icians call syncopation, rung on the notes of the familiar chord
formed by piling three minor thirds on top of one another (technically,
the chord of the minor ninth, ci-devant diminished seventh). One soon
picks it up and identifies it; but it does not get introduced in the
unequivocally clear fashion of the themes described above, or of that
malignant monstrosity, the theme which denotes the curse on the gold.
Consequently it cannot be said that the musical design of the work is
perfectly clear at the first hearing as regards all the themes; but
it is so as regards most of them, the main lines being laid down as
emphatically and intelligibly as the dramatic motives in a Shakespearean
play. As to the coyer subtleties of the score, their discovery provides
fresh interest for repeated hearings, giving The Ring a Beethovenian
inexhaustibility and toughness of wear.

The themes associated with the individual characters get stamped on the
memory easily by the simple association of the sound of the theme with
the appearance of the person indicated. Its appropriateness is generally
pretty obvious. Thus, the entry of the giants is made to a vigorous
stumping, tramping measure. Mimmy, being a quaint, weird old creature,
has a quaint, weird theme of two thin chords that creep down eerily one
to the other. Gutrune's theme is pretty and caressing: Gunther's bold,
rough, and commonplace. It is a favorite trick of Wagner's, when one
of his characters is killed on the stage, to make the theme attached
to that character weaken, fail, and fade away with a broken echo into
silence.

THE CHARACTERIZATION

All this, however, is the mere child's play of theme work. The more
complex characters, instead of having a simple musical label attached
to them, have their characteristic ideas and aspirations identified with
special representative themes as they come into play in the drama; and
the chief merit of the thematic structure of The Ring is the mastery
with which the dramatic play of the ideas is reflected in the
contrapuntal play of the themes. We do not find Wotan, like the dragon
or the horse, or, for the matter of that, like the stage demon in
Weber's Freischutz or Meyerbeer's Robert the Devil, with one fixed theme
attached to him like a name plate to an umbrella, blaring unaltered
from the orchestra whenever he steps on the stage. Sometimes we have the
Valhalla theme used to express the greatness of the gods as an idea of
Wota