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SLUMBER.
This, with the Fire and Siegfried themes, forms the magnificent closing passage of this drama. The melody of Wotan's farewell, though it can hardly be described as a leitmotiv, reappears with beautiful effect in Waltraute's narrative, when she tells of Wotan's sadness.
In "Siegfried" we meet with a score which contains a great amount of freely composed music. There is so much that is external and incidental in this work that the constant employment of guiding themes was unnecessary. The result is that we enter an atmosphere of buoyant, jubilant out-door life, full of the vigour and sweetness of spring and young manhood. The whole of the scene of the forging of the sword is sung in music aglow with the flame of the forge, alive with the rhythm of the bellows and the hammer. The forest scene gives us the bird music and the "Waldweben," freely written, the latter a mood picture, using only the Volsung theme as a reminder. Wotan's splendid summons to Erda is free music, and in the matchless scene of the awakening we hear much that is new and belongs only to "Siegfried."
The first of the important new themes is that intoned by the young hero's horn. It is the theme of Siegfried, the buoyant, fearless, militant youth:
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SIEGFRIED, THE YOUTH.
Out of this theme and that of the Sword, the melodies and rhythms being combined perfectly, is made the brilliant motive of Siegfried, the hero who welds and wields the sword: