TONALITY IN WAGNER'S PER RING PES NIBELUNOEN I certify that this thesis is ngr pwn unaided work A.H. LAING TONALITY IN WAGNER'S PER RING PES NIBELUNGEN How is the harmonic direction of the music determined by non-musical considerations? A.H. Laing Ph.D. University of Edinburgh 1973 ABSTRACT OF THESIS Name of Candidate j Address 12 RAYMOND AVENUE. CANTERBURY". KENT i Degree. Date. 1st August..1973 1 Title of Thesis JQimJlY:...m...EICHAHD..mGMER.l..S....DER..ia3JG....DES....iaiBELlMGEM....s....Ho.w:...is.....the. the harmonic direction of- the music determined by non-musical Considerations ? The the.sis examines the extent to which considerations other than those derived from "purely musical" concepts of harmonic architecture determine .the movement of tonalities in the Ring.' Reference is made to Wagner's. own theoretical and biographical^ writings and to his correspondence, arid extensive reference is made to the original sketches of the Ring music < (now housed in the Richard-Wagner-Archiv,Bayreuth). Although reference is...- - *' made to other Wagner works, the thesis is concerned particularly with the Ring; the structure of complex Motiv manipulation and the Stabreim- verse construction being peculiar to that work. The examination is divided into five sections. I ' In the first of these, the. relatiqnship between particular -musical Motive and particular tonalities is exhaustively investigated. From this investi¬ gation it is evident that certain Motive do have a very close link with a particular tonality, and that the use of these Motive (particularly in response to mention of an object or character in the text) is instrumental in the determination of the harmonic direction of the music. Other Motive display relationships of varying consistency and type; and these are ■classified accordingly, - N . " • ' r y * ;> W • • The second section examines the Ring for similar relationships between characters or emotions', and tonality. Less conclusive and more variable relationships are here established. c, The third section is concerned with the way is which these various relation¬ ships are used to influence the harmonic structure of the Ring beyond the simple device of direct object-Motiv association. Hare extensive reference is made to the technique of "Foreboding and Remembrance" expounded by.jWagner in Oper und Drama (18£l), by which musical Motive not explicit in the text would be introduced to a form musical drama complementing and extending that . on the stage. This section also examines the use of dramatic recapitulation J of more extended sections of music in the same terms. ' ■/ ■ The fourth section examines the ways in which variation of the relationships established in the preceding sections may lead to further situations in which the drama can be felt to be influencing the harmonic architecture. In particular, the dramatic significances of diatonicism and chromaticism are discussed. An examination of Wagner's .technique of underlying the drama / over Use other side if necessary. by combination of two or more Motive into a single musical unit (as suggested in his Ueber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama of 1879) reveals little of significance in terms of the drama itself influencing haimonic direction. The final section is concerned with the influence of the verse of the Ring poem itself upon the haimonic architecture. Wagner's adaptation of the Old High German Stabreim verse is related to his concept of the "poetic-musical-period" (introduced in Oper und Drama),. and sections of the Ring are analysed to illustrate the extent to which this procedure, in which musical modulation is determined by the movement of emotions and changing of alliterative sounds in.the text, was applied. A comparisc is made with the major analysis of the Ring made by Alfred Eorenz in the 1920's which, though concerned.with the "poetic-musical period", approach* the analysis more from a musical' than a dramatic standpoint. The material of the preceding four sections is here utilised to illustrate the way in .which predetermination of tonality, and even actual moments of modulationa were alreac(y implicit in the verse of the Ring |5oem, independent of any considerations of abstract, "purely-muSical" harmonic architecture. % CONTENTS : INTRODUCTION AND P» * NOTES: 9 1. Siegfrieds Tod 2. The Ring sketches 3o Abbreviations . 4. Translations 5. Nomenclature of Leitmotive FOREWORD 19 I THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTIVE AND TONALITY 26 1. The principles of Motiv-toriality relationship 27 2. The classification of Motive 33 3* Conclusion 63 II OTHER TONALITY RELATIONSHIPS 67 1. Character and tonality 68 2, . Emotion and tonality ' 84 3* A note on transposition 89 4. The choices of tonalities for extended' sections of the Ring 103 III AHNUNG UND ERINNERUNG ("FOREBODING AND REMEMBRANCE") 111 •1. The theory as it appears in Oper und Drama 112 2. The extension of the Oper und Drama theory in the Ring 119 3* Investigation of the extent to which the use of the technique affects tonality in the Ring i) "Foreboding" without "Remembrance" 124 ii) "Remembrance" without "Foreboding" 131 iii) "Remembrance and Foreboding" 142 IV CHROMATICISM, MOTIV-ADAPTATION AND -COMBINATION, 187 1. The dramatic significances of diatonicism and chromaticism 188 2. The technique of harmonic/emotional intensi¬ fication of Motive 203 3. Motiv-combination 220 4. A note on the use of key-signatures in the Ring 236 V THE STABREIM AND THE DICHTERISCH-MUSIKALISCHE PERI ODE 245 1. The Stabreim i) The Stabreim in Old High German verse 246 ii) Wagner's adoption and adaptation of the Stabreim 249 2. ■ The dichterisch-musikalische Periode i) Wagner's poetic-musical theory . 26l ii) The theory in practice in the Ring 266 3. Analysis of Siegfried Act I Sc.l and comparison with the Periode analysis.of Alfred Lorenz a) Some details in Mime's soliloquy 283 b) The large-scale analysis of the remainder of the scene . 289 4* Conclusions 501 APPENDICES 307 1. Table of Motive • 308 2. Classification of Motive 321 3* The relationship between character and tonality 325 4* 'The.Periode structure of the Ring 326 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 332 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 337 I ERRATUM "Eulenburg" (Miniature Scores) is misspellt "Eulenberg" throughout; INTRODUCTION and NOTES The existing Wagner literature falls into the following main categories: i) musical ii) biographical iii) concerning the poems and their philosophy and psychology iv) concerning performance These may comprise separate volumes or form the constituent parts of a general study of Wagner. It is however notable that the first of these aspects, the musical, has had comparatively little, space devoted to it. Such literature as concerns itself with musical commentary or analysis comprises: - a) the separate references or single chapter within a book basically concerned with biography or with some aspect of the drama. ' In this category may also be included collections of essays, and articles. b) the continuous.commentary: a retelling of the story, but with musical illustration and comment. c) the exhaustive study of some single aspect or aspects of Wagner's work, taking up an entire volume. While the first of these, the short chapter or article, may contain material of importance, it generally stiffers from its brevity in relation to the size of Wagner's output unless the matter with which it is concerned is extremely limited. The second, by its nature, generally does not have the scope to examine issues in detail Of the exhaustive studies of Wagner's works, one thing is immediately apparent - the reluctance of authors to deal with • Wagner's musical language. There exists a monumental study of the formal construction, and investigations into the purely musical structure (particularly of Tristan), but very few indeed have ever attempted to relate the musical content of the works to the stand¬ point of Wagner's own statements on the matter. The fact that these statements are extremely few and far between in his voluminous and frequently obscure writings may account for this, especially as such statements are concerned with music related to drama, rather than with music itself. Few but the most casual readers of the Ring score can however fail to have been struck by the fact that certain elements of the musical matte;r appear to be strongly associated with parti¬ cular tonalities. The most obvious of such relationships is that between the Motiv of the fortress Walhall and the key of D flat major* Wagner himself however makes no.mention in his writings of anything concerning harmonic construction down to the details of individual tonalities, and the significances cf individual tonalities have not been exhaustively investigated by the analysts. My original intention had been to examine Wagner's harmonic structure from the starting point of such relationships between dramatic elements and the tonalities associated with them (with reference, as far as is possible, to the statements in Wagner's theoretical works), and then to relate this examination to the larger construction. This large-scale construction of the mature works had been fairly exhaustively investigated by Alfred Lorenz. in the 1920's, although he did not generally attempt to account for the way in which various tonalities were used in the structure, a structure which he derived from Wagner's concept of the dichterisch- musikalische Periode. In fact, Lorenz largely ignored that part of the Periode theory which was concerned with modulation within that unit of construction, and he further applied the term,