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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2011
As is well known, Wagner began creating the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen by writing a three-act dramatic poem entitled Siegfrieds Tod, the story of a mythical hero, Siegfried, and his downfall. But Siegfrieds Tod was burdened by extended moments of static, explanatory narrative, and Wagner's dramaturgical instincts ultimately led him to write three works that would precede the tragedy of Siegfried's fall. Der junge Siegfried, ultimately retitled Siegfried, presents the rise of the hero, Die Walküre the hero's origins, and Das Rheingold serves as a one-act prologue to the Ring-trilogy. The character of Siegfried was, thus, the generative impulse behind Wagner's cycle and is central to its dramaturgy. The opera Siegfried focuses upon the upbringing and, more importantly, the coming of age of this pivotal character.
1 Though Wagner's first prose-draft for Siegfrieds Tod was written in 1848, he read a great deal of mythology and legends whose elements would later become part of the Ring story beginning in 1842. His first attempt to consolidate his readings into drama appears in The Nibelung-Myth as a Plan for Drama, finished 4 October 848. With this general plan in place, he then wrote a prose-draft and libretto for Siegfrieds Tod later that year, revising the libretto several times later in 1848 and in 1852. The Nibelung scenario, labelled ‘Text Ia’ for Götterdämmerung in Deathridge, John, Geck, Martin and Voss, Egon, Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen (Mainz: Schott, 1986)Google Scholar , hereafter ‘WWV’, is transcribed in Strobel, Otto, Skizzen und Entwürfe zur Ring-Dichtung (Munich: Bruckmann, 1930): 26–33Google Scholar . Wagner's first prose-draft for Siegfrieds Tod, labelled ‘Text IIa’ in WWV, is transcribed in Strobel, Skizzen, 38–55, along with Wagner's outline for the previously missing Prologue, ‘Text IIb’ (the Norns’ scene), 56ff.
2 Wagner wrote the prose-sketch for Der junge Siegfried in May of 85. This prosesketch, labelled ‘Text I’ in WWV 86c, is transcribed in Strobel, Skizzen, 66–68. The more detailed prose-draft, ‘Text II’, was written immediately afterwards, between 24 May and June of 85. It appears in Strobel, Skizzen, 69ff.
3 After completing two complete drafts for Act II in August of 857, Wagner broke off composition of the Ring until 864, when he wrote the full score for Act II. He only began composition of new Ring material, however, in March of 869, when he began sketching Act III of Siegfried.
4 See, for example, McClatchie, Stephen, Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and the German Nationalist Ideology (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998)Google Scholar .
5 See, for example, Bailey, Robert, ‘The Structure of the Ring and its Evolution’, 19th- Century Music 1/1 (1977): 48–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
6 Newcomb, Anthony, ‘Ritornello Ritornato: A Variety of Wagnerian Refrain Form’, in Abbate, Carolyn and Parker, Roger, eds, Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989): 202–2Google Scholar , and ‘The Birth of Music out of the Spirit of Music Drama: An Essay in Wagnerian Formal Analysis’, 19th-Century Music 5/1 (1981): 38–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
7 Brinkmann, Rheinhold, ‘“Drei der fragen stell’ ich mir frei”: Zur Wanderer-Szene im 1. Akt von Wagner's Siegfried', Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (1972): 120–62Google Scholar .
8 McCreless, Patrick, Wagner's Siegfried: Its Drama, History and Music (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982)Google Scholar .
9 Kietz was a German painter who did many portraits of Wagner in his early years.
10 ‘Ich habe zuletzt einen “jungen Siegfried” gedichtet …: er soll dem “Siegfried's tod” vorausgehen, und ist heitrer art.’ Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Briefe, ed. Strobel, Gertrud and Wolf, Werner (Leipzig: WEB deutscher Verlag für Müsik, 1979): 69–70Google Scholar . Translation mine and from Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Spencer, S. and Millington, B. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987): 226Google Scholar . My emphasis.
11 ‘[Der] “junge Siegfried” hat den ungeheuren Vortheil, daβ er den wichtigen Mythos dem publikum im spiel, wie einem kinde ein märchen, beibringt. Alles prägt sich durch scharfe sinnliche Eindrücke plastich ein, alles wird verstanden, – und kommt dann der ernste “Siegfried's tod”, so weiβ das publikum Alles, was dort vorausgesetzt oder eben nur angedeutet werden muβte.’ Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 4, 43fGoogle Scholar . Translation from Selected Letters, 223. My emphasis.
12 According to McCreless, Wagner's Siegfried, 39–40, there are several versions of this fairy-tale: Grimm's version can be found in Grimm, Jakob, German Folk Tales, trans. Magoun, Francis P. and Krappe, Alexander (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960): 12–20Google Scholar . Wagner merged this story with elements from the other sources to provide the comic, fairy-tale atmosphere of Der junge Siegfried.
13 Wagner refers to this fairy-tale inspiration in a letter of 24 August 85 (after the completion and revision of the poem) to August Röckel: ‘Siegfried ist nun ungefähr derselbe junge Bursche, der im Märchen vorkommt, und auszieht, “um das Fürchten zu lernen.”’ (Siegfried is more or less the same young lad as the one who is to be found in the fairy-tale, and who leaves home ‘to learn fear’.) Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, 94–5Google Scholar . Translation from Selected Letters, 227–8.
14 McCreless, Wagner's Siegfried; Lorenz, Alfred, Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner, vol. 1: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Berlin: Max Hesses Verlag, 1924)Google Scholar ; Coren, Daniel, ‘A Study of Wagner's Siegfried’, PhD dissertation (University of California at Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar ; Newcomb, ‘Ritornello Ritornato’.
15 McCreless, , Wagner's Siegfried, 186Google Scholar .
16 Newcomb, , ‘Ritornello Ritornato’, 204Google Scholar .
17 In the prose-draft for Der junge Siegfried, Wagner affixed the designation ‘Waldweben’ in the spot where the Forest Murmurs music would later appear, namely Siegfried's first moment alone in the forest after driving Mime away.
18 In Mein Leben, Wagner recalls: ‘Ich griff wieder zum Siegfried, und began die Komposition des zweiten Aktes davon. Während ich nun unschlüssig darüber gewesen war, wie ich mein neu gewonnenes Asyl benennen wollte, musste ich, da die Einleitung dieses Aktes bei guter Laune mir sehr wohl gerieth, laut lachen, als mir einfiel, ich müsste, eben dieser ersten Arbeit entsprechend, mein neues Heimweisen “Fafners Ruhe” nennen.’ (I went back to Siegfried and began the composition of the second act. While I had been previously in doubt as to the name I would give my new refuge [‘Asyl’], I had to laugh when it occurred to me, when the beginning of this act came off quite nicely, that it should be called ‘Fafner's Repose’.) Wagner, Richard, Mein Leben, 2 vols (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1911), II: 649Google Scholar . Translation from Wagner, Richard, My Life, trans. Gray, Andrew, ed. Whittall, Mary (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992): 548Google Scholar .
19 Two earlier Wagnerian introductions similarly establish a glum, foreboding atmosphere before the curtain rises: the introduction to Act III of Tannhäuser, an orchestral depiction of Tannhäuser's pilgrimage to Rome, and the introduction to Act II of Lohengrin, depicting the cogitation of the defeated Ortrud and Friedrich. The connection between the Siegfried Act II introduction and these two earlier introductions is discussed further in Hunt, Graham, ‘“Ever New Formal Structures”: The Evolution of the Dialogue-Scene in Wagner's “Lohengrin”’, PhD dissertation (Duke University, 2001)Google Scholar .
20 This motif is first heard in the brass and timpani when Fafner and Fasolt first enterin Scene 2 of Das Rheingold.
21 This motif is first heard in the tuba when Alberich turns himself into a dragon in Scene 3 of Das Rheingold.
22 Many refrain-based forms from the Baroque and Classical periods featured abbreviated or partial returns of the refrain, in their recurrences throughout the piece. For example, in a Haydn symphonic finale in rondo form, the intial A section would be in miniature ternary form (aba'), and later returns of the A section might contain only the a section, and omit the ba' continuation. The return of only the Dragon or Giants component of Refrain later in Act II in the present analytical model is analogous to this partial return of A in earlier refrain-based forms.
23 Curt von Westernhagen discusses the Siegfrieds Tod composition sketch from 1850 in ‘Die Kompositions-Skizze zu Siegfrieds Tod aus dem Jahre 1850’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (NZ) 25/5 (1963): 178–82Google Scholar . Detailed discussion of the 1851 Fafner sketches can be found in both Bailey, Robert, ‘The Method of Composition’, in The Wagner Companion (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979): 269–338Google Scholar , and Westernhagen, Curt von, The Forging of the Ring, trans. Arnold, and Whittall, Mary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976): 149–50Google Scholar .
24 In Das Rheingold, the syncopated chords that precede Alberich's curse begin with a C' diminished triad, whereas the chords that follow the curse begin with a B' diminished triad. The version of this motif that appears throughout Act II of Siegfried as my Refrain 1d is usually the latter of these two versions, although it, too, is occasionally transposed. McCreless separates these two refrains as ‘Rc’ (Curse) and ‘Ra’ (Alberich), respectively. I treat them both as part of the general ‘Curse’ refrain, which, along with Fafner's music, constitutes the flexible Refrain.
25 Although Alfred Lorenz, per his usual custom, treats the Prelude and the section that follows as two independent formal units ( Lorenz, , Geheimnis, 178 and 33Google Scholar ), the analysis here treats the two sections as one intermediate-sized Newcombian unit (Newcomb designates three ‘sizes’ for Wagnerian formal units: small (up to 150 bars), intermediate (between 150 and 600 bars) and large (greater than 600 bars). McCreless, while noting that Alberich's solo scene is independent from the Vorspiel from a poetic-musical period perspective, allows that the return of much of the Vorspiel's thematic material in Alberich's scene suggests that both sections are a ‘single musical unit unified by [Fafner's] refrain’ ( McCreless, , Wagner's Siegfried, 161Google Scholar ). Alfred Lorenz analyses the Prelude as a bar-form (Stollen I – Stollen II – Abgesang, or AAB); the present study shares McCreless’ view of the Prelude as a rondo-like structure, with Fafner's material as a refrain or A section framing internal motivic episodes. Lorenz analyses Alberich's scenes as a Bogen (arch) and McCreless divides the scene into three sections, each containing a different refrain.
26 Further integration of the Prelude and Scene results from Wagner's ‘re-composition’ of the Prelude's musical material in Scene; he had done this with the Prelude and first scene of Die Walküre's Act III and Siegfried's Act I, and also later in Act III of Tristan und Isolde.
27 See Coren, Daniel, ‘Inspiration and Calculation in the Genesis of Wagner's Siegfried’, in Hill, John Walter, ed., Studies in Musicology in Honor of Otto E. Albrecht (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1980): 266–87,Google Scholar and Bailey, Robert, ‘Wagner's Musical Sketches for Siegfrieds Tod’, in Powers, Harold, ed., Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968): 459–94Google Scholar .
28 Bailey, , ‘Wagner's Musical Sketches’, 477Google Scholar .
29 Wagner wrote the libretto in June 85 and began the Preliminary Draft of Act I of Siegfried in December 856.
30 Date from Burk, John N., ed. and trans., Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection (New York: Macmillan, 1950): 620Google Scholar . Barry Millington and Stuart Spencer (see n. 0), 228, give a slightly different date of 3 September.
31 ‘Für Liszt habe ich die Abschrift von meinem neuen, “komischen Operntext” nun ebenfalls besorgt … Ich gehe nun an die Musik … den Anfang hab' ich schon im Kopfe; auch einige plastiche Motive, wie den Fafner. Ich freue mich darauf nun ganz dabei zu bleiben.’ Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 4, 98–99. Translation from Selected Letters, 228–9, and Bailey, ‘Method of Composition’, 287. (Note: in a recent conversation with the author, Dr Bailey revised his translation of the adjective ‘plastiche’ from his original ‘plastic’ to ‘malleable’, the latter of which is included above.) My emphasis.
32 If these ‘Fafner’ sketches did indeed date from the summer of 85 (during or after the time he was writing the junge Siegfried prose-draft), then Wagner had already established Fafner as a former giant transformed into a dragon when he wrote them. In his original Nibelungsage, however, this connection was missing – when the giants obtained the hoard and the ring from the Gods in the portion of the saga that would become Das Rheingold, the ‘giants leave the hoard and the ring in charge of a huge dragon on the Gnitaheide’, Strobel, Skizzen, 26Google Scholar . My translation. The ‘Gnitaheide’, literally ‘plain of envy’, was the desolate plain where Sigurd, accompanied by Regin (later Mime), travelled to kill Fafnir in one of the sources Wagner used for the Ring material, the Scandinavian Volsunga Saga. Thus, at some point between writing the Nibelungsage in October 848 and the prose-draft for Der junge Siegfried in May and June of 85, Wagner established this connection between the dragon and the former giant. It is interesting to note that in the prose-sketch for Der junge Siegfried (which was written in May before Wagner wrote the prose-draft, and contains three paragraphs providing broad outlines for each act), Siegfried merely kills ‘Fafner’, so it is unclear whether Wagner had actually made the connection at this point, since there is no detail about Fafner's death-speech, in which he reveals to Siegfried his history as a former giant and his murder of Fasolt. However, given that Wagner proceeded more or less directly from writing this prose-sketch to the prose-draft, the idea was probably already in place.
33 Of course, his first integration of the Dragon (‘Fafner’) motif into the Ring cycle occurred during the Preliminary Draft of Das Rheingold (WWV 86A Musik II), written in November and December of 854, when he inserted the motif (there labelled ‘Schlange’) during Alberich's demonstration of the Tarnhelm's transformational power during Scene 3 on page 25 verso. The label, as well as a transcription of this portion of the Preliminary Draft, appears in Darcy, Warren, Wagner's Das Rheingold (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993): 234Google Scholar .
34 In this paper, I use the nomenclature coined by Robert Bailey (The Wagner Companion). The Preliminary Draft, ‘Musik II/Kompositionszizze’ in WWV, consists of a vocal staff and either one or two orchestral staves, at times including orchestral details on the vocal staff (he used three staves for the orchestral part in the Preliminary Draft for Act III, which he did not begin until 869). The Developed Draft (a stage of composition Wagner had not used in Die Walküre, instead proceeding directly from the Preliminary Draft to the Full Score), ‘Musik III/Orchesterskizze’ in WWV, consists of one staff exclusively for the vocal part(s) and two staves for the orchestral part, with more musical details included in the orchestral staves. It should be noted that in Siegfried, for the first time, Wagner completed all three stages – Preliminary Draft, Developed Draft and Full Score – for each act before moving on to the next act. In other words, before beginning his work on Act II in May 1857, Wagner had already completed the Preliminary Draft, Developed Draft and Full Score for Act I. Bailey posits that the main reason for this was the trouble Wagner encountered when composing Die Walküre when he would set the work aside for periods of time and forget details he had only hastily outlined before (in one case even referring to his previously sketched materials as ‘hieroglyphics’); these setbacks caused the composition of Walküre to last much longer than perhaps it should have in Wagner's mind.
35 Evidence of this preoccupation with Tristan can be found in Wagner's letters from as early as December of 1856. In addition, Wagner wrote several individual sketches for Tristan throughout early 1857, and entered the inscription ‘Tristan bereits beschlossen’ (Tristan already decided upon) at the top of the first page of the Developed Draft of Act II.
36 Even then he simply wrote the full score for Act II, which had already been drafted in its entirety in the Preliminary and Developed Drafts; as noted earlier, he did not begin work on new Ring material until beginning the Preliminary Draft of Act III of Siegfried in March of 1869.
37 Wagner himself wrote the date in large letters in the middle of the staff after writing a double bar at the end of present-day bar 72 and a single ‘D’ after the bar. A reproduction of the Preliminary Draft appears in Strobel, Otto, ‘Aus Wagners Musikerwerkstatt. Bretrachten über die Kompositionsskizzen zum “Ring des Nibelungen”’, Allgemeine Musikzeitung, 58 (1931): 496Google Scholar .
38 A facsimile of page 64 of the Developed Draft, with the breaking-off point at the very bottom of the sheet, appears in Zeitschrift für Musik, 98 (1931)Google Scholar , Notenbeilage #7 [‘Orchesterskizze aus ‘Siegfried’ (2. Akt)].
39 The date of July is taken from the top left of page 65 of the Developed Draft; I am indebted to Dr Sven Friedrich and Herr Günter Fischer at the Bayreuth Nationalarchiv for providing me with copies of this and other pages from the various Siegfried drafts and sketches. However, there is a possibility that he resumed composition even earlier; the letter to Liszt from July 9 mentions an unspecified ‘work’ that he is unsettled about (Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 8, 363), and a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck on the same day mentions that ‘Fafner lebt’, a comment he might not make if his mentality was still that of an indefinite break from the Ring. Even if he had not actually resumed composition by 9 July, it seems that he had at least begun thinking about it again.
40 ‘Ich habe meinen jungen Siegfried noch in die schöne Waldsamkeit geleitet; dort hab’ ich ihn unter der Linde gelassen und mit herzlichen Thränen von ihm Abschied genommen: – er ist dort besser dran, als anders wo. – Soll ich das Werk wieder einmal aufnehmen, so müβte mir dieβ … sehr leicht gemacht werden … Ob mir dann meine Nibelungen wieder ankommen, kann ich allerdings nicht voraus sehen: … ich habe mitten in der besten Stimmung den Siegfried mir vom Herzen gerissen und wie einen lebendig Begrabenen unter Schloβ und Riegel gelegt. Dort will ich ihn halten, und keiner soll etwas davon sehen zu bekommen, da ich ihn mir selbst verschlieβen muβ. Nun, vielleicht bekommt ihm der Schlaf gut; für sein Erwachen bestimme ich aber nichts … Es hat mich einen harten, bösen Kampf gekostet, ehe ich so weit kam! – Nun lassen wir auch das abgemacht sein!’ Kloss, Erich, ed., Briefwechsel zwischen Wagner und Liszt, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1910), II: 171 and 173Google Scholar . Translation from Selected Letters, 370 and 372.
41 ‘ich im Begriff stehe – mit grosser Ueberwindung – den Siegfried auf ein Jahr im Walde allein zu lassen.’ Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 8, 360. Translation from Westernhagen, , Forging of the Ring, 152Google Scholar .
42 ‘ein sehnsüchtiger Jammer’, from Wagner's letter to Mathilde Wesendonck, which appears in Sternfeld, Richard, ‘Richard Wagner in seinem Briefen an “Das Kind”’, Die Musik, xix/I (1926–1927): 5Google Scholar .
43 Wagner, , Mein Leben, II, 649Google Scholar .
44 A hint of the Forest Murmurs music appears slightly before Mime leaves, in bars 662–668 and 675–679.
45 This figure was slightly different in the Preliminary Draft: after the first bar, the violas and cellos moved in oscillating parallel thirds, rather than the existing alternation between third and sixth resulting from the cellos dropping down a third on the offbeats. In what is now bar 716, Wagner appears to have decided upon the third–sixth alternation, crossing out the parallel thirds and writing in the new figure. Wagner converted bars 714 and 715 from parallel thirds to alternating thirds and sixths not in the Preliminary Draft, but in the Developed Draft, where he had already proceeded with the parallel-third patterns. Thus, Wagner had made the decision to change these figures only when writing out this section in the Developed Draft. These modifications suggest that Wagner was somewhat uncertain about how to proceed with the Forest Murmurs refrain, having corrected its first few bars and then broken off composition in the middle of it.
46 These sketches, labelled ‘Waldvogel’, appeared on the same sheet as several Fafner sketches, which were probably written in the summer of 1851. They are transcribed and discussed in Bailey, , ‘Method’, 291Google Scholar .
47 Lorenz and McCreless both agree on a rondo or refrain-based structure in this scene. However, Daniel Coren's analysis, although presenting the scene as more of a Bar-form, perceptively points out the connection between the scene's formal structure and Siegfried's dramatic psychology. Siegfried undergoes several ‘cycles’ of alternating between thoughtfulness and agitation; each of the recurring pensive states moves Siegfried to a new physical position (indicated by the stage directions, such as ‘he leans back in thought’) representing a deeper state of relaxation and meditation. These emotional ‘cycles’ work in tandem with the refrain-based form (Table 6): each recurrence of the refrain, containing the Forest Murmurs music and predominantly E-major harmony, accompanies Siegfried's moments of thought and relaxation, whereas the contrasting episodes, containing unstable arioso texture and shifting harmonies, interrupt these moments of thought, and convey Siegfried's distracted, occasionally frustrated, states of mind. The exception is the second episode, Siegfried's moment of deepest introspection, rather than agitation, in which he ponders his mother's mortality. This section provides contrast through the lack of the refrain music and the first use of C major in the scene; thus, this second episode stands apart not only from the refrain sections, but also from Episodes and 3 (more agitated and generally motivically barren), implying a general outline of A–B–A–C–A–B–A for the first 59 bars of the scene.
48 The rather conventional cadence that concludes this extension of the Fafner music was in place in Wagner's sketches from 1851, when Wagner's harmonic idiom was perhaps less keenly shifted towards dissonance and cadential avoidance than in 1857.
49 McCreless, , Wagner's Siegfried, 169Google Scholar .
50 These rising diminished fourths in the tubas occasionally appeared in conjunction with the timpani tritones in the Prelude and Scene, for examples in bars 96–10 and bars 150–153.
51 Originally, Fafner's death-speech was different in the prose-draft (Text II) and first draft of the libretto (Text III). Significantly, it is one of the few portions of these drafts of Der junge Siegfried's text not involving the Wanderer that Wagner modified extensively. He mostly cut lines pertaining to the history of the giants, as well as a statement that ‘the price of envy I now pay’ (‘des neides lohn fand ich jetzt’), which then leads to the statement that remained in the extant version counselling Siegfried to beware of the person who led him on this mission. In the final version this reference to his own envy causing his downfall is omitted. Also, since Fafner's brother Fasolt was not specifically part of Wagner's Ring conception at all at the time of these early versions of the text (late spring 1851), Fafner only refers to murdering the ‘last brother’ (‘der letzten bruder’) and then guarding the hoard in the form of a dragon. As mentioned previously, Wagner's original Nibelungsage had the Giants giving the hoard to an actual dragon to guard; sometime between 1848 and 1851, Wagner decided upon Fafner transforming himself into the dragon, thus providing a more personal angle to this death-speech, the downfall of the last member of his once-proud race.
52 The idea of speech in the Forest Murmurs music originates in Refrain 2c (first seen in bars 833–856), which contains the woodwind imitations of actual birdsongs, and introduces several wordless ‘voices’ of the forest. Bernard Hoffman, in his 1906 ‘scientificomusical study’ of the Waldweben appearing in Siegfried's solo scene, ‘Die Waldvögel-Motive in Wagners “Siegfried”: Eine Naturwissenschaftlich-Musikalische Studie’, Bayreuther Blätter, 28 (1906): 137–58Google Scholar , matches the various birdsongs in bars 833–856 to the actual inflections and rhythm patterns of various birds. Further discussion of the Forest Bird, including a detailed survey of its genesis throughout the evolution of the Ring, can be found in Hunt, Graham, ‘Wagner's Forest-Bird(s): The Genesis of the Maternal Spirit in Act II of Wagner's Siegfried’, Wagner, 25/1 (April 2004): 19–47Google Scholar .
53 Westernhagen, , Forging of the Ring, 59Google Scholar .
54 ‘the [Preliminary Draft] has ten bars of Forest Murmurs with two birdcalls, blackbird and oriole: idyllic allusions which the score dispenses with.’ Ibid., 59.
55 Hoffman, ‘Die Waldvögel-Motive’, identifies the birdcalls depicted in the high winds during a portion of Siegfried's solo scene (bars 833–856): the yellow-hammer, yellow oriole, nightingale, tree-pipit, and blackbird, respectively. Wagner retains only the blackbird melody (the falling then rising thirds), and that of the nightingale (the arpeggiated rising E-major triad followed by the long F#), in Refrain 2d, when the Forest Bird's voice is added and now vocalizes the previously instrumental imitations of these two birds’ songs.
56 Ellis, William Ashton, The Life of Richard Wagner (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1908), vol. 6: 244Google Scholar .
57 ‘Meine täglichen Spaziergänge richtete ich an den heiteren Sommernachmittagen nach dem stillen Sihltahl, in dessen waldiger Umgebung ich viel und aufmerksam nach dem Gesange der Waldvögel lauschte, wobei ich erstaunt war, die mir gänzlich neuen Weisen von Sängern kennen zu lernen, deren Gestalt ich nicht sah, und deren Namen ich noch weniger wusste. Was ich von ihren Weisen mit nach Hause brachte, legte ich in der Waldscene Siegfried in künstlicher Nachahmung nieder.’ Mein Leben, 653–4. Translation from My Life II, 551.
58 For example, his sudden excitement at reading the Lohengrin myth while at the Marienbad spa in summer 1845, which prompted him to run half-naked from his bath to his cottage in order to get his ideas on paper.
59 Recall that the break occurred before the birdsongs entered the Forest Murmurs music, and that Wagner seemed uncertain of the exact form Refrain 2a should take (making corrections to the cello lines).
60 Bekker, Paul (Paul Bekker, Richard Wagner, His Life in His Work, trans. Bozman, M.M. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971): 280)Google Scholar notes that Siegfried is the story of ‘dramatically developing rhythm’ and the ‘growth of the power of rhythm’. The ‘power of rhythm’ that Bekker refers to permeates the opera on several levels, from the rhythmic alternation of episode and refrain seen in Table, to repeated rhythmic gestures uniting the entire opera. At one level, there are similarly repeated rhythmic and motivic gestures at the beginning of each act, giving the entire opera a sense of regularity; the prelude to each of Siegfried's acts employs a consistently repeated rhythmic pattern. The first rhythmic gesture heard in the opera, following the rhythmically barren opening measures (bars 1–50), is the repetitive dotted rhythm associated with the Nibelungs (in this case, Mime, busy attempting to reforge Nothung for Siegfried). The second act opens with the rhythmic figure that had previously been associated with the Giants, but which has now taken on the somnolent, sinister connotation of the sleeping dragon, Fafner. Finally, the tempestuous Prelude to Act III begins with two repeated rhythms, the Valkyrie's rhythm in the upper register along with the iambic rhythm associated with the rising Nature/Erda motif in the lower register. In addition, all of the Preludes begin softly and inevitably build towards the same climax: a fortissimo statement of the Servitude chords. At the level of the single act, Act II has a rhythmic, repetitive refrain-based form. At the level of individual sections, several parts of the opera are in rondo form and strophic form, both forms involving repetition and regularity (for example, Mime's Staarenlied, Siegfried's Forging Song, Mime's attempt to kill Siegfried, and the entire Riddle Scene [Act I, Scene 2], the latter of which is governed by a large, flexible rondo-like structure.)
61 A restless refrain repeated at the opening of each of the first two verses, depicting the steps of his journey, disappears when he arrives at Rome, replaced by a more active refrain as the possibility of his salvation, in the form of the Pope, arrives. The opening refrain returns for a third time when he describes the Pope's approach, but the refrain becomes fragmented, and disappears after six bars, stripping the narrative of what seemed initially to be a regular refrain-based structure. The remainder of the narrative, which contains the Pope's malediction of Tannhäuser, becomes an open-ended, refrain-barren form.
62 Newcomb, , ‘Ritornello Ritornato’, 211–18Google Scholar .
63 Ibid., 217.
64 Ibid., 219.
65 Bailey, , ‘Method’, 327.Google Scholar
66 op. cit., 204–5.
67 ‘ausgeführt; Fafner ist tot, Mime ist tot und Siegfried ist dem fortflatternden Waldvogel nachgelaufen.’ Sternfeld, ‘Richard Wagner’, 5. Translation, slightly modified, from Bailey, , ‘Method’, 327Google Scholar .