Crepuscolo

Speranza

In Wagner’s following recommendation of the fourth and final part of the Ring, the Twilight of the Gods, he leaves us no doubt that he regarded the Ring as not only transcending the limits of the operatic genre, but as much a work of poetic drama, with philosophic import, as a work of music:

"Besides the restoration of its naïve pointedness, it became possible to give the dialogue an extension covering the entire drama."

"And it is this that enables me to read to you to-day in guise of a bare dramatic poem a work that owes its origin to nothing but the feasibility of carrying it out completely in music.

For I believe I may submit it as a play in dialogue to the same judgment we are wont to invoke with a piece indited for the Spoken Play.

I wish to commend "Twilight of the Gods", not to an assemblage of opera-lovers,but to a gathering of truly educated persons earnestly concerned for an original cultivation of the Spirit.” [843W-{2/73}
Prologue to a Reading of Twilight of the Gods: PW Vol. V,p. 306]

As we embark upon our analysis of the last of the music-dramas which comprise the Ring tetralogy, it should have become apparent by now that in the Ring we are dealing with a hybrid masterwork which cannot be grasped under one category, such as drama, poetry, music, or philosophy.

It is, put simply, a dramatic, poetic, theatrical, musical, and philosophic meditation upon the great questions which have confronted man since his emergence as a conscious being among the animals.

It is in that spirit, Wagner’s spirit as described by himself above, that I commend the following critique of the last of the Ring music-dramas.

The prelude to the Prologue to the final part of the four-part Ring drama, Twilight of the Gods, begins in darkness near the base of the mountain where Siegfried left Brunilda protected by Loge’s ring of fire.

Erda’s (Nature’s) daughters, the three Norns, representing past, present, and future, the world embraced by Erda’s wisdom, meditate upon the ways of the world as they spin the rope of fate:

(Prelude: The curtain opens slowly. The scene is the same as at the end of the second day, on the Valkyrie’s rock. Night. A fiery glow is visible at the very back of the stage. The three norns, tall female figures in long, dark veil-like garments. The first (the oldest) is lying at the front of the stage on the left, beneath the spreading pine-tree; the second (the younger) is reclining on a stone terrace in front of the rocky chamber; the third (the youngest) is sitting on a rocky outcrop of the mountain ridge in the center at the back of the stage. Sombre silence and absence of any movement: #138
;
#3
PlayPausestop, #2
; #138
; #3
; #2
; #138
chord [transitions into #87
; [[ (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari ]] [diminished inversion])

It begins, significantly, with motif #138
, the chord - based upon #53
- to which Siegfried woke Bruennhilde in S.3.3. #53
is the motif representing Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, and that whatever “is” will come to an end. And this chord eventually transforms into #87
, the motif representing the fate the Norns spin. Their “Spinning Motif” is based on a diminished inversion of #3
, the motif first associated with the River Rhine’s motion. Twilight Of The Gods opens with #138
, in all probability, because it recounts the tragic consequences (or, as some would say, the redemptive consequences) which follow from Siegfried’s waking Bruennhilde, man’s collective unconscious, namely, his inadvertent sharing of her secret, Wotan’s unspoken secret, with all those common men who were never meant to be privy to the religious mysteries. This of course is the secret of how man involuntarily invented the gods, and how virtually all of man’s higher, allegedly transcendent values were originally predicated upon self-deception. Bruennhilde has awoken for Siegfried, never to sleep again: man’s unconscious hoard of forbidden knowledge is about to rise, as Alberich threatened, from her silent depths to the light of day. #87
’s presence here, the motif representing the fate the Norns spin, reminds us that this tragic fate is inevitable.

But we must also remember that Wotan told Erda that when her daughter waked, she would do that deed which will redeem the world, and that there are two distinct redemptive deeds which Bruennhilde performs. The first is to inspire Siegfried to produce redemptive deeds of art which reconcile mortal man to life within the real world, which makes him feel that he has risen above its concerns. But this secular art, in which man’s religious longing for transcendent value lives on as feeling, perpetuates Wotan’s original sin against his mother, Nature (Bruennhilde’s mother Erda), which Alberich’s curse punishes. So the second and final redemptive act, wholly distinct from the first, is to cease to commit the religious sin of world-renunciation in both religion and art, and acknowledge the bitter truths of nature. Only when man ceases to posit his transcendent value, and therefore ceases to look for life’s meaning in the illusory realm of spirit, and in all other imaginative alternatives to reality, can the unhealing wound be healed. In other words, only when Mother Nature’s (Erda’s) rightful claim upon us, and her truth, have been acknowledged, can Alberich’s curse end. But if man can’t bear to live within the confines of the real world, there is still a third alternative, redemptive only in a perverse sense, and that is the end of all human consciousness, which was the cause of the unhealing wound in the first place. This was “Das Ende” which Wotan - in his nihilistic despair, unable to accept the bitter truth, yet unable any longer to sustain the consoling illusions which he had substituted for the truth - told Bruennhilde he fervently desired at the end of his confession in V.2.2. Wagner will present all three of these possibilities as actualities in the course of Twilight of the Gods.

[T.P: B]

As we gradually become aware of the Norns spinning their rope of fate, they are posing the question whether the gleam they see yonder is the dawn of day, or merely Loge’s fire which still burns protectively round Bruennhilde’s mountaintop home:
First Norn: (#53
:) What light is gleaming yonder?



Second Norn: (#2
:) Is day already dawning (:#53
)? (#35
vari [is this slow oscillating figure, which is related to #42
, related also to #Mime’s Potion Motif, which is the oscillation at the end of #122
&/or #123
? - here it seems to transition into #54
?])



Third Norn: (#54
?:) Loge’s host burns brightly round the fell (:#54
?). ([[ (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari ]] [diminished inversion] Night still reigns (:#35
vari): why don’t we (#87
?:) spin (:#87
?) and sing (: (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari) [diminished inversion]?



Second Norn: (to the first) #15
vari: [could these alternating chords be those heard just before Siegfried confronts Wotan in S.3.2? - and are they related to the #35
vari oscillations above, or #42
?]) If we’re to spin and sing, on what will you stretch the rope (:#15
vari)?



First Norn: (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari; #44
/#101
[is this related more to #19
or #36
?]) Unwinding a golden rope from around herself and attaching it to a branch of the pine-tree.) (#@: c or d? = #3
vari:) For good or ill ([is there any #4
, #17
, #19
, or #20
d here?]) I wind the rope and sing (: (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari). – (#2
:; [[ #146
: ]]; #19
voc?:) At the world-ash once I wove (:#19
voc?) ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) when, tall and strong, a forest of sacred branches (:#146
; :(#@: c or d) = #3
vari) (#20
d voc?:) blossomed from its bole (:#20
d voc?; (#20
d) (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari: [is there any #4
in orch or voc?]) in its cooling shade there plashed a spring, whispering wisdom [“Weisheit”], its ripples ran (:(#@: c or d? = #3
vari): (#20
d voc?:) I sang then of sacred things (:#20
d voc?). (#20
d) – A dauntless god [“ein kuehner Gott”] came to drink at the spring; (#20
abc vari:) one of his eyes he paid as toll for all time: (#20
d) from the world-ash Wotan broke off a branch; (#21
; #19
or #20
a?) the shaft of a spear (#21
modified by #115
rhythm:) the mighty god cut from its trunk (:#21
modified by #115
rhythm). - (#97
vari:) In the span of many seasons the wound consumed the wood (:#97
vari); (#53
& #54
[in ornate varis?]) fallow fell the leaves (:#53
& #54
), ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) barren, the tree grew rotten (:(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari): (#53
:) sadly the well-spring’s drink ran dry (:#53
); the sense of my singing grew troubled. (#146
[in this definitive form does #146
contain #20
a or #19
harmony?) ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) But if I no longer weave by the
Twilight of the Gods: Page 736736
world-ash today, the fir must serve to fasten the rope (:(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari): ([[ #147
: ]] [or #15
vari? - alternating chords: Dunning previously called this #147
but now describes it as #15
vari – is there any #58
b influence?]) Sing, my sister, - I cast it to you (:#147
or #15
vari?) – (#88
:) do you know what will become of it (:#88
)?

The World-Ash having withered and died since Wotan broke off its most sacred branch to make his Spear from it, the Norns must attach their rope to any branch or rock which comes to hand. As they prepare to wind the rope of fate we hear #15
, the variant of the Rhinedaughters’ “Rhinegold! Rhinegold!” which tells us that Bruennhilde’s protection of Siegfried from the unhealing wound of knowledge transpires through a figurative return of the Ring to the Rhine: Bruennhilde, Wotan’s unconscious mind, who holds the Ring’s power safe, represents that surrogate Rhine and temporary redemption from Alberich’s curse, and also therefore temporary redemption from the fate the Norns spin. As the Norns proclaim they weave the rope for good or ill, we hear #44
/#101
, motifs in the family associated with the cunning of the world, man’s gift for distorting the truth (man as trickster) which includes Loge’s Motif #36
, and #27
, the inaugural motif of this family, which stands for Wotan’s intent (inspired by Loge’s cunning) to break the social contract he engraved on his spear of divine authority. It is this cunning which has tainted nature’s innocence with self-deceit. By the way, though #36
is a Loge motif, its harmonic basis is #19
, Alberich’s Ring.

As they sing of the sacred days when they wove their rope at the still living World-Ash, we hear the World-Ash Motif itself, #146
. Cooke describes it as a swaying, dance-like variant of #53
. This genealogical relationship is logical because both the World-Ash and #53
represent the natural course of events, nature’s necessity, as Feuerbach describes it. However, as they sing of these ancient, sacred times we also hear #20
d, the last segment of the Valhalla Motif, which Cooke describes as lending an air of nobility to anything seen or heard while it sounds in the orchestra. Its presence here in association with that pre-Fallen time before Wotan broke off the World-Ash’s most sacred branch to manufacture his Spear, is somewhat mysterious. But we must remember two things: first, religious man, though guilty of the sin of denying nature, is a part of nature (just as Wotan’s spear of divine authority he made from the most sacred branch of the World-Ash, i.e., from that branch of animal genealogy which produced man through the evolution of species); second, the poetic intent of religious man is to strive to restore man’s pre-fallen innocence.

We hear the first three of the Valhalla Motif’s five segments, #20
abc, as the Norns recall how Wotan sacrificed his now missing eye (which he identified earlier with Siegfried) in order to gain wisdom (“Weisheit,” the same wisdom - Erda’s “Weisheit” - which Wotan told Erda wanes before his Will, their daughter Bruennhilde), from the sacred spring which flows out from the roots of the World-Ash. Is this sacred spring the source of the Rhine? Is #20
d Wotan’s missing eye? Wotan had to sacrifice his instinctual knowledge, or aesthetic intuition, his eye which looks inward (which is restored to him in Siegfried’s love for Bruennhilde), in order to gain the power of reflective thought, just as Alberich had to renounce love to forge his Ring from the Rhinegold in order to obtain world-power through the acquisition of symbolic consciousness and language. Presumably Wotan’s sacrifice of one eye for the sake of the sacred spring’s wisdom was also required in order to break off the World-Ash’s most sacred branch to manufacture the spear engraved with the social
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 737737
contract, since this act followed immediately after Wotan sacrificed his eye, as if his sacrifice granted him the privilege of breaking off the World-Ash’s most sacred branch.

In any case, the wound Wotan had to make in the World-Ash in order to break off its most sacred branch is what killed it. Wotan’s virtual murder of the World-Ash is a symbol for religious man’s status as the killer of his mother, Nature. We hear #53
(the natural necessity of change, the end of all things) and #54
(Twilight of the Gods) as the Norns describe how the World-Ash withered and died due to Wotan’s abuse. We are reminded that Wotan perpetuated his sin against Mother Nature’s truth (represented by #53
and #54
) by seeking to redeem the gods from their natural, inevitable fate, by finding a hero freed from the gods’ authority and divine protection, who could keep Alberich from regaining his Ring, and thereby forestalling that fate. And this concept was represented by the “Need of the Gods Motif,” #83
, comprised of #53
and #54
overlain by #81
. Wotan’s attempt to create cultural, social institutions of divine origin which are therefore regarded as immortal and unchanging was itself a sin against the natural necessity for change, the everlasting creativity of the cosmos in motion and evolution. And of course, though Wotan and the gods have figuratively murdered Mother Nature (Erda) by denying her truth and substituting a consoling illusion in her place, nonetheless, in the fulness of time, Erda’s laws of change, embodied by #53
and #54
, will wreak nature’s vengeance upon those who have denied her, through her agents Alberich and Hagen, those men who have the courage to objectively affirm nature even at her worst.

Feuerbach gave these natural laws, Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, and therefore the Norns’ spinning of the rope of fate, pride of place, for he said:

[P. 60] “Space and time are not mere forms of appearance; they are conditions of being, forms of reason, and laws of existence as well as of thought. [P. 61] (…) Limitation in space and time is the first virtue … .” [185F-PPF: p. 60-61]

Wagner provided us an interesting insight into the concept underlying his World-Ash Tree. He told Cosima how modern, cultured man seems concerned solely with dead things (referencing Wotan’s spear), while in former, purer times we embraced living things, plants, animals, etc. (i.e., felt one with them):

“After a good night R. and I have breakfast in the conservatory, and he says, ‘It has occurred to me that we now seem to concern ourselves only with dead things; everything around us seems lifeless, whereas previously our existence was concerned with living things, with plants, animals; Wotan carved his spear from the growing ash tree.’ When I say that it is perhaps this life within life that has given later generations a feeling for divinity, and that Siegfried and Bruennhilde give the appearance of sacred, living Nature, whereas the Gibichungs [Hagen, Gunther, and Gutrune, to whom we will be introduced in T.1.1] are already among the dead, he agrees with me.” [1114W-{1/8/82} CD Vol. II, p. 786]

As the First Norn prepares to hand the rope of fate over to the Second Norn so she can spin and sing her knowledge of world history, a new motif is introduced, #147
, which I believe is only heard in T.P in this current context. Dunning has described it as a #15
variant. As the First Norn casts the rope to the Second, asking her what will come of the fact that the World-Ash has withered and died
through Wotan’s sin, we hear #88
, the motif generally associated with doom, the ultimate price of being subject to fate, to the natural necessity of change, which was introduced in V.2.4 as Bruennhilde announced his predestined death to Siegmund. It also calls to mind, of course, the martyrdom of those culture heroes whose self-deceit has unwittingly dedicated their lives to Wotan’s (collective, historical man’s) futile quest to restore lost innocence, to stop and reverse the natural evolution from unconsciousness to consciousness, by artificially attempting to regain the paradise of preconscious animal feeling in religion and art.

It has often been said that Wagner’s application of musical motifs to the drama grew far more loose and creative during the final phase of the composition of the Ring music, starting with the last act of Siegfried, and expressly under Schopenhauer’s influence, who gave pride of place to music where music and drama, or music and words in general, interact. In other words, it has been suggested that Wagner’s employment of musical motifs by this point in the composition paid comparatively little heed to the dramatic situation or their prior history of associations with the libretto text, and paid more attention to purely musical priorities. While it is certainly true that Wagner’s employment of his musical motifs for dramatic ends grew more involved, sophisticated, and complex as he neared the end of the composition of the Ring’s music in 1874, I do not find it to be true that Wagner’s employment of motifs has comparatively little dramatic significance. That their richness and ambiguity grows is beyond question. I mention this because his employment of motifs in this scene is often cited as a primary example of the motifs’ gradual emancipation from the restrictions of Wagner’s theory of music-drama. On the contrary, I find no dramatic examples of motifs employed purely for musical reasons which cut against the grain of the drama. All musico-dramatic elements seem to me to remain fluent and comprehensible right up to the very finale of the Ring. Nonetheless, it is impossible to ascertain motifs’ “meaning” definitively.

Take for instance the presence of #97
, the motif known as “Bruennhilde’s Magic Sleep” (based on #30
b, the motif – known as “Godhead Lost” - first heard when Fafner said that if the Giants took Freia away from the gods, the Giants would deprive them of her golden apples of sorrowless youth eternal, i.e., immortality), heard here in a variant as the First Norn says: “In the span of many seasons the wound [which Wotan made in the World-Ash by breaking off its most sacred branch to make his Spear] consumed the wood. Wotan, upon taking his final leave of Erda in S.3.1, and having just told her that her wisdom wanes before his will (i.e., before his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, in whom he repressed the knowledge Erda had taught him), consigned Erda to the oblivion of sleep and dreaming. It is precisely religio-artistic man’s refusal to accept the natural evolutionary trend from unconsciousness to consciousness, to return to an earlier phase of evolution which we might describe as nature’s sleep, or dreaming, which constitutes Wotan’s sin against Mother Nature, his figurative matricide, the wound his social contract, predicated on religious faith, made in Nature.

This is not to say, however, that I am certain I can account, from the standpoint of the drama, for every single recurrence of every motif in the work. To affirm with such certainty where the best we can hope for is well-informed speculation and guesswork, would be suspect in any case, because, with almost any interpretation, one can find plausible reasons for the presence of almost any motif in almost any dramatic context. The only way to speculate intelligently about the presence in different dramatic contexts of various motifs is to remain cognizant of each motif’s overall dramatic profile (i.e., all instances of its recurrence within the Ring), so that we obtain a sense of
Twilight of the Gods: Page 739739
the motif’s dramatic or thematic center of gravity, and to maintain consistency in interpretation. If any motif can mean anything then all hope is lost. Most of the motifs accrue a large body of associations with the libretto in the course of the work, some appearing dozens of times, and needless to say a motifs’ full meaning can only be ascertained by comparing all such recurrences. It is inevitable that by virtue of so many associations, even if they seem to be applied by Wagner with an overall logic which makes sense in terms of the libretto, they will carry a good deal of ambiguity. Many such recurrences are susceptible to multiple interpretations, and the only check we have against error is to maintain a unified overview, an overall sense of the dramatic narrative, which allows us to make sense of each particular recurrence with informed plausibility. It might be said that Wagner’s musical motifs are a sort of poetico-musical version of the concept in quantum physics of indeterminacy, an ambiguity (in our perception, or in nature?) in which a wave collapses into a particle upon being observed, or a phenomenon crystallizes and becomes real through the statistical probability of its potentiality to manifest itself as human experience.

[T.P: C]

The Second Norn now describes how Siegfried broke Wotan’s spear, and how Wotan then ordered his martyred Valhallan heroes to chop down the World-Ash, causing its sacred spring to dry up forever:

Second Norn: (Winding the rope that has been thrown to her around a projecting rock at the entrance to the chamber.) [[ #116
: ]] The runes of trustily counseled treaties (:#116
) ([[ #115
: ]] [definitive - is there any #53
influence?]) Wotan carved (:#115
) (#21
vari:) on the shaft of the spear (:#21
vari) [[ #115
: ]] he held it as his grip on the world (:#115
). (#21
vari:) A dauntless hero shattered the spear in combat (:#21
vari); (#19
>>?: [is there any #27
, #36
vari, #44
, #101
, or #116
influence?]) the contracts’ hallowed haft was smashed to whirling splinters (:#19
>>? [is there any #27
, #36
vari, #44
, #101
, or #116
?]). – (#19
>> :; 82 hint?:) Then Wotan bade Valhalla’s heroes hew into pieces ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari or #146
?:, #115
?:) the world-ash’s (#54
>>:) withered boughs and bole (:(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari or #146
?; :#54
): the ash-tree fell; the spring ran dry for ever! (#146
; (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari) ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) If I tether the rope to the jagged rock today (:(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari), (#147
: [but is #147
a #15
vari?]) sing, my sister, - I cast it to you (:#147
or #15
vari?) - (#88
:) do you know what will become of it (:#88
)?



Third Norn: (catching the rope and throwing the end behind her: #77
dysrhythmic hint? [or could this be #12
b, its 2nd segment of five notes?]) Built by giants, the stronghold towers aloft; (#26
a drums?) with the hallowed kin of gods and heroes (#54
vari) Wotan sits there within the hall.
PlayPausestop:; #54
:) the downfall [“Ende”] of the (#20
a:) immortal gods will dawn for all eternity (:#21
; :#20
a; :#54
). (#87
[plus #87
’s drum roll as heard also in #177
during Siegfried’s funeral procession?]) – ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) If you know yet more, (#87
?) then coil the rope anew; ((#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:) from the north I cast it back to you (:(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari): (she throws the rope to the Second Norn, the latter tosses it to the first, who unties it from the branch and attaches it to another bough.) (#147
or #15
vari: [is there any #35
vari or #42
influence? - these chords are reminiscent of some heard just before Siegfried confronts Wotan in s.3.2?]) spin, my sister, and sing (:#147
or 15 vari)!




Curiously, accompanied by the new motif #116
(based directly on #27
, and therefore part of the motif family which includes Loge’s Motif #36
, #44
, and #101
, the last two associated with Mime’s cunning and scheming), the Second Norn speaks of the “runes of trustily counseled treaties” Wotan carved on his spear, which he holds as his grip on the world. The orchestra sounds #115
at this point, recalling the power of the gods. It seems odd that the Norns, Erda’s daughters who spin her knowledge into the rope of fate, would be so naïve that they could describe Wotan’s runes as trustily counseled, or for that matter, that they would describe him here as a god (“Gott”), since Wotan’s sole purpose since making the law has been to subvert it, and the Norns’ mother Erda denied that Wotan is what he calls himself, a God. Is this one of those rare instances where Wagner forgot to revise a portion of his libretto text to make it consistent with his final conception of the whole, before submitting it for publication? In any case, the sounding of #116
at this point indicates that these runes were not trustily counseled, but were counseled with a cunning intent to break them. It is conceivable that Wagner inadvertently failed to update every facet of an earlier version of his libretto text when he decided to alter the plot later, re-conceiving Wotan as a subtle and corrupt god who would go down to destruction without final redemption, so that the Norns in this scene seem unaware of Wotan’s duplicity towards others, or even his self-deception.

Catching the rope thrown to her by the Second Norn, the Third Norn recounts how Wotan now sits among the gods and heroes in Valhalla, which his heroes have surrounded with logs made from the wood of the World-Ash. Here he awaits that fire which will bring about the twilight of the gods. During her description of the events leading up to the twilight of the gods, #115
, formerly associated with the gods’ rule over men, now begins to be associated specifically with the gods’ downfall. One can only assume #115
’s presence in this context highlights the irony of the gods’ destiny. We are reminded that in the finale of R.4 Loge wryly observed that the gods, who think they will last forever, are headed for destruction, and Loge imagined his fire would play a key role in their demise.


The first Norn again asks whether the day is dawning, or whether Loge’s fire still lights the night sky. It is almost as if she’s asking whether the day has come in which man’s hoard of knowledge of the real world will rise from the silent depths to daylight consciousness, and bring about the twilight of the gods, or whether the artificial ring of fiery self-deception with which Loge has surrounded Bruennhilde, keeper of the religious mysteries, still burns in man’s heart. But now, she says, her sight plays tricks on her, and she can’t clearly remember the hallowed past when Loge once flared up. Loge’s motival material here, like so much of the motival material heard earlier in the Ring which is recapitulated here, through Wagner’s subtle variation of the motifs’ harmony, melody-line, phrasing, modulation, instrumentation, etc., is now imbued with a nostalgic mood evoking time long past and dimly remembered. It is one of the most remarkable aesthetic effects in the Ring:

First Norn: (looking behind her as she busies herself with the rope: (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:; #44
/#101
:; #33
b vari:) Is daylight dawning? Or is it the light of the fire? (#33
b) Clouded, my sight plays tricks on me; (#35
vari:; #33
b vari:) I cannot see clearly the hallowed past, (#33
b vari:) when Loge once flared up in white-hot flame (:#33
b fades): (#88
:) do you know what became of him (:#88
)?



Second Norn: (Once again winding the rope that has been thrown to her round the rock) (#21
vari >>:; #115
?:) By the spell of his spear Wotan tamed him (:#21
vari; :#115
?); (#33
b) (#15
vari/#33
b:) he whispered wisdom to the god (:15 vari/#33
b): to work himself free (#34
:) he gnawed and destroyed the runes on the shaft (:#34
). (#21
vari or #115
?:) Then with the (#21
vari:) spear’s all-powerful point (:#21
vari; :#115
?) (#15
vari/#33
b?:) Wotan cast a spell on him, (#33
b) (#33
b:) bidding him blaze round Bruennhilde’s rock (:#15
vari?/#33
b): (#35
vari: She throws the rope to the Third Norn, who once again throws it behind her.) (#88
:) do you know what will come of him (:#88
)?



Third Norn: (#115
definitive over #100
accompaniment:) The shattered spear’s sharp-pointed splinters Wotan will one day bury deep in the fire-god’s [“Bruenstigen”] breast (:#115
definitive over #100
accompaniment): (#34
?:) a ravening fire will then flame forth, (#54
vari:) which the god will hurl (:#34
?) (#146
/#20
a: [in which can be heard clearly the relationship of #146
to #20
a, or is #146
merely influenced by #20
a because the world-ash will burn Valhalla?]) on the world-ash’s (:#146
/#20
a) (#20
b) heaped-up logs. (#97
: She throws back the rope; the Second Norn coils it and
throws it back to the First.) (#97
:) If you want to know when that will be, (#87
) (#15
vari: [with trills: is there any #35
vari or #42
influence?]) sisters, wind the rope (:#15
vari [with trills. is there a hint of #35
vari or #42
?])! (#97
)

The Second Norn has recounted how, after Wotan tamed Loge to serve the authority conferred on Wotan by his spear, Loge whispered wisdom to the god (The Second Norn may be alluding to Loge’s five requests in R.2 and R.4 that Wotan restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, suggested here perhaps by the presence of a #15
variant), and then gnawed at the runes on Wotan’s spear to gain his freedom from servitude to the gods. Given Loge’s status as the archetype for the revolutionary Waelsung heroes, particularly Siegfried, it makes sense that Loge would gnaw at Wotan’s spear to gain freedom from the gods’ rule, since the greatest of the Waelsung heroes, Siegfried, gained his freedom by chopping Wotan’s spear in half and penetrating Loge’s ring of fire to wake and win the redemptress Bruennhilde. Wotan had cast a spell on Loge with his spear to compel him to create the protective circle of fire around Bruennhilde, so by penetrating Loge’s ring of fire to win Bruennhilde, Siegfried not only breaches Wotan’s social contract, literally, by breaking the spear on which Wotan’s contract is engraved, but figuratively breaches it by penetrating the veil of illusion with which religious societies have preserved their mysteries, in order to gain access to Wotan’s hoard of forbidden knowledge, upon which religious faith has, up till now, maintained a tight seal. The mere fact that Wotan bound Loge to protect Bruennhilde’s sleep with his ring of fire (to insure that only an authentic, fearless hero wins her hand), though Loge was in the process of breaking free from the gods’ authority, is precisely the situation in which Siegfried finds himself: he serves Wotan’s need through his very defiance of Wotan’s law. Siegfried, in a sense, breaks the law in order to preserve it (transmuted of course into a higher law), just as the savior Jesus is said to have broken the Old Testament law to reconstitute it.

The Second Norn closes her account with another interesting detail of the story of Wotan’s involvement in his own demise: she foresees that he will light a fire composed of the logs of the dead World-Ash, with a torch made of his spear, splintered by Siegfried, which will burn Valhalla, and consume its denizens, the gods and heroes. Bruennhilde, his will, will perform this last act.

[T.P: E]

#97
begins to creep in now because Wotan had already (in S.3.1) consigned Erda and her wisdom to the oblivion of sleep and dreaming which would permit man’s religious self-deception to live on a while longer, in art. The First Norn notes that night is now, after all, waning, and that she can no longer see to find the strands of the rope of fate, as we hear #15
again, the motif which seems to have established itself as representing Bruennhilde’s protection of Siegfried from consciousness of Erda’s (and thus of the Norns’) fateful knowledge. #15
, the Rhinedaughters’ “Rhinegold! Rhinegold!” tells us that Bruennhilde, who will now hold the Ring for Siegfried to keep its power safe (just as she has been holding for him the knowledge of his true identity, his prehistory, and his fate), is Siegfried’s surrogate Rhine, who temporarily neutralizes the Ring curse through her magical protection:
Info
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 743743
First Norn: (fastening the rope again) (#15
vari: [with trills: is there any #97
, #35
vari, or #42
influence?:) Night is waning; I see no more: (#97
:) the strands of the rope (#15
vari:) I can find no longer; (#19
?:) the threads have become entangled. (#19
) (#19
:) A desolate vision (:#19
) (#37
:) maddingly throws my mind into turmoil (:#37
): - (#12
:; #15
:) Alberich once stole the Rhinegold (:#12
; :#15
): - (#19
?:) do you know what became of him (:#19
)? (#19
)



Second Norn: (winding the rope with effortful haste round the jagged rock outside the chamber) (#19
:; (#@: c or d?) = #3
vari:; #voc?: [perhaps #59
a, b, or c, as in the Rhinedaughters’ lament for the stolen Rhinegold from the finale of R.4?]) The stone’s sharp edge is cutting the rope; the web of its strands is no longer stretched taut: the woven skein is raveled (:#19
; :(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari; :#59
voc?). (#19
/(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari?:) From need [“Noth”] and spite [“Neid”] the Nibelung’s ring stands proud (:#19
/(#@: c or d?) = #3
vari): (#45
a:) an avenging curse (:#45
a) (#45
b:) gnaws at the tangle of threads (:#45
b): (throwing the rope to the Third Norn: #92
?; #57
) do you know what will come of that?



Third Norn: (hastily seizes the rope that has been thrown to her) The rope’s too slack! It doesn’t reach me: (#103
frag) if I’m to draw the end to the north, (#103
frag) tauter let it be stretched! (she pulls hard on the rope, which breaks.) (#51
) It’s snapped!



Second Norn: It’s snapped!



First Norn: It’s snapped!



(They gather up the pieces of broken rope and bind themselves together with them.)



The Three Norns: (#54
:; #37
?:) An end to eternal wisdom (:#54
; :#37
?)! (#51
:; #51
voc?:) Wise women no longer tell the world their tidings.



Third Norn: (#97
:) Descend!



Second Norn: (#97
:) To our mother!
Info
Home Page / About Wagnerheim
Introduction by Roger Scruton
About the Author
Interactive Features
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Wagner Lecture / Papers Transcript
Links
Contact Us
Discussion Forum

Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 744744
First Norn: Descend! (#87
: They disappear.)




It is often assumed that the fact that the First Norn recounts Wotan’s past history before she describes Alberich’s history in brief, merely saying that he once stole the Rhinegold, implies that Alberich’s theft of the Rhinegold occurred after Wotan broke the most sacred branch off of the World-Ash Tree to make his Spear. But there is no way to ascertain the position of Alberich’s theft of the Rhinegold within historical time from her account, because, in speaking of Alberich, she is speaking of a new topic, and, so far as we can tell, going back in time to an indeterminate period. At no point does she definitively place Alberich’s theft in time relative to Wotan’s breaking the branch off the World-Ash, giving it a mortal wound. Similarly, the First Norn also notes that she can no longer clearly see the clearly the hallowed past, when Loge flared up in flame. This provides us no concrete information about Loge’s place in the chronological sequence of world history. The confusion here is largely due to the fact that man’s mytho-poetic, or religious phase, represented by Wotan and the gods of Valhalla, preceded in time the birth of modern science (whose actual beginnings evidently lay in Classical Greece, approximately, between 2,300 and 2,600 years ago, but which was not firmly established until the 17th Century), with which I identify Alberich’s son Hagen. But Alberich’s forging of the Ring and acquisition of his Hoard of knowledge is not Wagner’s metaphor for the birth of modern science; rather, it is his metaphor for the birth of human consciousness itself, which began immediately to acquire useful knowledge. But this knowledge did not become a threat to religious faith until much later. Therefore Alberich’s forging of the Ring of human consciousness is the logical - but not necessarily the temporal - precondition for the collective Folk’s unwitting and involuntary invention of the gods, and therefore for the development of the earliest human cultures.

The First Norn has told of a vision which throws her maddening mind into turmoil, accompanied by #19
and #37
, the motifs regularly associated with the Ring’s power, and with the lovelessness which Alberich was compelled to acknowledge in order to obtain that power, which he has both imposed on – and discovered is the essence of – the real world. Noting that Alberich once stole the Rhinegold, she asks what became of him, while throwing the ever more invisible rope of fate to the Second Norn. At this point we hear #19
plus the #3
Variant (#@: C or D?), a diminished inversion, which is the motif representing the Norns’ spinning of the rope of fate and natural necessity. In other words, the Norns have, since nature’s rise to self-consciousness in man, been spinning the consequences of the Fall – the burden of consciousness - into their rope of fate. But now the Second Norn, alarmed, observes that the stone’s sharp edge is cutting the rope of fate. From need (“Noth”) and spite (“Neid”), she says, the Nibelung’s Ring stands proud, and we hear #45
ab (the so-called “Power of the Ring Motif”) as she tells how Alberich’s avenging curse gnaws at its threads, as if to say that Alberich’s curse on the Ring is itself cutting the rope of fate. By cutting the rope of fate Alberich’s curse would seem, ironically, to be fulfilling the ultimate task which Wotan had set Siegfried, to free himself from all entanglement in the real world, its laws and egoistic impulses. The only way we can make sense of this is to construe Siegfried’s and Bruennhilde’s love, their creation of unconsciously inspired art, as itself the fulfillment of Alberich’s curse on the Ring.

In the event, we will see that this is true, for Alberich had cursed the Ring expressly to punish all those - specifically the humans who worship supernatural gods - who renounce Mother Nature and her laws and wisdom (the Hoard of earthly knowledge) for the sake of world-denial in religion and
Twilight of the Gods: Page 745745
art. And Wotan warned Bruennhilde that in living for the redemption by love, an ideal he once proclaimed with joy but has now renounced as unrealizable, inherently futile, she would end up by punishing herself. For the artist-hero and his loving muse perpetuate Wotan’s sin against all that was, is, and will be, i.e., the World Ash, in the inspired art they will create together.

That the Ring curse’s gnawing at the rope of fate is deeply linked with Siegfried, who represents Wotan’s hope to transcend the limits of natural law and egoistic impulse, by consigning to oblivion all that Wotan loathes in his own nature and origin, is proved by the sounding now of #57
(Wotan’s grand idea of redemption from Alberich’s curse in the Waelsung heroes, embodied by the sword Nothung, whose motif’s segment #57
b is the original nature arpeggio representing the pre-fallen, still innocent world), while the Norns’ rope of fate is being split. It is also proved by the sounding moments later of a #103
fragment, #103
being Siegfried’s own youthful horncall. It is as if Siegfried, through his unconscious artistic inspiration by Bruennhilde (which is taking place, significantly enough, in the cave on Bruennhilde’s mountaintop, even as the Norns spin the rope of fate below it), is cutting the rope of fate with his sword Nothung, whose whole purpose was to restore the lost innocence of feeling and love, the time before the birth of human consciousness. We hear the curse motif #51
precisely at the moment the rope of fate breaks. But this is not so much the neutralization of the curse as its fulfillment: in all particulars Alberich’s curse will have run its course and fulfilled itself by the end of the Ring, and Siegfried and Bruennhilde will unwittingly play their part in this.

But the breaking of the Norns’ rope of fate is not merely a foreshadowing of the moment, much later, when Alberich’s curse on the Ring will indeed come to an end as the Rhinedaughters dissolve the Ring, restored to them by Bruennhilde, in the waters of the Rhine. It represents in its current context the figurative transcendence of the limits of time and space within the inspired artwork Siegfried creates, in the Wagnerian “Wonder,” the waning of Erda’s knowledge (spun by her daughters the Norns) before Wotan’s will, Siegfried’s muse of inspiration, Bruennhilde. It is through her inspiration of Siegfried’s art that he is freed from Wotan’s fear of the fated end Erda foresaw, freed both of Erda’s objective knowledge, and religious belief’s illusory claims to truth which were the cause of that fear. In other words, Alberich’s curse on the Ring does not end with the breaking of the Norns’ rope of fate, since Siegfried and Bruennhilde will eventually succumb to Alberich’s curse after all. The Norns do not foresee this only because the knowledge they spin is waning before Wotan’s will Bruennhilde, as she inspires Siegfried to go out into the wider world to undertake new adventures by performing heroic deeds of artistic creation.

The Norns’ scene, T.P.1, transpires between the two halves of Siegfried’s love duet with Bruennhilde, namely, S.3.3, and T.P.2, representing the unconscious inspiration of the artist-hero Siegfried by his muse Bruennhilde. Therefore it seems clear that the rope of fate they spin breaks, not literally, but figuratively, thanks to Siegfried’s creation of a work of art inspired by his muse Bruennhilde, before whom Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be - the real world and its laws and egoistic impulses - fades. Thus, after it snaps we hear #54
, the Twilight of the Gods motif, representing - we must presume - not a literal prophecy of the eventual twilight of the gods which takes place in the last act, but the figurative twilight of the gods Bruennhilde spoke of in the ecstatic finale to S.3.3 when she described how the gods would go under in the face of the love she shares with Siegfried. The Norns proclaim the end of eternal wisdom (an oxymoron, of course), which only makes sense if we see its end as something subjectively experienced by both
Bruennhilde and Siegfried during their ecstatic love-duet, and presumably by the audience for the art to which their union will give birth.

When, accompanied by the Twilight of the Gods Motif #54
, the Norns proclaim “An end to eternal wisdom,” their mother Erda’s wisdom - which embraces the inevitable end of the gods - has temporarily been repressed into the unconscious where Bruennhilde hides it. So long as Bruennhilde maintains this unspoken secret, so long as it sleeps in her and only emerges into consciousness sublimated as a dream rather than as waking reality, the actual twilight of the gods will not occur. For the Norns’ eternal wisdom lives on unchanged in the world and its laws, in spite of any subjective psychological event which takes place in the artist-hero Siegfried and his audience. They descend now to sleep with their mother Erda, accompanied by the “Magic Sleep” (or “Godhead Lost”) motif #97
, and finally by #87
, the fate motif representing the world-events whose historical necessity they spin. But their knowledge has only waned temporarily before Wotan’s will Bruennhilde. Should Siegfried or Bruennhilde somehow betray that knowledge to the light of day, the gods’ fate will be sealed, and will come about not figuratively but in fact.

How has Siegfried’s loving union with Bruennhilde made love, feeling, the heart’s need, music, the new law of the world? It is through a trick the mind plays on us, as Wagner describes below. Of all the arts music seems to aesthetic philosophers the least directly connected with human experience, since it contains no images or ideas from the real world, only abstract patterns of notes which somehow capture all the nuances of the human passions and sentiments, as if music was their very essence. But, as Wagner notes below, these expansive moods which seem to us sui generis (just as our dreams seem to have been created within us by something else, though they are after all our very own, the product of our unconscious mind), are in fact the indirect product of events in our past life which are transmuted over time by our unconscious mind into moods which presumably have lost all trace, for us, of the events which originally inspired them:

[P. 79] “… grand, passionate, and lasting emotions, dominating all our feelings and ideas for months and often half a year, these drive the musician to those vaster, more intense conceptions to which we owe, among others, the origin of a Sinfonia eroica. These greater moods, as deep suffering of soul or potent exaltation, may date from outer causes, for we all are men and our fate is ruled by outward circumstances; but when they force the musician to production, these greater moods have already turned to music [P. 80] in him, so that at the moment of creative inspiration it is no longer the outer event that governs the composer, but the musical sensation which it has begotten in him.” [355W-{10/41} A Happy Evening: PW Vol. VII, p. 79-80]

It is precisely in this sense that Wotan’s repressed hoard of knowledge, which he imparted to Bruennhilde, influences Siegfried unconsciously, and therefore in such a manner that Siegfried seems to be inspired spontaneously, without any influence by Wotan. Through this means it seems as if music, heart-felt subjective feeling, is now the law of the world which trumps the objective laws represented by the Norns’ knowledge of time, space, and causality. Here are some of Wagner’s thoughts on this particular question:

“Everywhere we see the inner law, only conceivable as sprung from the spirit of Music, prescribe the outer law that regulates the world of sight … .” [791W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 121]

[P. 106] “We … should not go far astray, if we defined Music as man’s qualification a priori for fashioning the Drama. Just as we construct for ourselves the world of semblances through application of the laws of Time and Space existing a priori in our brain, so this conscious representment of the world’s idea in Drama would thus be foreordained by those inner laws of Music, operating in the dramatist equally unconsciously [P. 107] with the laws of Causality we bring into employment for apperception of the phenomenal world.” [782W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 106-107]

[P. 441] “ … whereas the world gets by and is held together solely by dint of experience, the poet’s intuition precedes all experience and, on the basis of his own unique potentiality, comprehends what it is that gives all experience its significance and meaning. … what we have here is the best possible example of that same phenomenon which alone makes cognition possible, whereby the entire framework of space, time and causality in which the world as represented to us is prefigured in our brain as the latter’s most characteristic functions, so that these conditional qualities of all objects, namely their spatiality, temporality and causality, are already contained within our heads before we recognize these objects, since without them we should have no means of recognizing them at all [Wagner speaks here of Schopenhauer’s – and therefore Kant’s – concept of apriori knowledge].

But what is raised above space, time and causality, and what does not require these expedients for us to recognize it, in other words, what is unconditioned by finality … [i.e., unconditioned by the fate the Norns’ spin into their rope]; [P. 442] this is something that can never be grasped by any common philosophy, but is prefigured by the poet with that same prefiguredness that lies within him, conditioning all that he creates and enabling him to represent this something with infallible certainty, -- this something, I say, which is more definite and more certain than any other object of our cognition, in spite of the fact that it involves no property of the world as we apprehend it through experience [Wagner is speaking here of the poet’s aesthetic intuition granted him by music].

(…)

The common world, which is entirely subjected to the influence of experience forced upon it from without [i.e., entirely subject to the Norns’ knowledge of all that was, is, and shall be], and which can grasp nothing that has not been more or less physically and palpably suggested to it, can never understand the poet’s attitude towards the world of his own experience [thus the Norns do not foresee what the artist-hero Siegfried and his muse of inspiration Bruennhilde will do].” [667W-{1/19/59} Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 441-442]

But Feuerbach understood perfectly well that when idealist philosophers like Kant and Schopenhauer spoke of apriori knowledge of time, space, and causality as if these are properties granted by the mind to the essentially unknowable thing-in-itself (i.e., what the world is in and of itself independent of man’s artificial attempts to grasp and encompass it with ideas), they were fooling themselves, for the sake of a futile effort to smuggle religious man’s bid for transcendent meaning back into philosophy. Feuerbach recognized this as a trick of self-deception. It is through this trick that such philosophers strove to restore to the mundane world an element of mystery and transcendence, as if all human efforts to obtain knowledge of a reality outside of man were destined to failure by virtue of the fact that our mind automatically imposes its own ineradicable limits upon

its object of inquiry. But, he noted, time and space aren’t the world’s preconditions, they are merely qualities which man abstracts from his experience of the world’s phenomena:

“ … from physical things man abstracts space and time as universal concepts or forms, common to them all … . But although man has abstracted space and time from spatial and temporal things, he posits them as the first grounds and conditions of these same things. (…) … man sets space and time before real things … .” [227F-LER: p. 117]

Similarly, the poet’s alleged aesthetic intuition does not represent the inner essence of things-in-themselves, and it does not free him or his audience from the limitations of life within the objective world. It merely represents man’s subjective, felt response to his experience. There is therefore nothing whatsoever transcendent about music or aesthetic intuition, and it most certainly does not make us lord of the world, but merely lord of our aesthetic recreation of the world in art. The key point for us, though, is that inspired art makes us feel as if we are transported outside the bounds of the real world and our own most mundane concerns. But we must not mistake the feeling for the fact.

Twilight of the Gods: Prologue, Part Two - On top of Bruennhilde's rocky peak: Bruennhilde and Siegfried
[T.P: F]

As the sun rises, Siegfried and Bruennhilde emerge from a cave on the peak of Bruennhilde’s mountain. The musical prelude to their final love duet, representing the sun coming up over their last happy moment together, is one of the grandest orchestral passages in Wagner, and is justly famous as an independent piece in the concert hall. Having given Siegfried the unconscious inspiration he needs to produce heroic deeds of art in the wider world, she sends him off to undertake those new adventures (“adventures” being a metaphor for Siegfried’s artistic endeavors in the wider world). In the meantime, his wonderful youthful horncall #103
has, as Cooke noted, matured into a grand, harmonically rich theme, the new motif #148
, the mature Siegfried’s horncall, played by a number of instruments from the horn family. When Siegfried emerges from Bruennhilde’s cave, we feel that he is a mature man, though this is not explicitly spelled out in the libretto text (nor, I believe, in Wagner’s stage directions):

(Prelude: Dawn. The sky begins to brighten and the fiery glow at the back of the stage grows increasingly faint. #87
?; [[ #148
frags ]] [on bass clarinet]; #? [low music on cellos, double-basses, or bass clarinet, seem to play #139
as heard in the transition S.3.2-3, plus material from Siegfried’s and Bruennhilde’s love-duet, such as, perhaps, #140
?]; [[ #148
]]; #139
?; #148
; [[ #149
]] [on clarinet]; #148
; #149
; #148
?; #77
; #148
: Sunrise. Broad daylight. Siegfried and Bruennhilde emerge from the rocky chamber. He is fully armed; she leads her horse by the bridle)



Bruennhilde: [[ #149
: ]] To new adventures [“Thaten,” i.e., deeds), beloved hero (:#149
), [[ #149
: ]] what would my love be worth if I did not let you go forth [“wie liebt’ ich dich – liess ich dich nicht”] (:#149
)? (#?:) A single worry makes me falter (:#?) - [[ #150
: ]] that my merit has brought you too little gain (:#150
)! (#150
) [[ #150
>>>: ]] What gods have taught me I gave to you: a bountiful store [“Hort,” i.e., hoard!!!] of hallowed runes [“heiliger Runen reichen Hort”] (:#150
>>>); (#150
?:; #?: [lower notes perhaps reference music which expressed Bruennhilde’s fear of sexual union with Siegfried in S.3.3?]) but the maidenly source of all (#150
:) my strength (:#150
?; :#? [music expressing Bruennhilde’s fear of union with Siegfried from S.3.3?]) (#140
:) was taken away by the hero to whom I now bow my head (:#140
). (#149
) (#149
:) Bereft of wisdom (#149
) but filled with desire; (#149
) rich in love yet void of strength, I beg you not to despise the poor
Info
Home Page / About Wagnerheim
Introduction by Roger Scruton
About the Author
Interactive Features
Wagner Lecture Videos
Wagner Lecture / Papers Transcript
Links
Contact Us
Discussion Forum

Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 750750
woman (#150
:; #149
?:) who grudges you naught (#149
?) but can give you (#150
:) no more (:#150
; :#149
?)! (#148
)



Siegfried: (#103
voc?:) You gave me more, o wondrous woman (:#103
voc?), (#150
:) than I know how to cherish [“als ich zu wahren weiss,” i.e., than I know how to keep, or guard] (:#150
): (#150
) (#149
:) Chide me not if your (#150
:) teaching has left me untaught! (:#149
; :#150
).



Another major new motif, #149
, has been introduced further along in the prelude. Cooke recognized this beautiful motif (which he designated “Bruennhilde as Siegfried’s Mortal Wife”) as part of a family of musically related motifs expressing the concept of man’s inspiration by woman, which include #8
, #23
, and #93
. I don’t believe the concept of “Woman’s Inspiration” fully captures this family’s essence, though #149
clearly represents Bruennhilde’s inspiration of Siegfried’s heroic deeds (of art). For instance, #8
was introduced in R.1 as one of the motifs expressing the Rhinedaughters’ cruel, mocking seduction of Alberich. #23
in R.2 represented at its inception Fricka’s effort to sustain Wotan’s fidelity by offering him the domestic tranquility of their new home Valhalla, so he wouldn’t seek romantic adventures outside the home. But Bruennhilde is inspiring Siegfried to leave their home to undertake adventures, and she asks herself what value her love could have if it didn’t serve this purpose. And #93
is of course the motif associated permanently with Sieglinde’s apostrophe to Bruennhilde’s love for the Waelsungs and for Siegfried in particular, “Sublimest Wonder.” It is #93
, significantly, that Wagner chose as the capstone of the entire Ring drama, since it is heard throughout the finale of the last of the four dramas, Twilight of the Gods, and expresses Bruennhilde’s ecstatic longing to reunify with the dead Siegfried by immolating herself on his funeral pyre, as well as her resignation to all that has passed, both good and evil. What seems to link the four motifs of this family conceptually is the connection between the old and the new Valhallas, i.e., between the realms of revealed religion and unconsciously inspired art, which, taken together, represent the realms of feeling as opposed to thought (Alberich’s Ring). #8
, expressing the love the Rhinedaughters would offer Alberich if they really cared for him, if he was their proper wooer, sets them apart from him because he represents the power of thought, of ideas, as opposed to feeling, as opposed to love.

At least in this case, #149
, there is ample evidence for Cooke’s reading of this motif as representing inspiration by woman, though its meaning runs deeper than simple inspiration per se. Cooke, like so many others, evidently interpreted the “new adventures” which Bruennhilde inspires Siegfried to undertake as merely that, heroic adventures. But the only adventure we will witness Siegfried undertake (besides, obviously, his journey to Gibichung Hall, where he meets the agents of his demise, Hagen, Gunther, and Gutrune) during the entire course of Twilight of the Gods, is his unwitting abduction of his own true love Bruennhilde, in order to hand her over as wife to his new comrade Gunther, the Gibichung. And in this instance Siegfried’s action is undertaken under the Gibichung (and Nibelung) Hagen’s influence, under the spell of Hagen’s potion. Interestingly, the only true candidate for an heroic adventure which Siegfried undertakes in Twilight of the Gods is not a heroic action or deed in the strict sense of the word, but rather, the performance of a song narrating the story of his heroic life, prompted by Hagen’s question, how did Siegfried come to understand the voices of the Woodbirds. Siegfried, at Hagen’s behest, will sing to the assembled
Gibichungs, as they rest after a hunt, the tale of how he learned the meaning of Woodbirdsong, and the wonderful events which followed from this. But this song, which we may actually interpret as a heroic action or adventure (it is of course the narrative of Siegfried’s heroic adventures in the past) is the product of Bruennhilde the muse’s artistic inspiration, because it is a song narrating the story of Siegfried’s life, which we might regard as Wagner’s entire Ring in miniature, a play within the play. And this is truly the great adventure that the muse Bruennhilde inspired Siegfried to undertake, since Siegfried’s narrative can be construed as a Wagnerian music-drama in miniature, in other words, the product of Bruennhilde’s unconscious artistic inspiration of the artist-hero Siegfried.

In fact, Bruennhilde defines her love for Siegfried as having no other purpose than to inspire such adventures, for she asks, accompanied by #149
, what her love would be worth were it not to let him go forth to these new adventures. And we must remember what the purpose of her love for him is: it is to inspire artworks which will redeem man’s religious impulse from the threat posed by Alberich’s curse on the Ring, the curse of consciousness, which will be fulfilled if Alberich’s hoard of hidden knowledge ever rises from the silent depths of the unconscious to the light of day. Significantly, Bruennhilde entertains fear that her merit (as the repository for Wotan’s hoard of runes, and as Siegfried’s muse of unconscious inspiration) has brought Siegfried too little gain, and her doubt is embodied in the next new motif, #150
. Cooke suggested that #150
is related to, or is a variant of, the “Hoard of the World Motif” #143
, but Dunning disagrees. If Cooke is right, however, quite a number of interesting consequences follow. But either way, #150
represents the risk that Wotan’s unspoken secret, the forbidden hoard of knowledge which Wotan imparted to Bruennhilde in his confession - and which she in turn imparts to her lover Siegfried subliminally so that he can draw unconscious inspiration from it - might become compromised, Wotan’s unspoken secret be revealed to the light of day. If this occurred Bruennhilde’s status as the muse of unconscious artistic inspiration would be over, for she would forever wake, the contents of her mind exposed to the bright sunlight of consciousness.

This provides the explanation for Bruennhilde’s following comments, also accompanied by #150
, that what the gods – i.e., Wotan in his confession – have taught her, she gave to Siegfried, a bountiful hoard (“Hort”) of hallowed runes. {{ There seems to be a hint at this point in the orchestra of music associated in S.3.3 with Bruennhilde’s fear of sexual union with Siegfried: the score needs to be examined to ascertain the accuracy of this speculation. }} Bruennhilde adds, again with #150
sounding, that the maidenly source of all her strength was (now accompanied by #140
) taken away by the hero to whom she now bows her head. The source of all her strength, the content of her womb which her prior Valkyrie chastity protected, is that she, the womb of Wotan’s wishes, is the repository for Wotan’s hoard of forbidden knowledge. Since this protection was taken away by Siegfried, the only artist-hero worthy to woo the authentic muse of art, and therefore worthy to access her hoard of forbidden knowledge, Siegfried now has taken over Bruennhilde’s role as guardian of Wotan’s unspoken secret, though Siegfried is wholly unconscious of his new status.

Wagner provides evidence for our reading in his prose draft of Siegfried’s Death, his earliest version of the Twilight of the Gods:



“Bruennhilde: [to Siegfried]
Info
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 752752
Of all my wisdom must I go lacking,

For all my knowledge to thee had I lent:

What from me thou took’st, thou usedst not, --

To thy mettlesome mood thou trustedst alone!

But now thou’rt gone, hast given it free,

To me my lore cometh back,

The runes of the Ring unravel.

The Norn’s old saying know I now too,

Their meaning can unriddle … .” [385W-{10-11/48} Siegfried’s Death: PW Vol. VIII, p. 50] [See also 381W]

One of the most enlightening aspects of this passage from Siegfried’s Death is that Bruennhilde says, to the now dead Siegfried, that though she lent him her knowledge and wisdom (i.e., Wotan’s hoard of runes), he did not use this conceptual knowledge, but depended instead on his mood, or feelings. And another interesting detail is that by cross-referencing we can identify what Bruennhilde describes above as the “runes of the Ring,” and the “Norn’s old saying” (which is tantamount to Erda’s knowledge, which Erda imparted to Wotan, and he imparted in turn to Bruennhilde in his confession), with the hoard of runes which the gods (and by gods Bruennhilde means Wotan) taught her, and which she gave to Siegfried. But Siegfried does not use this hoard of knowledge. It would be more accurate to say, he is not conscious of the use he makes of this knowledge, because it is his hidden source of inspiration. Similarly, Siegfried will tell Gunther in T.1.1 that he left Alberich’s Hoard of Treasure unused in Fafner’s cave. But in point of fact Siegfried, following the Woodbird’s subliminal directive, took the essence of Alberich’s Hoard of Treasure, the Ring (the power of the human mind) and the Tarnhelm (the imagination). For Dark-Alberich’s and Light-Alberich’s (Wotan’s) Hoard of knowledge is now embodied by Alberich’s Ring, which Siegfried wears on his finger.

On one occasion, Wagner said that Bruennhilde sends Siegfried off to perform new deeds after teaching him secret lore which, interestingly, includes a warning about the deceit and treachery he will meet in the outer world (recalling Mime’s pretended pretext for teaching Siegfried fear):

“ … he [Siegfried] marries her [Bruennhilde] with Alberich’s ring, which he places on her finger. When the longing spurs him to new deeds, she gives him lessons in her secret lore, warns him of the dangers of deceit and treachery: they swear each other vows, and Siegfried speeds forth.” [378W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 304]

Clearly, Siegfried is wholly oblivious to any warnings which Bruennhilde has taught him subliminally, because he will fall into every trap the world sets for him from the time he leaves Bruennhilde, until his tragic end in T.3.2.

Bruennhilde, noting (accompanied by #149
) that she is bereft of both wisdom and strength, yet rich in love and filled with desire, begs Siegfried not to despise her. But – accompanied now by both #150
and #149
- Siegfried declares that the wondrous Bruennhilde has given him more than he knows how to cherish (i.e., keep, or guard), and he asks her not to chide him if her teaching (now accompanied by #150
) has left him untaught. Siegfried has not only unwittingly described himself
as the beneficiary of the unconscious artistic inspiration granted him by his lover, the wondrous Bruennhilde, but has given us a premonition of the entire plot of Twilight of the Gods.

That Bruennhilde’s teaching has left him untaught is a consequence of the fact that Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s unconscious mind, influences him subliminally with Wotan’s hoard of secret knowledge (identified moments ago with #150
), i.e., she teaches him, but her teaching has left him untaught because he remains unconscious of its true source. Similarly, the Woodbird taught Siegfried the use he could make of both the Tarnhelm and the Ring, yet by the time he’d left Fafner’s cave with these objects in hand he had forgotten their use. Clearly, the Woodbird had taught Siegfried these things subliminally. And of course, Bruennhilde taught Siegfried the meaning of fear, yet through her love he was able to forget his fear. This concept goes right back to Wotan’s relationship with Bruennhilde’s mother Erda, who taught him both the meaning of his fear of the shameful end of the gods she had foreseen, and taught him also how to end his fear (through their child Bruennhilde).

Siegfried unwittingly foretells the entire plot of Twilight of the Gods in his seemingly innocent remark that Bruennhilde gave him more (i.e., access to Wotan’s unspoken secret) than he knows how to cherish (keep, or guard). By virtue of winning Bruennhilde Siegfried has fallen heir not only to the muse of unconscious artistic inspiration, man’s collective unconscious, through which man involuntarily created his religions with their supernatural gods, but he has also fallen heir to the hoard of repressed knowledge of the bitter truth which it is the ultimate purpose of religion to hide and replace with a consoling illusion. Siegfried, the secular music-dramatist (a figure for Wagner himself), is now the sole authentic vessel and guardian of the religious mysteries (i.e., knowledge of those inner processes through which man involuntarily created his gods, inner processes to which Wagner himself claimed to have unique access). But, as Siegfried notes, since he remains unconscious of this secret knowledge, he does not know how to cherish, guard, or keep it. In other words, Siegfried foresees that he may one day innocently betray Wotan’s unspoken secret, his hoard of knowledge, so that it rises, as Alberich foresaw, from the silent depths of man’s collective unconscious Bruennhilde, to the light of conscious day. This notion that Siegfried is destined to betray Wotan’s unspoken secret to the light of day is embodied by #150
. We will see dramatic evidence for this in T.2.5, when Bruennhilde, again accompanied by #150
, confesses to Gunther and Hagen her anger at Siegfried for having taken her knowledge away and betrayed her.

For evidence that Wagner regarded the special sort of music he composed for his music dramas as keeping the secret of the religious mysteries, in his following remark Wagner describes music not only as “the very mother-womb of Drama,” but also suggests that this music-drama (such as Siegfried will create under the spell of Bruennhilde’s inspiration, and present to an audience), is effectively an allegory or legend “shadowing the mysteries of religion.”:

“… she [music] feels called to re-assume her ancient dignity, as very mother-womb of Drama. … she is no rival, but its mother. She sounds, and what she sounds ye see upon the stage; for that she gathered you together: what she is, ye never can but faintly dream; so she opens your eyes to behold her through the scenic likeness, as a mother tells her children legends shadowing the mysteries of religion.” [837W-{10/72} On the Name ‘Music Drama’: PW Vol. V, p. 302]
[T.P: G]

And now Bruennhilde asks Siegfried to follow her lead in swearing an oath that the two of them will preserve the very special sort of love which they share, i.e., that he’ll preserve, cherish, and guard her function as his muse of unconscious artistic inspiration, so she can fulfill her sole purpose as his muse, to inspire his heroic deeds of art: presumably this is what she means when she tells him below that if he would bestow his love on her, he must be mindful only of himself and his exploits, i.e., his new adventures, a metaphor for the works of art she’ll inspire him to create:



Siegfried: (#149
:) One lore I cherish yet: (ardently: #150
) that Bruennhilde lives for me; (#149
) one lesson I learned with ease: (#150
) to be ever mindful of Bruennhilde! (#150
[as an orchestral explosion])



Bruennhilde: (#148
[#103
] vari >>: [in a rhythmic, dance-like vari as heard in Siegfried’s Rhine Journey]) If you’d bestow your love on me, (#voc?: [perhaps a musical reference to Bruennhilde’s remark to Wotan in V.2.2: “… who am I if not your will?”?]) be mindful only of yourself (:#voc? [back reference to Bruennhilde’s remark: “… who am I if not your will?”?]), be mindful of your exploits (:#148
)! Recall the raging fire (#15
/#103
: [could this also contain #35
vari or #100
?]) through which you (#15
/#103
:) fearlessly passed (#103
?) – (#92
) when it burned round the fell – (#150
; #77
?; #148
?)



Siegfried: in order to win Bruennhilde! (#103
vari)



Bruennhilde: Recall the shield-clad woman (#77
; #87
?) whom you found there deep in (#87
) sleep (#92
) and whose close-fitting helmet you loosed –



Siegfried: (#150
>>> :) in order to waken Bruennhild’ (:#150
)! (#149
?)



Bruennhilde: (#149
:; voc?: [reminiscent of the cello solo from the 1860 Venusberg music in Tannhaeuser? – is it related to #153
?]) Recall the oaths that unite us (:#149
; :#voc? [Venusberg reference or #153
?]); (#149
) recall the trust that we place in each other; (#150
) recall the (#149
:) love for (#150
:) which we (#149
: [a painful, sustained note on “leben,” i.e., “live,” which follows]) live: (#58
b hint?: [something curious happens here. we hear a painful phrase, perhaps shared by voc & orch, reminiscent of Siegmund’s version of #58
b?]) Bruennhilde then will burn for aye
[“ever”] (#149
:; #150
?:) with holy fire in your [#92
c or #71
vari “Hero” or special #57
vari from v.3.1?] breast (:#150
; :#149
; :#58
b?; [:#92
c or #71
vari “hero” or special #57
vari from v.3.1?]! –



(She embraces Siegfried. #134
)



As Bruennhilde asks Siegfried to recall the oaths which unite them, the trust they place in each other, and the love for which they live, we hear #150
and #149
alternating, reminding us that the love to which Bruennhilde alludes is the special Wagnerian redemptive love through which the artist-hero receives unconscious inspiration from his loving muse. Significantly, the orchestra expresses their embrace with #134
, the motif which I have strongly suggested represents redemption by love in the sense of redemption of man’s religious impulse by Wagner’s secular art, which is unconsciously inspired.

{{ There is what sounds like a possible reference to the music to which Bruennhilde sang to Wotan “Who am I if not your will?” from just prior to his confession to her in V.2.2, as Bruennhilde tells Siegfried that if he’d bestow his love on her, he should be mindful only of himself. If this is accurate the implication is obvious. There is also what sounds like a reference to #58
b when Bruennhilde sings to Siegfried that she will then burn forever with holy fire in his breast. If this is accurate, #58
b would recall Wotan’s apostrophe to the new fortress Valhalla, “safe from dread and dismay!”, and also Wotan’s grand idea of winning redemption from Alberich’s curse on the Ring, the redemption of Valhalla, through his Waelsung heroes. It is in the inspired art which Siegfried’s loving union with Bruennhilde creates that Wotan, man’s religious impulse, can forget its fear, its dread, of the truth. }}

[T.P: H]

Siegfried now gives Bruennhilde Alberich’s Ring - wholly oblivious to the fact that it could only be forged by renouncing love - as her wedding ring, in exchange for the subliminal runes she’s taught him, and asks her to keep its power safe. In other words, Siegfried is effectively repressing knowledge into his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, removing the risk that it will rise to consciousness in him, just as Wotan did in making confession to Bruennhilde of his most bitter thoughts, in exchange for a sublimation of this knowledge into inspired art:

Siegfried: (#148
vari:) If, my dearest, I leave you here (#19
?:) in the fire’s hallowed guard, (He has removed Alberich’s ring from his finger and now hands it to Bruennhilde. #98
clarinet) (#19
vari?:) in return for all your runes I hand this ring to you (:#19
vari?). (#19
) (#92
:) Whatever deeds I have done, their virtue it enfolds (:#92
); (#48
:; #148
:) I slew a savage dragon that long had guarded it grimly (:#48
; :#148
). (#48
) (#59
a, b, or c?: [perhaps the Rhinedaughters’ Lament for the stolen gold
Twilight of the Gods: Page 756756
as heard during Siegfried’s Rhine Journey?]) Now keep its power safe (:#59
a, b, or c?) (#voc?: [This music could be very important!!!:) in solemn token of my troth (:#voc?).



Bruennhilde: (#19
: rapturously putting on the ring) (#19
?:; #150
/#77
:) I covet it as my only wealth (:#19
?; :#150
/#77
). (#13
:) For the ring now take my horse (:#13
)! (#12
) (#77
:) As once, with me, he boldly clove the air in flight, (#97
?:) with me he’s lost that mighty power (:#97
?). (#77
>> :) Over the clouds, through the lightning-rent storms (:#77
), (#97
?:; #19
voc?:) no more will he bravely soar on his way (:#97
?; :#19
voc?). (#91
>> :) But wherever you lead him – be it through fire – (#148
vari/#91
[in the “Rhine-Journey” dance-like vari]) Grane will fearlessly follow; for you, o hero, he shall obey (:#148
/#91
)! (#77
?:) Guard him well; he’ll heed your word (:#77
?): (#64
:) oh, often give Grane (:#64
) (#150
:) Bruennhilde’s greeting (:#150
)!

Siegfried proclaims that the Ring enfolds the virtue of all the heroic deeds he has performed, and he says more than he knows, because Alberich’s Ring gave birth to Valhalla (#19
>#20
a in R.1-2), and Alberich’s threat to the gods inspired Wotan’s longing for redemption from Alberich’s curse, which is Siegfried’s raison d’etre. But of course Siegfried knows nothing of this past history, and the only instance of a heroic deed he mentions is his one great deed in killing Fafner and thus dispossessing him of the Ring. {{ As Siegfried requests that she keep the Ring’s power safe in solemn token of their troth, we hear what sounds like one of the #59
segments, a, b, or c. This was of course the Rhinedaughters’ lament for the lost Rhinegold in R.4, implicitly their appeal to Wotan to restore it. If this is accurate, it provides a motival support for what is already self-evident, that by leaving the Ring’s power safe under Bruennhilde’s protection, it is as if Siegfried has restored the Ring to the Rhine where its waters will dissolve it and its curse, but only temporarily. Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s unconscious mind, is figuratively a surrogate Rhine, because she does indeed neutralize Alberich’s curse on the Ring, the curse of consciousness, temporarily, which restoring the Ring to the Rhinedaughters will accomplish permanently (or at least until the next Ring cycle begins). As Bruennhilde rapturously places Alberich’s Ring on her finger she tells Siegfried, accompanied by both #150
and #77
, that she covets it as her only wealth. This motivally identifies the Ring with the Hoard of knowledge Wotan learned from Erda, imparted to Bruennhilde in his confession, and which she has now taught to Siegfried subliminally, feelingly, musically.

The notion that by leaving Alberich’s Ring under Bruennhilde’s protection Siegfried has found a surrogate Rhine to neutralize Alberich’s curse, seems to be further confirmed by the sounding of #13
(the Rhinedaughters’ joyful cry of “Heiajaheia! Heiajaheia!”) and #12
(the “Rhinegold Motif”), as Bruennhilde offers Siegfried her horse Grane in exchange for the Ring. The flying Valkyrie horse Grane may well be regarded as another metaphor for the feeling of transcendence which music gives us, which can be compared with the aesthetic joy the Rhinedaughters took in the pre-Fallen Rhinegold before Alberich stole it and forged a Ring from it. It is as if the Ring, in Bruennhilde’s hands, has regained its pre-fallen innocence. The redemptive art Siegfried produces under Bruennhilde’s spell will make his audience feel as if paradisal innocence has been restored.
[T.P: I]

Bruennhilde and Siegfried now sing their good-byes: Siegfried grants Bruennhilde credit for all the adventures he will now undertake, inspired by her love, and the two of them figuratively exchange identities, so that wherever one is, both are:

Siegfried: (#77
vari:; #150
:) Through your virtue alone (#150
/#77
:) shall I still undertake adventures (:#77
vari; :#150
)? (#77
) (#77
:) Is it you who’ll choose my battles, (#106
voc?: [or some other music from Siegfried’s musings on his mother, who died giving him birth, &/or other music expressing his loneliness from S.2.2-3?]) you to whom all my victories redound (:#106
voc? [or other musical references to Siegfried’s musings on his mother and loneliness from S.2.2-3?])? (#57
?:; #148
>>:) Upon your stallion’s back, (#103
?:) within the shelter of your shield (:#57
?; :#148
; :#103
?) (#111
definitive:) no more do I think of myself as Siegfried, I am (#77
:) Bruennhilde’s arm alone (:#111
)! (#150
)



Bruennhilde: (#150
:) If only Bruennhilde were your soul (:#150
)! (#111
?)



Siegfried: (#150
?:) Through her my (#150
:) courage is (#150
:) kindled (:#150
).



Bruennhilde: (#150
:; #111
?:) So you yourself would be Siegfried and Bruennhilde (:#150
:; :#111
?)? (#150
vari?)



Siegfried: (#92
voc?:; #111
:) Wherever I am, (#150
vari:) both will be safe. (#111
)



Bruennhilde: (animatedly) So my mountain hall is deserted?



Siegfried: United, (#75
or #125
frag?:) it holds us both (:#75
or #125
frag?). (#148
)



Bruennhilde: (with great emotion: #111
:; #149
:) O holy gods, (#149
:) hallowed kinsmen (:#149
)! (#149
:; #voc?: [possible reference to Siegmund’s remark to Sieglinde in V.1.1: “Cooling comfort came from the spring”?]) Feast your eyes (:#voc? [back reference to V.1.1?]) (#63
voc?:) on this

blessed pair (:#63
voc?)! (#111
:) Parted (:#111
) – (#149
:; #150
?:) who would divide us (:#149
; :#150
?)? (#111
:) Divided (:#111
) – (#150
:) they’ll never part (:#150
)! (#57
vari; #150
vari?)



Siegfried: (#111
vari:; #150
?:) Hail to you, Bruennhilde, glittering star! (#111
?) Hail, lightening love!



Bruennhilde: (#111
vari:) Hail to you, Siegfried, conquering light! Lightening life!



Both: (#150
vari:; #77
?:) Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail! [etc.]

Siegfried has effectively described Bruennhilde as none other than his own unconscious mind, just as Wotan did when he acknowledged her as his own will, saying that with himself he communes when he communes with her, and that what he says to no one in words (because Bruennhilde is his own will), shall remain forever unspoken. For Siegfried says that through Bruennhilde’s virtue alone he’ll still undertake adventures, and that she’ll chose his battles, reminding us that Bruennhilde and her Valkyrie sisters once inspired Wotan’s chosen heroes - whom he, deceiving himself, deceived in turn - to martyrdom, in order that after death the legacy they’d left could be enlisted in the ultimate fight to preserve Valhalla, man’s religious impulse and ideals, from the reductive power of the scientific advancement of knowledge (Erda’s objective knowledge). Bruennhilde, his unconscious mind, chooses his battles and inspires him to adventures, rather than his conscious mind, because he is an unconsciously inspired artist-hero. And note, #150
(representing Wotan’s hoard of knowledge, which Bruennhilde imparts subliminally to Siegfried) and #77
(the Valkyrie theme, which represents Wotan’s fear of Erda’s prophecy of the end of the gods, which is the true source of inspiration of the heroes chosen for martyrdom in order to sustain Valhalla, through the agency of his Valkyrie daughters, the heroes’ muses, who possess their mother Erda’s foresight of the twilight of the gods), accompany Siegfried as he grants all credit for what he shall do in future to his muse Bruennhilde.

Wagner meditated quite deeply on the nature of unconscious artistic inspiration, and he felt that the more completely art is inspired involuntarily and unconsciously, like a dream, rather than through conscious calculation and taking one’s audience’s tastes, finances, etc., into consideration, the greater, freer, more spontaneous and more sublime the art. Understanding, on the other hand, which is the kind of thinking Alberich does, and Wotan does too when he is objective, Wagner regards as unfree:

[P. 352] “Man, as he stands confronting nature [i.e., consciously, in either scientific endeavor, which ultimately exploits nature, or religious belief, which denies nature], is wilful and therefore unfree: from his opposition to, his wilful conflict with her, have issued all his errors (in religion and history): only when he comprehends the necessity in the phenomena of nature and his indissoluble connection with her [i.e., through music, feeling, in which he feels one with all things], and becomes conscious of her, fits himself to her laws, does he become free. So the artist confronting life: as long as he chooses, proceeds wilfully, he is unfree; only when he grasps the necessity of
Info
Home Page / About Wagnerheim
Introduction by Roger Scruton
About the Author
Interactive Features
Wagner Lecture Videos
Wagner Lecture / Papers Transcript
Links
Contact Us
Discussion Forum

Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 759759
life, is he also able to portray it: then, however, he has no more choice, and consequently is free and true.” [473W-{49-51 (?)} ‘Notes for ‘Artisthood of the Future’ (unfinished); Sketches and Fragments: PW Vol. VIII, p. 352]

And Wagner distinguished the art of music from the other arts on the probably spurious basis that he regarded music as uniquely unconsciously inspired. What he likely meant was that unlike the other arts which involve either concepts, dramatic situations, or images taken from real life, music’s true source of inspiration is not so apparent, but remains hidden. It’s link with the “mundane” and “everyday” is not self-evident. In any case, his description below of the composer’s procedure (as opposed to the allegedly more conscious composition by the poet), where the artist doesn’t impose his aesthetic form but it is imposed upon him by his own inner vision, stemming from the mystic ground of the unconscious, certainly makes sense of Siegfried’s declaration that Bruennhilde - taken here as Wagner’s metaphor for the language of the unconscious, music - chooses his battles (i.e., his artworks) for him:

[P. 63] “I believe that the most positive fact we shall ever ascertain about Beethoven the man, in the very best event, will stand in the same relation to Beethoven the musician as General Bonaparte to the ‘Sinfonia Eroica.’ Viewed from this side of consciousness, the great musician must always remain a complete enigma to us. At all to solve this enigma, we undoubtedly must strike an altogether different path from that on which it is possible, up to a certain point at least, to follow the creative work of Goethe and Schiller: and that point itself becomes a vanishing one exactly at the spot where creation passes from a conscious to an [P. 64] unconscious act, i.e. where the poet no longer chooses the aesthetic Form, but it is imposed upon him by his inner vision (Anschauung) of the Idea itself [Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s unconscious mind, holds for him subliminal knowledge of Wotan’s unspoken secret, his hidden poetic aim, which unconsciously inspires Siegfried to produce redemptive works of art]. Precisely in this beholding of the Idea, however, resides the fundamental difference between poet and musician … .

The said diversity comes out quite plainly in the plastic artist, when compared with the musician; betwixt them stands the poet, inclining toward the plastic artist in his conscious fashioning (Gestalten), approaching the musician on the mystic ground of his unconsciousness.” [763W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 63-64]

“The actual Art-work, i.e., its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is … the only true redemption of the artist [Siegfried]; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice [through Bruennhilde’s virtue alone Siegfried will undertake adventures, and she, his unconscious muse of inspiration, will choose his battles]; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense … [i.e., redemption of Wotan’s thought, his hoard of objective knowledge, in Bruennhilde’s feeling, her music].” [418W-{9-12/49} The Artwork of the Future: PW Vol. I, p. 73]

[P. 110] “Through Tone are Dance and [P. 111] Poetry brought to mutual understanding; in her are intercrossed in loving blend the laws by which they each proclaim their own true nature; in her, the wilfulness of each becomes instinctive ‘Will’ (‘Unwillkuerlichen’) … [i.e., lost innocence seems to be restored].” [434W-{9-12/49} The Artwork of the Future: PW Vol. I, p. 110-111]
“The unconscious [Bruennhilde] is precisely the involuntary, the necessary and creative … .” [466W-{49-51 (?)} Notes for ‘Artisthood of the Future’ (unfinished); Sketches and Fragments: PW Vol. VIII, p. 346]

And these considerations on the nature of unconscious artistic inspiration, which Wagner identifies especially as a feature of musical composition, recall how Wotan originally redeemed himself from consciousness of thoughts too unbearable to contemplate, by confessing his divine “Noth,” his unspoken secret, to Bruennhilde, thereby repressing his potentially conscious thoughts into his unconscious mind, so that he could be born anew as the creative and free hero Siegfried:

“Consciousness is the end, the dissolution of unconsciousness: but unconscious agency is the agency of nature, of the inner necessity … . So ye err when ye seek the revolutionary force in consciousness, and therefore fain would operate through the intelligence … . Not ye, but the folk [Wotan, collective, historical man, who in primal times involuntarily invented the gods by projecting his own idealized nature on to figures of his imagination. His creative gift is resurrected in Siegfried, the single artist-hero of the modern, secular age.] – which deals unconsciously – and for that very reason , from a nature-instinct – will bring the new to pass; but the might of the folk is lamed for just so long as it lets itself be led by the chain of an obsolete intelligence, a hindering consciousness: only when this is completely annihilated by and in itself, -- only when we all know and perceive that we must yield ourselves, not to our intelligence, but to the necessity of nature, therefore when we have become brave enough to deny our intellect, shall we obtain from natural unconsciousness [Bruennhilde, in whom Wotan represses his potentially conscious thoughts], from want [Noth?], the force to produce the new, to bring the stress of nature to our consciousness through its satisfaction.” [465W-{49-51 (?)} Notes for ‘Artisthood of the Future’ (unfinished); Sketches and Fragments: PW Vol. VIII, p. 345]

When Siegfried adds that upon her stallion’s back, and protected by the shelter of her shield, Siegfried has ceased to be Siegfried but is Bruennhilde’s arm alone, Wagner now re-introduces #111
, the so-called “Siegfried’s Mission Motif,” in definitive form. #111
was introduced in S.1.1 in association with Siegfried’s presumption that in restoring his connection with his heroic Waelsung ancestors (or parents, to be literally accurate), knowledge of which Siegfried’s foster-father Mime had withheld from him, Siegfried was now free to cast aside Mime’s claim of influence and indebtedness, and entirely emancipate himself from loathsome Mime to seek a heroic life in the wider world, wielding the newly re-forged Nothung, the sword representing the heritage of genius which Siegfried inherits by virtue of being one among their number. Bruennhilde holds for Siegfried, of course, the full knowledge of his true identity as Wotan, which includes Wotan’s lower self, Mime, the very aspect of Wotan’s character from which Bruennhilde frees Siegfried’s conscious mind. Bruennhilde gave Wotan a new identity as Siegfried, and Siegfried therefore is not entirely himself, the unconsciously inspired artist-hero, without his muse, Bruennhilde, who represents for him his truer, instinctive self. #111
thus recalls Siegfried’s intent, as proclaimed to Mime in S.1.1, to undertake adventures in the wider world and to purge from himself all the limitations which Wotan felt would constrain the artist-hero’s freedom. But we must not forget that #111
is based upon #105
, Mime’s so-called Starling Song, in which Mime reminded Siegfried of all that he owes Mime. Similarly, #19
(Alberich’s Ring), the basis for #20
a (the first segment of the Valhalla Motif), recalls all that the gods owe Alberich.

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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring
Introduction


The Rhinegold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
Twilight of the Gods
Prologue, Part One
Prologue, Part Two
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act One, Scene Three, Part One
Act One, Scene Three, Part Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene Three
Act Two, Scene Four
Act Two, Scene Five
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three

References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Twilight of the Gods: Page 761761
Speaking of Siegfried’s and Bruennhilde’s description of themselves as one single unit, one identity, one person (which is no surprise, since Bruennhilde is Siegfried’s unconscious mind), Wagner, significantly enough, described his own unconscious artistic inspiration as a marriage of himself to himself. I first found the following passage cited by Donington in his book The ‘Ring’ and its Symbols, and it has always stimulated the deepest reflection on the metaphorical significance of the relationship of the heroes to the heroines in Wagner’s three canonic romantic operas, and the four music-dramas:

“I had been distressingly but more or less decidedly disengaging myself from the world; everything in me had turned to negation and rejection; even my artistic creativeness was distressing to me, for it was longing with an insatiable longing to replace that negation, that rejection, by something affirmative and positive, the marriage of myself to myself (‘sich-mir-vermaehlende’).” [657W-{9/18/58}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: Quoted by Robert Donington in his Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and its Symbols; p. 152]

And in the remarkable passage below Wagner explicitly describes the two aspects of his own psyche which must join in loving, marital union, to produce the unconsciously inspired music-drama, figuratively, as Beethoven’s music and Shakespeare’s dramatic gift:

[P. 110] “… let us … compare the work of Shakespeare [with musical composition by Beethoven]; and we shall find him [Shakespeare] to be the ghost-seer and spirit-raiser, who from the depths of his own inner consciousness conjures the shapes of men from every age, and sets them before his waking eye and ours in such a fashion that they seem to really live. … we may term Beethoven, whom we have likened to the clairvoyant, the hidden motor (den wirkenden Untergrund) of Shakespeare the ghost-seer: what brings forth Beethoven’s melodies, projects the spirit-shapes of Shakespeare; and both will blend into one being, if we let the musician enter not only the world of Sound, but at like [P. 111] time that of Light.” [785W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 110-111]

And so, riding on Grane’s (music’s) back, and protected by Bruennhilde’s shield (her loving protection, which figuratively renders Siegfried unconscious of the paralyzing knowledge of the truth which so benumbed Wotan), Siegfried rides off on his famous journey down the Rhine, where he will finally come to shore at the archetypal Gibichung Kingdom, Wagner’s archetype for the modern State, essentially secular but still holding on to the old forms, the worship of the gods, to undertake his new adventures inspired by his muse Bruennhilde. Siegfried is inspired now by feeling alone, not by thought, but his feeling is nonetheless not purely spontaneous and not freed from ulterior motive. Its ultimate source of inspiration is Alberich’s forging of his Ring from the Rhinegold which gave birth to consciousness, and Wotan’s (man’s) futile quest to preserve man’s religious longing for transcendent value in the face of Alberich’s advancement (through his son and proxy Hagen) of conscious knowledge. Siegfried the secular artist-hero is the unwitting pawn of historical man’s desperate quest to restore an innocence forever lost. Curiously, Mime had warned Siegfried not to try and go out into the cunning world until he’d learned the meaning of fear, and Mime said that Siegfried’s mother – presumably Sieglinde – had insisted that Siegfried learn this lesson. But Bruennhilde has in fact taught Siegfried the meaning of fear, and so he is now journeying into the world to the tune of #111
, the so-called “Siegfried’s Mission Motif,” {{ and perhaps even #110
}}, both motifs recalling Siegfried’s self-proclaimed emancipation from Mime in the finale of S.1.1.