This Act will ever be accounted one of Wagner's most magnificent and fully inspired. The superb vocal writing, the beauty and sheer strength of the orchestral parts, the gorgeous colouring, and the human passion blent with the sense of the green yet fiery spring, all go to make up a thing unique in opera. A tide of life rushes through it all; and the man's technical accomplishment was so fine and complete that he found immediate incisive expression for every shade of emotion, or complex blend of emotions, and every sensation. The jealous, savage ferocity of Hunding is there; Siegmund's and Sieglinda's despair, hope and final burst of ecstatic joy; and at the same time we seem to smell the fresh, wet earth and leaves and to see the sparkling moonlight.
III
The Second Act opens in a wild and rocky place amongst the mountains. Siegmund and Sieglinda have fled; Hunding is in hot pursuit; and now Wotan stands, the mighty war-god, brandishing his spear, and calling his daughter Brünnhilda, the Valkyrie, to favour and aid Siegmund. She joyfully assents and goes off, and Wotan exults. He persists in deceiving himself: Brünnhilda, his own daughter, was created to execute his purposes: the Runes make him accountable for her actions, just as he is now for Siegmund's and in the later operas for Siegfried's. As in the Rhinegold, Fricka instantly bids him remember what and how he is. As the goddess of covenants, laws, she wants vengeance wreaked on Siegmund and Sieglinda: they have broken the most sacred of all covenants in the eyes of a woman, the marriage covenant. Vainly Wotan pleads that the Valkyrie works unaided: she presses him, until at last he swears a sacred oath on his spear that Siegmund shall die. Brünnhilda comes in, whooping her war-call, but her voice drops at the sight of Fricka. Fricka, who thoroughly despises all the Valkyrie maidens as being born out of true wedlock, tells her to take her orders from Wotan, and goes off triumphant. Wotan, deeply despondent, terrifies Brünnhilda with his grief; she casts down her spear and shield and kneels before him, imploring him to tell the cause.
Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been explained amply in the Rhinegold and in the scene we have just witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again—with dreary and soporific effect. Brünnhilda, as love incarnate, pleads for the man and woman whose only crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. Sadly Brünnhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is subject to—for how should love know aught of greed for power?—picks up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps—the Valkyrie having thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Brünnhilda advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come to call thee hence"; he raises his head, sees her, and knows his fate. This is the final crushing blow; the Volsung had always deserted him; but he had found the magic sword and thought the promised help would not fail him in his worst need. (Truly the gods treat us as toys to be broken at pleasure!) He refuses to go, and speaks blasphemy of the high gods; Brünnhilda is horrified: here she is going to take him to Valhalla to feast on delights for ever—and he scorns her. He ridicules Valhalla and Wotan and the serving-maidens: he wonders who the Valkyrie is, so beautiful and cold and stern. The scene is one of the fullest dramatic intensity: at last Siegmund asks whether, if he goes to Valhalla, he will find his wife there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," is the answer: Siegmund for the moment is crushed, but again rebels, and takes his sword to kill first Sieglinda and then himself. Brünnhilda is overcome with admiration: this, at any rate, this love she can understand; she tells him to prepare to fight Hunding and she will help him.
The next scene is unmatched, even in Wagner, for its terror and the swiftness with which the climax comes on. Clouds gather; Hunding's horn is heard and his voice; Siegmund leaves Sieglinda and goes off cheerfully and confidently to meet his foe. Thicker gather the clouds; thunder peals and lightnings flash; the antagonists are heard calling as they seek each other in the darkness; Sieglinda speaks in her dreams; as she awakes, Hunding and Siegmund are seen in the dim light high up amongst the rocks; Brünnhilda encourages Siegmund, guarding him with her spear; he is about to strike Hunding down; there is an angry red glare, and Wotan shatters the sword with his spear; Hunding runs his spear through Siegmund; Sieglinda shrieks and falls insensible to the ground. Slowly the red light fades; "Go, tell Fricka I have sent you," Wotan says bitterly, and at his nod Hunding falls dead; Brünnhilda has run round, picked up the shards of the Sword, and, gathering Sieglinda in her arms, rushed away. There is a moment of suspense; the tragedy is accomplished; and now Wotan must punish Brünnhilda for disobeying his commands; and amidst thunders and lightnings, in flaming wrath, he rides off, and the curtain falls.
The drama of Siegmund and Sieglinda is ended; the second inner drama, that of Wotan and Brünnhilda, is begun. Love, the best part of Wotan's nature, has risen against him in his endeavour to rule; she cannot prevent him destroying the creatures he has made, but she can defy him. That sort of rule would be intolerable, so love shall be put away from him and he will still rule. And, love being discarded, there is no reason why he should not still get the Ring, by fair or foul means, and reign—loveless indeed, but in no fear of Fafner or the Nibelung, black Alberich.
IV
As a musical structure the Second Act divides more easily and clearly than the first into sections: the sections, indeed, are boldly defined. First there is a prelude formed of the scene in which Wotan, rejoicing in the coming combat, directs Brünnhilda to see to it that Hunding is slain; and this is followed by what may be regarded as the main first movement—the dispute between Wotan and Fricka, terminating in his taking the oath; then comes his monologue, addressed, of course, to Brünnhilda ("In talking to thee it is with myself I seem to speak," to transcribe approximately what he says); Brünnhilda's warning to Siegmund follows, and then the finale, the catastrophic climax with Siegmund's death.
The prelude opens with the same fiery impetuosity as that to the First Act. It is largely made up of what in the guide-books used to be called the "Flight motive"—as though a serious composer would or could invent a motive of Running away!—and as the opening bar may be taken as a variation of the Sword theme, and the thing ends with what we learn to be a tune associated with the Valkyries, a really fertile and picturesque mind may see in it a musical account of Siegmund flying with the Sword and pursued, for good or evil, by the Valkyrie. What we really feel in it is the harshness of the opening discords, the agitation, the power, all forming a fitting prelude to what we see when the curtain rises, the barren rocks, and Wotan, exultant, calling Brünnhilda. His phrases have, indeed, a glorious vigour, as have Brünnhilda's in her answer. Her war-whoop plays an important part in the Third Act. Fricka's music is royally imperious at first: such declamation had never been thought of in the world before; but there is rare beauty of an austere kind—the beauty of holiness—afterwards, as she momentarily drops her dignity and pleads her cause. She gains the day and departs, and after Wotan's tedious meditation comes the most magnificent music of all. We hear the Fate theme—a strange phrase that seems to question destiny without ever getting an answer—and a subject taken bodily from Mendelssohn and made into a new thing filled with a curious blending of wistful and tender pity, mystery and power. It gives us a glimpse into the very heart of Brünnhilda, obeying her father because she must, and revolting against the task. Siegmund's declamation is a fine example of Wagner's finest vocal writing at this period—the style which I have referred to as something between recitative and true song. That is, it remains metrical without the slightest tendency to fall into regular four-bar measure, or any other regular measure; yet it decidedly is not recitative. But as the prevailing mood becomes more exalted, so does the music become more lyrical, and the ending of the dialogue, when Brünnhilda's emotion swamps every other consideration than rescuing the lovers, is sheer song. The orchestral part is symphonic throughout, with a few dramatic pauses. One of the most wonderful of these is at Brünnhilda's reply: "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more." There is no wailing, no sadness, in the accompaniment—only simple chords; and the simple voice-phrase, evidently intended to be half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is none of the contrapuntal intricacy of Tristan: the pictorial requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, both—if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned—for the abstract colour of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use of chords permitted. Wagner never ceases to make us feel that the drama passes amidst the wild mountains and woods: the drama is poignant enough in all conscience, and the scenery is an aid to it. We have the purely pictorial Wagner with the gathering storm—the voices calling amongst the clouds. The sinister growling of the approaching thunder is heard, and, still more sinister, the harsh notes of Hunding's horn; the orchestra rages louder and louder, Sieglinda mutters in her dream, the Valkyrie's call is heard encouraging Siegmund, the crash as the Sword is splintered, and then an awful silence. The action has been long delayed, but the catastrophe arrives with appalling swiftness at the end, and the music is equal to the opportunity. It is not wholly theatre music: that passage in the bass, galloping up and down the scale against a tremolando accompaniment, is in itself fine music; even Hunding's rough cow-horn makes a musical effect. When Wotan's fury breaks forth and he rides off in godlike wrath—even here the music is glorious, taken simply as music. Had all the Ring been done with the superb mastery of this and the preceding Act, we should have an art creation to be set above every other art achievement in the world—above anything done by Æschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare.