'THE VALKYRIE'
I
The _Rhinegold_ suffers from a plethora of undeveloped themes, some of
which are treated at length as the _Ring_ proceeds. Of all announced
only two remain unchanged, the Valhalla and the Fire themes. The
first, I have just remarked, is not susceptible of development, and is
only slightly varied throughout the _Ring_; the second does not demand
development, but is varied much as Beethoven varied his melodies in
his last pianoforte sonatas. The most important of those that are
metamorphosed is the Spear motive. The Spear is the symbol at once of
Wotan's sovereignty and of his bondage. On its shaft, the world
ash-tree stem, are graven the mystic laws by virtue of which he rules;
did he break these laws his power would be gone from him. The essence
of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and so we first hear its
representative theme when the Giants come to claim Freia as payment
for the building of the Burg: it makes its appearance quietly,
unobtrusively, almost apologetically, and might be, as I have said, a
fragment from Spohr or Weber. Its treatment in a simple snatch of
two-part canon, one part following the other at half-a-bar's distance,
seems like a mild gibe at those who only live for and by conventions.
When it reappears in the Second Act of the _Valkyrie_ it is
altogether a different thing: here we have Wotan the ruler determined
at all costs to rule and using to the full the power the Spear confers
on him. Like many of the greatest musical subjects, it is simple
beyond the daring of the minor composers, merely an unbroken scale
descending in heavy, emphatic steps to the lower octaves: it is
authority personified, will that brooks no opposition. This motive,
the Valhalla motive and the fire motive are the principal ones carried
into the _Valkyrie_ from the _Rhinegold_; and an immense amount of new
musical matter is introduced. We see no more of the inferior deities:
we hear the stroke of Donner's hammer in a storm _Lied_, and Loge
appears as consuming flame in the last act; but, excepting Wotan, only
Fricka is seen again in human shape. The stage is now occupied by
human beings, raised up, it is true, by Wotan himself, and by some
other mysterious beings, also raised up by Wotan, one of whom, _the_
Valkyrie, Brünnhilda, is condemned in the final scene to become human.
Two dramas, the huge encircling tragedy of Wotan in conflict with his
wife Fricka, the goddess of laws and covenants, especially the
covenant of marriage, and the subsidiary tragedy of Siegmund and
Sieglinda, are combined in perfect proportions in the _Valkyrie_. The
story at first sounds a little complicated; but the reader, bearing in
mind what has already been said of Wotan's Master-idea, can have no
difficulty whatever in following it. The Master-idea, we know, is to
raise up a hero who, acting freely, independent of and ever defying
the gods, will wrest the Ring from Fafner. Wotan, then, has descended
from his Valhalla, and, taking an earthly wife, begotten two children,
Siegmund and Sieglinda, who know themselves to be of the tribe of the
Volsungs. These he deserts. Sieglinda is taken captive and made the
loveless wife of Hunding; Siegmund, alone in the world, wanders hither
and thither, meeting ill-luck everywhere--ill-luck prepared by his
father. At last, in attempting to rescue a maiden from some raiders,
he is forced to fly. As he runs through the depths of an unknown
forest a storm breaks upon him, and he takes shelter, utterly
exhausted, in the house of Hunding. At this point the curtain rises.
The scene is the inside of Hunding's dwelling, built round a great
ash-tree; on the right the fire burns on the hearth. The steady roar
of the storm outside is heard, broken by shocks as the wind buffets
the trees and the house and by the plashing of the rain. The room is
empty; presently the door is roughly dashed open from outside and
Siegmund staggers in. "Whatever this house may be, I must rest here,"
he says, and throws himself on the hearth. (We must bear in mind that
the hearth was sacred: if my enemy took refuge on mine I might starve
him out, but so long as he stayed there I might not hurt him.)
Sieglinda enters; the two do not recognise one another; he calls for
water; she brings him mead. Presently they fall to talking; and it is
seen that the inevitable must happen. Hunding enters abruptly; they
sit down to supper; Siegmund discloses his identity, so far as he
knows it--all but his name; Hunding recognises the very man he has
been chasing, and gives him shelter for the night, but warns him that
in the morning he, without a weapon, must fight. He calls for his
night-draught, sends Sieglinda into the sleeping-room, and follows
her. She glances repeatedly from Siegmund to a spot on the ash-trunk;
but he does not take her meaning.
There follows a strange and beautiful scene. Siegmund lies down to
rest; the fire glimmers fitfully, then blazes up, revealing at the
point on the trunk at which Sieglinda had gazed a shining sword-hilt,
the blade embedded in the trunk. Still Siegmund does not understand,
and the fire dies down; he is beginning to slumber when Sieglinda
enters and calls him. He starts up; she has put a sleeping-powder in
Hunding's cup, and they are safe; and thus begins the greatest
love-duet, next to the _Tristan_, in the world. Sieglinda tells how
when she, full of grief, was wedded to Hunding, a grey old man, with
one eye, clad in a blue cloak, came in uninvited, drove the sword
Nothung into the ash-tree, and said that it should belong to the hero
strong enough to draw it out. From all parts warriors came, but none
could move it. Sieglinda feels that the appointed man has come;
Siegmund grasps the weapon and triumphantly pulls it out. Then they
reveal their names, and recognise one another as brother and sister,
and the Act ends.
This is the first step towards Wotan's discomfiture. The significance
of the Sword theme in the _Rhinegold_ at the moment when he has the
Master-idea will now be apparent. The sword was so endowed by Wotan
that only a fearless hero could use it; therefore, when Siegmund draws
it from the wood, Wotan, watching from Valhalla, knows he has
succeeded in raising up the hero he needed. Siegmund had been tested
by all manner of misfortune; no harder life could have been his; Wotan
had never aided him, but thrown disasters in his path; and had he
failed or succumbed Wotan's device would have failed. But freely,
independently, with no help from the god, he had come through all, and
now his own strength enabled him to take the sword to--to what?--to
work Wotan's will! That is, in creating Siegmund, even in testing him,
in preparing for him a weapon that none could stand against, Wotan,
far from successfully accomplishing his purpose, was accomplishing his
ruin. Disillusionment comes swiftly. The first deed of his hero is to
break two of the most sacred laws of heaven--laws binding on Wotan
until he gets the Ring--for he carries off another man's wife, who is,
moreover, his own sister. The punishment for that is matter for the
next Act. At the end of the first we have seen that Wotan's
Master-idea is a delusion. He might as well go and kill Fafner himself
and take the Ring as breed a hero to do it for him with the aid of a
magic sword. If he did so it would be by virtue of the power conferred
on him by the runes on the Spear; and by those runes--those
laws--Siegmund must be, and is, promptly judged and punished.
II
Before the rising of the curtain we have the first and one of the
greatest of the ear-pictures of the _Valkyrie_. There is no preamble;
at once the strings begin in repeated quavers to sustain (virtually) a
long D, while the basses start off with a figure many times
repeated--a figure which is simply a bold variant of the bass figure
in Schubert's _Erl-king_. So, for that matter, is the long D. Schubert
drew a fine picture of storm in black wood; but he was limited by the
form he wrote in and the instruments he wrote for. The energy,
superhuman energy, of the thing is amazing: the storm throbs in the
forest: one feels the pulse of the storm-god; the _sforzando_ shocks
and shrieks add to the terrific wildness of the scene. Pitilessly,
ever higher and higher, the wind shrieks, always to that beating bass,
until, amid the clatter and screaming, we hear Donner, exulting in his
mad strength and swinging his mighty hammer as he rides. The lightning
crackles vividly in the orchestra, the thunder rolls, crashes and
growls, and the thunder-god can almost be heard betaking himself off
to continue his riot afar. Then a labouring, panting and struggling
phrase--scarcely a theme--is heard as the storm slightly lulls; the
curtain rises and we see Hunding's dwelling, and Siegmund bursts in.
The music of the earlier portion of the first scene is not of the same
intrinsic quality, nor need it be. We have the setting before our
eyes, and the stupendous power of what has just been heard leaves in
our minds a vivid impression of what is going on out of doors.
Sieglinda comes in, surprised to find a stranger there at all,
especially on so wild a night; Siegmund asks for water; she brings it;
finding he is likely to fetch trouble on her head, he is for going.
But there is sympathy between them, and various Volsung motives and
phrases of the rarest beauty and expressiveness tell us why; and she
tells him to wait. "Hunding I will await here," says Siegmund. It is
in this scene that a passage occurs like one which I have referred to
in the chapter on the _Dutchman_--the phrase is marked (_f_) on p.
118. The _Dutchman_ phrase is longer and at the same time less
poignant; here it is brief and extraordinarily expressive; there it is
not developed, nor, after some repetitions, heard again; here it is
made the most of musically and appears so late as in the _Dusk of the
Gods_. But the situations are analogous. Senta gazes, rapt, on
Vanderdecken; Sieglinda and Siegmund look on one another and passion
begins to dawn. This is worth noting as showing that Wagner used the
leitmotiv spontaneously, so to speak, and not always as the result of
deliberate calculation. Like all the other composers, he had his
mannerisms: having invented a melody to find utterance for a feeling
or set of feelings, when similar feelings had to be expressed again it
was natural to him to use again the first melody, or something very
like it. No composer, not even Beethoven, was more resolutely bent on
writing _truthful_ music; and having once found the music to express
certain shades of feeling, he was like a writer who, having said
something as well as he can say it, prefers repeating himself to
trying to achieve a superficial appearance of variety. Wagner, I
think, repeated himself quite unconsciously very often: when the
repetition is conscious of course we have at once the genuine
leitmotiv; but it is the maddest of errors to see in every resemblance
between phrases the deliberate employment of the leitmotiv.
The pair have drunk mead together and stand looking at one another;
the storm has died away; and from the orchestra come passages of
wondrous delicacy, tenderness and freshness, scored by a perfect
master. Suddenly the clanking of a horse's hoofs is heard; "Hunding!"
exclaims Sieglinda; the door is again thrown open and the black,
ferocious barbarian stalks in. His theme is, figuratively, as black,
gloomy, sinister and forbidding as himself; and the heavy, sullen
tones of the battery of tubas which announces it intensify its
effectiveness a hundredfold. Hunding is no villain of the piece, but a
simple, surly chief of a tribe of savage fighters, and Wagner's music
exactly describes him. Save for Siegmund's recital of his woes, the
remainder of the scene remains sullen and gloomy; Siegmund, however,
has some touching passages, and notably a phrase of unearthly
strangeness when he tells how he came back to his hut and found his
father gone, only a wolf-skin lying there; and a bit of the Valhalla
motive in the orchestra thrills one with its suggestiveness. One is
carried into the dimmest recess of a forest where man has never been,
far back in a period so old that it is ridiculous to call it ancient.
Throughout the music is in Wagner's grandest manner; the vocal writing
is perfect; and though there are plenty of theatrical strokes, they
are done in a nobler way than the mere opera way of _Tannhäuser_ and
_Lohengrin_. In a word, the music is big: the breadth and sweep are
enormous: the greatest Wagner has arrived, the Wagner who has gone far
beyond the hesitations and littlenesses even of the _Rhinegold_.
Hunding is characterised more clearly and with more decisive strokes
than Hagen in the last opera of the _Ring_, partly because there is
more genuine inspiration in the _Valkyrie_, partly, perhaps, because
Hunding is a much simpler personage.
That strange scene where Siegmund lies on the hearth again, and,
realising his desperate situation, calls on his father the Volsung for
aid, is musically and dramatically splendid in its colour and force.
As he thinks of Sieglinda a feeling of spring again comes into the
music; thus is strengthened the beautiful music she is given; then
comes the avowal of love, and the flying open of the door. Outside,
the trees are seen in the moonlight, the dripping green leaves
glistening; and Siegmund sings a spring-song never to be beaten for
freshness (though, as I have pointed out, not equal in musical
significance to Walther's song in the _Mastersingers_); there comes
the magnificent scene of the plucking out of the Sword; the
recognition of the two as brother and sister; and the final
impassioned outburst which ends the scene as with a blaze of fire.
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.
V
Like the First Act, the Third begins with a storm of rain, wind,
thunder and lightning; like First and Second, it opens with a display
of energy before which all listeners are as leaves in the wind. As
panoramic displays translated into music all the three introductions
are likely enough to be misunderstood; so at the outset let us
carefully bear in mind Wagner's intention at the beginning of the last
Act of the _Valkyrie_--to show, with unequalled force and splendour,
the strength of the god, soon to be shown as nothing before the
strength of Brünnhilda. Brünnhilda, let us always remember, stands for
human love, affection--not love in the _Tristan_ sense--but that love
of which Goldsmith sang that He "loved us into being"; the love of
human being for human being so strong that not for so many thousands a
year as a judge, so many pitiable hundreds a year as a magistrate,
immortality as an omnipotent ruler or a Wotan, will it perpetuate or
permit a wrong on a human being. To win omnipotence Wotan has
inflicted wrong upon wrong--wrong upon wrong on those he had created
for his purpose, on those the fine part of his nature loved. The fine
part of his nature revolts and conquers him. He struggles on, shorn of
nine-tenths of his strength, and it is not until the Third Act of
_Siegfried_ that he sees himself beaten and acknowledges it; but the
ending of the gods, which really began with Wotan's first grasp at
universal power, is first in this last Act of the _Valkyrie_ clearly
foretold. Wotan comes on clothed in thunders and lightnings to punish
Brünnhilda because she fought on the side of the higher instead of the
lower part of his nature--his higher self is cast from him, only (he
thinks) to unite later with a force (a hero) independent of him to
gain him his sovereignty.
The tempest rages and roars; the Valkyries arrive "by ones, by twos,
by threes," at the Valkyries' Rock; and presently, in hotter haste
than the rest, Brünnhilda comes in, bringing Sieglinda. She tells her
(Brünnhilda's) sisters how she has defied Wotan, the All-father; they
are scandalised, and desert her; Sieglinda feebly begs her to take no
more trouble--there is nothing left to live for; Brünnhilda tells her
she carries within her the seed of the highest hero of all the world;
Sieglinda is filled with joy, revives, and flies to the cave in the
wood where Siegfried is destined to be born. Wotan comes on with his
thunders and lightnings and calls for Brünnhilda; at last she answers,
and he announces her punishment: she shall be deprived of her godhood
and left on the mountains to become the wife and slave of the first
man that passes. The other maidens wail in protest; in anger he bids
them begone; Brünnhilda, overcome with shame, sinks at his feet. The
storm slowly dies away; Brünnhilda rises and pleads her cause--"Is
this crime of mine so shameful?--in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I
simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost
heart." At first Wotan will scarcely hear her; gradually he relents.
But he cannot go back on his oath, on the sentence he has pronounced;
and in the end he yields her this much--that she shall lie guarded by
a wall of fire, only to be claimed by a hero who, not fearing his
spear, will pass through the fire. Then he bids her an everlasting
farewell; lays her to sleep in her armour, covered by her shield, her
weapon by her side; calls up the fire, and casting a last sad look on
her, his favourite child, goes slowly off as the curtain falls.
The drama here is of the most poignant kind; the scenic surroundings
are of the sort Wagner so greatly loved--tempest amidst black
pine-woods, with wild, flying clouds, the dying down of the storm,
the saffron evening light melting into shadowy night, the calm
deep-blue sky with the stars peeping out, then the bright flames
shooting up; and the two elements, the dramatic and the pictorial,
drew out of him some pages as splendid as any even he ever wrote. The
opening, "the Ride of the Valkyries," is a piece of storm-music
without a parallel. There is no need here for Donner with his hammer:
the All-father himself is abroad in wrath and majesty, and his
daughters laugh and rejoice in the riot. There is nothing uncanny in
the music: we have that delight in the sheer force of the elements
which we inherit from our earliest ancestors: the joy of nature
fiercely at work which is echoed in our hearts from time immemorial.
The shrilling of the wind, the hubbub, the calls of the Valkyries to
one another, the galloping of the horses, form a picture which for
splendour, wild energy and wilder beauty can never be matched.
Technically, this Ride is a miracle built up of many of the
conventional figurations of the older music. There is the continuous
shake, handed on from instrument to instrument, the slashing figure of
the upper strings, the kind of basso ostinato, conventionally
indicating the galloping of horses, and the chief melody, a mere
bugle-call, altered by a change of rhythm into a thing of superb
strength. The only part of the music that ever so remotely suggests
extravagance is the Valkyrie's call; and it, after all, is only a
jodel put to sublime uses. Out of these commonplace elements, elements
that one might almost call prosaic, Wagner wrought his picture of
storm, with its terror, power, joyous laughter of the storm's
daughters--storm as it must have seemed to the first poets of our
race. The counterpoint is not so obviously wonderful as in _Tristan_
and the _Mastersingers_, but only a contrapuntist equal to Bach and
Handel could have written such counterpoint. We may gain a clearer
idea of what this means if we compare, not to the disadvantage of one
or the other, this Ride with Berlioz's "Ride to the Abyss." At first
sight, Berlioz seems the more daring. He trusts to a persistent rhythm
and to orchestral effects. There is no inner structure--the separate
parts, or batteries of parts, have no individuality: nothing of the
sort is attempted or indeed wanted. The horses gallop on like mad
things: their pace cannot be checked; themes, properly speaking, there
are none--we hear the screeches of fearsome wild-fowl, the excitement
and the noise increase, until at last the catastrophe is reached, and
the final climax is the terrible gibberish-chant of all the devils in
hell. Regarded as sheer music, the thing gets as far by the twentieth
bar as ever it gets. The piece is as near to pure colour in music as
can be attained. Why, Wagner with his counterpoint seems old-fashioned
and formal by comparison! The four constituents, the wild laughter of
the shakes of the wood-wind, the slashing figure of the strings, the
galloping figure of the bass, the Ride theme--had these been used by
any one save Wagner the result would have been unendurably wooden. But
Wagner had unlimited harmonic resources at his disposal; and he had
the determination and the gift to achieve perfect truth in his
delineation of a storm. Delineation, I say, for here we have drawing
as well as colour. Of colour there is plenty: notice, for example, the
use of the brass against the descending chromatics; but the colour is
mainly harmonic. In a sense Wagner was not an innovator: so long as
the methods of his mighty predecessors served him he sought no
others--effects, whether of orchestration or of melody, were to him
simply means: never for a second was he beguiled into regarding them
as ends; and every musician knows that plenty of them came at his
call, more readily and spontaneously than in the case of any of the
later musicians.
It is worth looking at the plan of this Ride--which is, be it
remembered, only the prelude to the gigantic drama which is to follow.
After the ritornello the main theme is announced, with a long break
between the first and second strains; and again a break before it is
continued. Then it sounds out in all its glory, terse, closely gripped
section to section, until the Valkyries' call is heard; purely
pictorial passages follow; the theme is played with, even as Mozart
and Beethoven played with their themes, and at the last the whole
force of the orchestra is employed, and his object is attained--he has
given us a picture of storm such as was never done before, and he has
done what was necessary for the subsequent drama--made us feel the
tremendous might of the god of storms. A few of my readers may know
Handel's "Horse and his Rider" chorus--how he piles mass on mass of
tone until in the end we seem to see a whole irresistible sea rushing
over Pharaoh and his host. Wagner does a thing perfectly analogous;
but as I have remarked with regard to Weber and Mendelssohn and their
picturesque music, where Handel, having painted his tremendous
picture, had achieved his end and was satisfied and left off, is just
the point where Wagner begins what to him is much the more important
thing, the drama. The omnipotent master of Valhalla comes on apace:
the storm is a mere indication of what is coming.
A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this.
Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and
it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has
done. Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and
station at great length. This may be a vestige of the older
stage-craft: certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas
that followed the _Valkyrie_. It is not for even the minor personages
of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience
into their confidence. But, as I say, words were indispensable, and
Wagner found the best he could--I suppose. The defect is a tiny one;
none the less it is a defect.
With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced. The
godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme
sounds out--if, indeed, we may call it a theme--and then we get a lull
after all the hurly-burly. Brünnhilda and Sieglinda come in;
Brünnhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl
disturbed the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and
horror. The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the
opera--Brünnhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one
after another refusing in very conventional phrases. The scene is
indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate: music
has no tones to express primness. With the voice of Sieglinda the
music at once begins to live in Wagner's own curious fashion. She has
nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to
be left alone to die. Wagner well knew when the drama could make its
effect almost unaided--when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic
music in the older style would be to overdo things. Sieglinda's
phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to
be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung. Bathos is avoided:
the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched. In fact the
technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous
act. But with Brünnhilda's announcement to Sieglinda we get the great
lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the
last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_, and we get the mightiest of the
Siegfried themes. With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes
the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame;
then comes his denunciation of Brünnhilda, another specimen of the
lyrical Wagner. Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down
of the storm. We can _see_ the setting sun and the departing
storm-clouds in the music, and with these we are made to feel the
abating wrath of the god. And then comes the noblest piece of
recitative in all music. The words in which Brünnhilda appeals to her
father have already been (roughly) quoted: to give an idea of the
musical phrases would require too many pages of this book. The Sleep
theme enters as Wotan sees a way to the great compromise--the
compromise foredoomed to bring him to ruin. He will put Brünnhilda to
sleep to await the hero; but he will hedge her in with fire so that
the hero shall be a true one. With the indescribable finesse,
subtlety, of his own particular art, Wagner lets us feel how
Brünnhilda, in begging to be protected in this (rather unusual) way,
is reading only her own father's thought: he seems for a long time to
contend, but at last yields. The music steadily increases in force and
passion, and at each stage where one would think the composer could
strike no harder he immediately does it. More and more of the divine
fury pours into the music, until the climax is reached in the bars
preceding the Farewell.
In the meantime we have had the wonderful Eternal Love theme--not
sexual love, but the mystic force that created the worlds and holds
them in their courses: in all Wagner there is no nobler and sweeter
passage than that in which Brünnhilda first sings it. The vivid
musical description of the crackling flames which are to surround her
is another of an unequalled series of marvels. The Farewell I have
already compared with that at the end of _Lohengrin_: the voice part
is at times in Wagner's own style of song-recitative, but a great deal
of it is sheer simple melody. No master has excelled, or perhaps
matched, Wagner in the art of expressing the most profound and
poignant pathos without ever a suspicion of letting it lapse into
bathos; and this he does by--what at first it may seem ridiculous to
say of so opulent and luxurious a genius as Wagner's--by his
instinctive artistic austerity. The word is not too strong to be
applied to the resolute simplicity which enabled him to write such
melodies as those of which I am now speaking and the Farewell in
_Lohengrin_: the temptation to let himself go, to wallow in sadness
and to wring our bowels must have been almost too tremendous to be
resisted by the man who within a year or so planned _Tristan_. In art,
harrowing our feelings never pays, and his self-repression has its
exceeding great reward: we could not feel more with Wotan's desolating
grief--one stroke more and we should rebel: we should know that our
most sacred feelings were being exploited--that an endeavour was being
made to gain our applause for a work of art by an illegitimate appeal
at one particular moment to those feelings. I have dwelt a little on
this because we all know _Tristan_ and its author, and though there is
little self-repression in that work--where it is not required--and
physically there was little but self-indulgence in its author's
nature, it is well to realise that the artist rose immeasurably
superior to the man. It must have come to us all at one time or
another with something of a shock to find that the voluptuous Wagner
of _Tannhäuser_ could be as austere as Milton. Austerity is not
barrenness--not the barrenness that would result from imitating the
austerity of the old church composers with their hundred rules and
regulations: the harmony is as free as could be wished; at the needful
moment the melodies pass without hesitation from key to key; but when
we have long known them and learnt to understand them we find them at
heart to be idealised folk-tunes--simple and indescribably pathetic,
as the situation demands.
An instance of Wagner's subtle feeling is the passage where Wotan
"kisses away" Brünnhilda's godhood and lays her to sleep, as one with
the rocks and stones of mother earth, Erda, whose music accompanies
the act. Wotan, like Alberich, has renounced love; so just previously
we have heard the corresponding passage from the _Rhinegold_. We have
the lulling Sleep theme, and then comes the Fire-music, a thing
unmatched--and, so far as I know, never attempted--in all music. The
mighty Spear strikes the ground to the mighty Spear theme; the earth
seems to shiver as the fire comes up; then the flames mount, yellow
against the deep blue sky; the Loge music sparkles in the orchestra,
the strings sustain a continuous whizz and roar, and over it all, and
at times in it or under it, swings that lulling Sleep theme. If it is
not too futile a word to use, the Siegfried "heroic" theme, as Wotan
uses it in commanding the fire (Loge) that only the noblest hero ever
born shall pass to Brünnhilda, is the most pompous form in which it
appears throughout the _Ring_; but the situation warrants it, demands
it. Amidst the roar of the fire and with the divine lulling phrase,
fragments of the Farewell are heard; and twice, as Wotan looks back on
his daughter, we hear the Fate theme--the Scandinavian sense that this
tragedy _mysteriously had to be_: the mighty god and lord of the
universe himself knows and feels that the things preordained must
happen. He goes slowly off; the central tragedy is virtually
accomplished; to the end the fire blazes and sparkles, and the curtain
descends on a soft chord. The revolving seasons will pass; strange
events will happen in the outer world of men; Brünnhilda will sleep
there, the guarding fire seen from afar by awe-stricken warrior
tribes.
The spring freshness of the music, its vivid pictorial quality, the
intense human feeling expressed, its profound sense of the past and
the mystery of things, the godlike power, place it hardly second, if
indeed second, to _Tristan_. There are love-duets in music which may
be compared with those in _Tristan_: there is nothing with which the
music of the _Valkyrie_ may be compared. The grandeur of Handel's
picture-painting in _Israel in Egypt_ is a different quality
altogether. Handel is unapproachable; but he worked with a different
aim, in a different way, and in a different material. Wagner's music
is beautiful and sublime, and he blent the human element with the
others in a fashion no other musician has attempted.