A colossal work in four parts, the Ring’s central theme is one of redemption. The Norse God Wotan, addicted to the amassing of power, may not achieve it through deceit or treachery. By trickery he obtains from the Nibelung Alberich a ring possessing untold powers, made of the gold of the Rhine. Alberich hisses a curse, in losing it, which only a pure hero acting as a free agent may remove.
Wotan’s attempts to get the ring, his often devious reasoning, and the panoplied purpose of the whole, make of the tetralogy an epic study in the emotions, the humanities, the loyalties, the shortcomings, in short, in the whole moral and spiritual concept of the individual and society.
The Ride of the Valkyries from “Die Walküre”
In the time intervening between Das Rheingold and Die Walküre Wotan has worked out a plan to save the gods from destruction. The ring must not fall into the wrong hands, those of Alberich, for instance, for the wily and greedy creature knows full well its powers. The thing to do, then, is to regain possession of it without “craft or violence.” He must employ some means above such devices. Consequently his plan is to bring into being a hero who shall not be his servitor, but rather the agency for the accomplishment through a free, totally unguided will. Thus we come to the saga of the Walsungs, human descendants of Wotan, and one of them, Siegmund, is the hero chosen.
The Valkyries are the nine daughters of Wotan by the earth goddess of wisdom, Erda. And of these Brünnhilde is Wotan’s favorite. She interferes with her father’s wishes in order to aid Siegmund, however, and she is given the penalty of mortality by her father. The duet in the last act of the opera between Wotan and Brünnhilde is one of the most moving sequences in all Wagner.
The Ride of the Valkyries is an excerpt from the music which leads into Act III, made into a concert piece by Wagner himself. A great rock dominates the scene in the opera. It is the Valkyr Rock where now the maidens are gathering. Fully equipped in shining mail, carrying spears and shields, they ride swiftly through the storm. At the curtain’s rise only four of the maidens are discernible on the stage. The others may be heard announcing their entrance with the exultant Valkyr call. The music surges to great heights of sound, wild, untrammeled, passionate, driven relentlessly by powerful rhythms.
A Siegfried Idyl
In a letter dated June 25, 1870, Wagner wrote of his wife Cosima, “She has defied every disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation. She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful boy, whom I call boldly Siegfried; he is now growing, together with my work [he was working then on the opera Siegfried; hence the name]; he gives me a new long life, which at last has attained a meaning. Thus we get along without the world, from which we have wholly withdrawn.”
The composer wrote the music of the Idyl—originally called the Triebschen Idyl—as a birthday gift for his wife. On Christmas morning, 1870, Wagner and a group of musicians assembled on the stairs of his home at Triebschen and performed the lovely music, which, cramped though the musicians were because of tight quarters, obtained a fine rendering, according to ear-witnesses.
When the Idyl was first played in Berlin, in 1878, a music critic gave it as gospel that the music was taken from the second act of the opera Siegfried. The truth of the matter is that the Idyl, while based on several themes from the opera besides that of a folk song, is a complete entity in itself, for the themes were developed in a manner entirely different from their treatment in the opera. In addition to which, it must be remembered that the folk song, Schlaf’, mein Kind, schlaf’ein, does not appear in the opera at all.