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PRIMEVAL ELEMENTS.
This motive plays an important part in the trilogy. When Erda rises from the earth in the last scene of the prologue we hear this same theme in the minor mode, and we at once perceive that by this simple process of musical development Wagner associates her with the primeval elements (earth, air, and water), but emphasises the sadness of her character and her peculiar office in the tragedy as a prophetess of woe. When she utters the words, "Ein düst'rer Tag dämmert den Göttern" ("A dismal day dawns for the Aesir"), we hear her motive first in its natural form, and then inverted, and we then learn that this inversion has an especial meaning, the end of the gods, the "Götterdämmerung":
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A—ERDA. B—GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.
Ein düst'rer Tag dämmert den Göttern
Now let us turn to the scene in which Waltraute comes to tell Brünnhilde how Wotan has had the ash cut down, hewn into faggots, and assembled the gods to wait for the end. In the accompaniment to her words appears the Erda theme, originally that of the Primeval Elements which surrounded the Rhinegold, transformed into a stately progression of octaves. Presently over these we hear the Walhalla theme, and then the octaves descend in a new development of the "Götterdämmerung" theme:
