Ah! those eyes
Are open forever!
Ah! how sweet
Is her swelling breath!
Delicious destruction—
Ecstatic awe—
Brünnhild gives greeting—to me!"
This reminiscent love-music gives way to the Death March, which, from a purely structural point of view, is an epitome of much that is salient in the musical investiture of the entire tetralogy, yet in spirit is a veritable apotheosis, a marvellously eloquent proclamation of antique grief and heroic sorrow. This music loses nothing in being listened to as absolute music. Never mind that in obedience to his system of development Wagner has passed the life of Siegfried in review in the score. The orchestra has a nobler mission here. It is to make a proclamation which neither singers nor pantomimists nor stage mechanism and pictures can make.
The hero is dead!
What does it mean to him?