t is coming.

A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this.
Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and
it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has
done. Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and
station at great length. This may be a vestige of the older
stage-craft: certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas
that followed the _Valkyrie_. It is not for even the minor personages
of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience
into their confidence. But, as I say, words were indispensable, and
Wagner found the best he could--I suppose. The defect is a tiny one;
none the less it is a defect.

With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced. The
godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme
sounds out--if, indeed, we may call it a theme--and then we get a lull
after all the hurly-burly. Bruennhilda and Sieglinda come in;
Bruennhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl
disturbed the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and
horror. The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the
opera--Bruennhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one
after another refusing in very conventional phrases. The scene is
indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate: music
has no tones to express primness. With the voice of Sieglinda the
music at once begins to live in Wagner's own curious fashion. She has
nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to
be left alone to die. Wagner well knew when the drama could make its
effect almost unaided--when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic
music in the older style would be to overdo things. Sieglinda's
phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to
be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung. Bathos is avoided:
the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched. In fact the
technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous
act. But with Bruennhilda's announcement to Sieglinda we get the great
lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the
last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_, and we get the mightiest of the
Siegfried themes. With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes
the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame;
then comes his denunciation of Bruennhilda, an