Richard Wagner – 'Magic Fire' from 'The Valkyrie'
(16 pages, 10 €)
For Anton Bruckner, Richard Wagner was the most important composer of his time, the "master of all masters". However, he showed no interest in Wagner's librettos or in the productions of his music dramas; he admired only Wagner's music, especially his harmonic innovations, his preference for chord combinations that reached into remote keys. These harmonic darings were so fascinating for Bruckner because they often contradicted what he had previously learned in his intensive six-year study of harmony and counterpoint (1856-1861) with Simon Sechter in Vienna.
As various reports show, Bruckner often sat in the Vienna Opera without knowing the content of Wagner's respective music dramas. The technique of leitmotifs, Wagner's special invention for musically "explaining" the plot through recurring motifs, was also of no importance to Bruckner.
It is therefore not surprising that individual motifs from Wagner's music dramas found their echo in Bruckner's symphonies, often as associations, occasionally as direct quotations. Soit was logical that the final scene from 'The Valkury' was one of his favorite pieces: In it, Wotan puts his daughter Brünnhilde into a deep sleep and encloses her in a ring of fire that only those who are not afraid of 'the tip of his spear' can pass through.
Wagner illustrates this plot with some of his most sophisticated 'leitmotifs'. The magic sleep motif, which begins in quiet half notes, consists of a descending chromatic scale, the changing sounds of which no longer allow for harmonic orientation. Wagner, on the other hand, depicts the fire god Loge in fast sixteenth-note passages, the chromatic sequences of which also elude precise perception.
And in the middle of the scene, the Siegfried motif sounds with increasing intensity, reaching fortissimo, to indicate that he will be the one who will be able to pass through the ring of fire.
(Dr. Rudolf Innig)