as heard during Siegfried’s Rhine Journey?]) Now keep its power safe (:#59a, b, or c?) (#voc?: [This music could be very important!!!:) in solemn token of my troth (:#voc?).
Bruennhilde: (#19: rapturously putting on the ring) (#19?:; #150/#77:) I covet it as my only wealth (:#19?; :#150/#77). (#13:) For the ring now take my horse (:#13)! (#12) (#77:) As once, with me, he boldly clove the air in flight, (#97?:) with me he’s lost that mighty power (:#97?). (#77 >> :) Over the clouds, through the lightning-rent storms (:#77), (#97?:; #19 voc?:) no more will he bravely soar on his way (:#97?; :#19voc?). (#91 >> :) But wherever you lead him – be it through fire – (#148 vari/#91 [in the “Rhine-Journey” dance-like vari]) Grane will fearlessly follow; for you, o hero, he shall obey (:#148/#91)! (#77?:) Guard him well; he’ll heed your word (:#77?): (#64:) oh, often give Grane (:#64) (#150:) Bruennhilde’s greeting (:#150)!
Siegfried proclaims that the Ring enfolds the virtue of all the heroic deeds he has performed, and he says more than he knows, because Alberich’s Ring gave birth to Valhalla (#19>#20a in R.1-2), and Alberich’s threat to the gods inspired Wotan’s longing for redemption from Alberich’s curse, which is Siegfried’s raison d’etre. But of course Siegfried knows nothing of this past history, and the only instance of a heroic deed he mentions is his one great deed in killing Fafner and thus dispossessing him of the Ring. {{ As Siegfried requests that she keep the Ring’s power safe in solemn token of their troth, we hear what sounds like one of the #59 segments, a, b, or c. This was of course the Rhinedaughters’ lament for the lost Rhinegold in R.4, implicitly their appeal to Wotan to restore it. If this is accurate, it provides a motival support for what is already self-evident, that by leaving the Ring’s power safe under Bruennhilde’s protection, it is as if Siegfried has restored the Ring to the Rhine where its waters will dissolve it and its curse, but only temporarily. Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s unconscious mind, is figuratively a surrogate Rhine, because she does indeed neutralize Alberich’s curse on the Ring, the curse of consciousness, temporarily, which restoring the Ring to the Rhinedaughters will accomplish permanently (or at least until the next Ring cycle begins). As Bruennhilde rapturously places Alberich’s Ring on her finger she tells Siegfried, accompanied by both #150 and #77, that she covets it as her only wealth. This motivally identifies the Ring with the Hoard of knowledge Wotan learned from Erda, imparted to Bruennhilde in his confession, and which she has now taught to Siegfried subliminally, feelingly, musically.
The notion that by leaving Alberich’s Ring under Bruennhilde’s protection Siegfried has found a surrogate Rhine to neutralize Alberich’s curse, seems to be further confirmed by the sounding of #13 (the Rhinedaughters’ joyful cry of “Heiajaheia! Heiajaheia!”) and #12 (the “Rhinegold Motif”), as Bruennhilde offers Siegfried her horse Grane in exchange for the Ring. The flying Valkyrie horse Grane may well be regarded as another metaphor for the feeling of transcendence which music gives us, which can be compared with the aesthetic joy the Rhinedaughters took in the pre-Fallen Rhinegold before Alberich stole it and forged a Ring from it. It is as if the Ring, in Bruennhilde’s hands, has regained its pre-fallen innocence. The redemptive art Siegfried produces under Bruennhilde’s spell will make his audience feel as if paradisal innocence has been restored.
