But the most beautiful and significant development of this remarkable musical system is to be found in the construction of those motives which are designed to illustrate the emotions and dramatic principles of the plays. Of these there are some which have also a scenic aspect and at first will seem to the new hearer of Wagner’s works to belong wholly to the external class. The most easily comprehended is that commonly described as the smithy motive. The Nibelungs were dwarfs, dwellers in the hollows of the earth, and workers in precious metals. They were a crushed, tyrannized race, and after one of their number, Alberich, had obtained power over the worldly possession of a ring of Rhine gold, they became the most abject of slaves. Two things appeal to us in the contemplation of this race: first, ceaseless labor at the smithy; second, the bitterness of spirit caused by the drudgery. Wagner invented for the theme representative of this race the smithy motive, founded on a rhythm imitative of the beating of hammers.
A HUMOROUS COMPOSITION ADDRESSED TO LOUIS KRAFT.
The host of Hotel de Prusse, in Leipsic.
It seems at first as if this theme could picture for us only that beating. But in the second act Alberich’s brother, Mime, who has been plotting to get the Rhine treasure for himself, is slain by Siegfried. Then Alberich, who is concealed in the forest and witnesses the scene, laughs aloud in bitter scorn of his fallen foe; and his laugh consists of that Nibelung theme sung fortissimo. Then we perceive that the theme fully embodies both of the characteristics of the dwarfs, of which the second is the product of the first. To rise a step higher, in the first act of “Die Walküre,” when Siegmund and Sieglinde, the only living members of the race of Volsungs, are gazing into one another’s eyes and learning to sympathize with one another’s sorrows, the orchestra, always revealing to us the most secret feelings of the actors, plays this passage:—
The bass phrase is the motive of the Volsung race, and its melancholy character is intended to remind us that this is a race of tragic heroes whose heritage is woe. The treble phrase is the motive of sympathy. It is, therefore, written in thirds, the closest and most elementary of those harmonic agreements called consonances, and it is, in melody as well as harmony, expressive of sympathy. In the second act of the drama of “Siegfried,” when the young hero lies under the tree in the forest and wonders what manner of being his mother was, the orchestra reminds us that he is a Volsung by intoning the motive in this form:—
And again when Siegfried in “Die Götterdämmerung” has sobbed forth his last words and lies dead among Gunther’s appalled vassals, the basses of the orchestra once more wail out this sad motive, accentuated by muttered beats of the kettle drums. Thus we see that this motive is always heard when the two thoughts—Volsung race and its woe—are especially significant in the drama. We learn that it refers to these two things by the text with which it is associated, and we then find that it intensifies for us the feeling of that text.