As I have said in speaking of
"Parsifal," there is one rhythm throughout; music, action, speech, all
obey it. When Bruennhilde awakens after her long sleep, the music is an
immense thanksgiving for light, and all her being finds expression in a
great embracing movement towards the delight of day. Siegfried stands
silent for I know not what space of time; and it is in silence always,
with a wave-like or flame-like music surging about them, crying out of
the depths for them, that all the lovers in Wagner love at first sight.
Tristan, when he has drunk the potion; Siegmund, when Sieglinde gives
him to drink; Siegfried, when Bruennhilde awakens to the world and to
him: it is always in the silence of rapture that love is given and
returned. And the gesture, subdued into a gravity almost sorrowful (as
if love and the thought of death came always together, the thought of
the only ending of a mortal eternity), renders the inmost meaning of the
music as no Italian gesture, which is the vehemence of first thoughts
and the excitement of the senses, could ever render it. That slow
rhythm, which in Wagner is like the rhythm of the world flowing onwards
from its first breathing out of chaos, as we hear it in the opening
notes of the "Ring," seems to broaden outwards like ripples on an
infinite sea, throughout the whole work of Wagner.
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