried; he is now growing, together with my work [he was working then on the opera Siegfried; hence the name]; he gives me a new long life, which at last has attained a meaning. Thus we get along without the world, from which we have wholly withdrawn.”

The composer wrote the music of the Idyl—originally called the Triebschen Idyl—as a birthday gift for his wife. On Christmas morning, 1870, Wagner and a group of musicians assembled on the stairs of his home at Triebschen and performed the lovely music, which, cramped though the musicians were because of tight quarters, obtained a fine rendering, according to ear-witnesses.

When the Idyl was first played in Berlin, in 1878, a music critic gave it as gospel that the music was taken from the second act of the opera Siegfried. The truth of the matter is that the Idyl, while based on several themes from the opera besides that of a folk song, is a complete entity in itself, for the themes were developed in a manner entirely different from their treatment in the opera. In addition to which, it must be remembered that the folk song, Schlaf’, mein Kind, schlaf’ein, does not appear in the opera at all.

“Wagner and the Critics” is the title of this amusing contemporary caricature.

Forest Murmurs from “Siegfried”

The music for this sequence is taken from the scene before the dragon’s cave in the second act of Siegfried. In arranging it for concert use, Wagner gave it the name Waldweben (Forest Weavings or Forest Murmurs). The young hero Siegfried is left to his own thoughts by the dwarf Mime. The rustling of the leaves is first heard in D minor, then in B major. Siegfried is daydreaming. He ponders on the question of his origin. He knows that he is not of Mime’s blood, and the clarinet, paralleling, and explaining the idea, intones the theme of the Volsungs.

As his thoughts turn to his mother the Love-Life motive emerges through the ’cellos and violas and double basses, next in all the strings, and finally horns and bassoons take it over. A solo violin plays a subject associated with Freia, goddess of youth and love. The rustling of the leaves is again heard and the theme of the Forest Bird comes in by way of the oboe, flute, clarinet and other wood winds. The music ends in a Vivace which incorporates the Fire, the Siegfried, and the Slumber motives, besides the twittering of the Forest Bird.

Excerpts from “Götterdämmerung”—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey

This music comes between the Prologue and the first act. It is frequently referred to as a “scherzo.” Siegfried has taken leave of his wife Brünnhilde and, exhorted by her, sallies forth on new adventures. The music brings up the hero’s past achievements, whose themes are presented in new guises. They are cleverly interwoven, the pattern being rich in colors and effects as well as in sonorities. Through the orchestral web may be detected threads akin to such thematic ideas as Siegfried’s horn call, the Rhine motive, the motive of Renunciation, the motive of the Rhine Daughters, the motive of the Rheingold and, last, that of the Nibelungs’ Servitude. Climactic and exultant, the music yet gives forth many implications of impending tragedy.

Funeral Music

Through the trickery of Hagen, villainous half-brother of Gunther, Siegfried is slain. His body is lifted tenderly by Gunther’s followers and carried back to the hall of the Gibichungs. As that happens on the stage, the orchestra sings out with a giant dirge, lamenting the fall of the Volsungs while reviewing previous moments in the history of the tragic race. There is the reference to the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walküre. Toward its conclusion the horns and bass trumpet announce sonorously the motive of Siegfried the hero. There is a rhythmic variant of the horn call and with the dying away of the music Brünnhilde is momentarily mentioned.

Brünnhilde’s Immolation

The end of the gigantic Ring, specifically Brünnhilde’s scene of immolation, is frequently performed in concert with a soprano soloist. The heroine’s great monologue, delivered in the hall of the Gibichungs, writes finis to a drama that takes four separate operas to tell. In her grief over the death of her hero-husband she stills the “loud, unworthy” lamentations of the others who are gathered about the slain Siegfried. She commands them to erect a funeral pyre and to place the hero’s body upon it. His ring is taken from his finger and she puts it on her own. After applying a torch to the pyre she leaps on her horse Grane and rushes into the flames.

Prelude and ‘Love-Death’ from “Tristan und Isolde”

In 1854, when Wagner was in the midst of composing the Ring, the idea for an opera on the Tristan theme came to him. Not till three years later, however, did he begin actual work on it, and the music-drama was finished in August 1859. Complications of various kinds interfered with the production of the opera, but it finally obtained its première at the Royal Court Theater in Munich, on June 10, 1865, under the direction of Hans von Bülow.

Wagner’s version of the tale combines features from numerous legends. Very likely of Celtic origin, the story, as the German composer utilized it, makes room for myriad delvings into psychology and metaphysics, some of which are not easy to follow. We must assume, as Ernest Newman suggests, that the characters and their motivations were perfectly clear to the composer, if they seem not to be altogether to the listener. Here is the essence of the music-drama’s plot, extracted from Wagner’s own description:

We are told of Tristan and Isolde in an ancient love poem, which is “constantly fashioning itself anew, and has been adopted by every European language of the Middle Ages.” Tristan, a faithful vassal of King Marke, woos Isolde for his king, yet not daring to reveal to her his own love. “Isolde, powerless to do otherwise, follows him as a bride to his lord.” In the meantime the