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Siegfried: Page 610
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passed through the blaze (#128b:) and awakened the bride (:#128b), Bruennhilde then would be his!

 

(Siegfried leaps up impetuously from his sitting position.)

 

Siegfried: ([[ #132b: ]] O welcome song! O sweetest breath! Its meaning burns my breast with searing heat! How it thrills my heart with kindling desire!

 

At this moment of sublimest revelation, when Siegfried is suffering from the heat of the sun at high noon, we hear what Dunning describes as a harmonic foreshadowing of the quirky little motif #176, which will not be heard in its definitive form until T.3.1. It will be heard there in association with the poignant fact that thanks to the first potion Hagen offers Siegfried, he has forgotten Bruennhilde and fallen in love with Gutrune, but now, in this scene by the Rhine where Siegfried is confronted by the Rhinedaughters, Siegfried complains to them that a little elf-like creature led him astray from the prey he was seeking during a hunt. Perhaps what Siegfried was seeking during this hunt, without knowing it, was the remembrance of Bruennhilde, and in point of fact during the following scene Hagen will give Siegfried the antidote to his first potion of love and forgetfulness, namely, a potion of remembrance, so that Siegfried does indeed recall Bruennhilde. It seems very likely, therefore, that if #176 is indeed foreshadowed at this very moment when Siegfried first learns of the sleeping Bruennhilde from the Woodbird, #176 as heard in its definitive form in T.3.1 must herald Siegfried’s forthcoming remembrance of Bruennhilde, after the long hiatus during which, thanks to Hagen’s potion, he had forgotten her. #176 must therefore be associated with the concept underlying Siegfried’s complaint, that an elf (perhaps Alberich, and/or Hagen) has led him astray from the game he was seeking (perhaps the remembrance of Bruennhilde).

When Siegfried says that the sun stares down at the crown of his head, and its eye looks upon him from the brilliant blue above, experts on the lore of the Norse gods will remind us that the sun is sometimes considered Wotan’s (or Odin’s) eye. Mime had already alluded to this when, thanks to the clap of thunder the Wanderer called up by plunging his spear toward the earth, he recognized Wotan under the Wanderer’s disguise and told the Wanderer that Wotan’s eye had lighted upon him. We must consider also that Wotan in S.3.2 will tell Siegfried that Siegfried is the eye which Wotan is missing. {{ There is some mysterious music heard during Siegfried’s remark which seems to hint at #20a, the first, key segment of the Valhalla Motif. This needs to be looked into. }} In any case, Siegfried now complains to the Woodbird that he is lonely, never having known his mother or father, and never having had any siblings or any loving companions, but only the vile Mime. So Siegfried lays down under a lime tree hoping the Woodbird can tell him of a boon companion who would suit him. And of course the Woodbird does, telling him that Bruennhilde lies asleep within a ring of fire, and will be his bride if he wakes her.

The sudden violent onset of Siegfried’s loneliness and the urgency of his long-thwarted longing for a companion culminates in the introduction of motif #132ab, #132a being the segment of this motif which expresses Siegfried’s lonely longing for a companion, and #132b representing his excitement

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