The Music of The Ring

THE REPRESENTATIVE THEMES

To be able to follow the music of The Ring, all that is necessary
is to become familiar enough with the brief musical phrases out
of which it is built to recognize them and attach a certain
definite significance to them, exactly as any ordinary Englishman
recognizes and attaches a definite significance to the opening
bars of God Save the King. There is no difficulty here: every
soldier is expected to learn and distinguish between different
bugle calls and trumpet calls; and anyone who can do this can
learn and distinguish between the representative themes or
"leading motives" (Leitmotifs) of The Ring. They are the easier
to learn because they are repeated again and again; and the main
ones are so emphatically impressed on the ear whilst the
spectator is looking for the first time at the objects, or
witnessing the first strong dramatic expression of the ideas they
denote, that the requisite association is formed unconsciously.
The themes are neither long, nor complicated, nor difficult.
Whoever can pick up the flourish of a coach-horn, the note of a
bird, the rhythm of the postman's knock or of a horse's gallop,
will be at no loss in picking up the themes of The Ring. No
doubt, when it comes to forming the necessary mental association
with the theme, it may happen that the spectator may find his ear
conquering the tune more easily than his mind conquers the
thought. But for the most part the themes do not denote thoughts
at all, but either emotions of a quite simple universal kind, or
the sights, sounds and fancies common enough to be familiar to
children. Indeed some of them are as frankly childish as any of
the funny little orchestral interludes which, in Haydn's
Creation, introduce the horse, the deer, or the worm. We have
both the horse and the worm in The Ring, treated exactly in
Haydn's manner, and with an effect not a whit less ridiculous
to superior people who decline to take it good-humoredly. Even
the complaisance of good Wagnerites is occasionally rather
overstrained by the way in which Brynhild's allusions to her
charger Grani elicit from the band a little rum-ti-tum triplet
which by itself is in no way suggestive of a horse, although a
continuous rush of such triplets makes a very exciting musical
gallop.

Other themes denote objects which cannot be imitatively suggested
by music: for instance, music cannot suggest a ring, and cannot
suggest gold; yet each of these has a representative theme which
pervades the score in all directions. In the case of the gold the
association is established by the very salient way in which the
orchestra breaks into the pretty theme in the first act of The
Rhine Gold at the moment when the sunrays