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,. What we'll hear today by way of Wagner's
music is indeed only a teaser, only the smallest sample of his great music, but
I would like to share with you a bit of video that my colleague,
Steve Milanowski, and I, mostly Steve, if truth be told, have created for
Wagner's famous, Ride of the Valkyries.
This is an overture to the final act of the second mu,
music drama of the ring cycle, the Valkyrie,
here the women warriors, the Valkyries ride up from
a battlefield toward Valhalla carrying the bodies of fallen heroes in battle.
This is the music in instrumental form that precedes the next scene that
we'll see.
This is the music that opens the third and final act of Die Walkure.
You'll recognize this music, and I'll comment as we go.
Now we start out here in trills, mostly woodwinds, and
each time a new one enters, it's up or down an octave.
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Same music, up or down an octave,
a rhythmic motion has now started out.
Now of course the theme.
It is in fact a lovemaking.
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[INAUDIBLE]
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Minor
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[INAUDIBLE] Now.
[INAUDIBLE] More low brass.
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[INAUDIBLE] More trombones and tubas, as the texture builds.
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Now, this part, in Wagner's original, he wrote this as an instrumental
Wagner, The Valkyries, with their cries up above.
Here there are, swinging through the air,
in Wagner's stage, and singing cries to one another.
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Once again King comes back, lightning speed.
The brass is carrying the day.
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[INAUDIBLE] Keep us there [INAUDIBLE] that climax and
we're going to fade it out here.
We're actually only half way through this exciting, driving overture, but
let's move on, eventually Valkyrie Brunnhilde meets up with her father Wotan,
he must punish her for suborning incest,
we needn't go into the specifics of that, to inflict the punishment as said
Volta will surround Brunnhilde with a ring of fire.
Wotan knows that he is sacrificing and will never see again,
his beloved child, his most favored of all children but
the social order of the world, Wotan's world, requires that this be so.
As we've seen, everything with Wagner is complicated.
So, I've tried to simplify and explain this climactic scene.
As we view it in a production from a Metropolitan opera performance,
I try to provide a guide here with the synopsis of the drama, and
I'm shortening the text, admittedly.
And I tried to provide an identification of
the light motifs as we proceed through this.
Here, as we see Wotan say goodbye to Brunnhilde, here in Wotan's Farewell.
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And then gradually, actually diminishes, rises by a pitch and continues.
Well, that's extraordinary, that's extraordinary.
What Wagner had really foreseen here, I believe, what we would call today
an IMAX theater, sitting in the darkness with an unseen orchestra completely,
surrounded by sound, and
completely enveloped in the drama that's unfolding before us.
As I say, as the most original, most transformative force in
the history of western theater, it's difficult to deny Richard Wagner.