[989W-{10/79}On the Application of Music to the Drama: PW Vol. VI, p. 182-183]
[P. 182] {FEUER} “The science of Aesthetics has at all times laid down Unity as a chief requirement for the artwork. In the abstract this Unity is difficult to dialectically define, and its misapprehension has led to many and grave mistakes. [P. 183] It comes out the plainest in the perfect artwork itself, for it is it that moves us to unbroken interest, and keeps the broad impression ever present. Indisputably this result is the most completely attained by the living represented drama; wherefore we have no hesitation in declaring the Drama the most perfect of artworks. (…) … to be an artwork again qua music, the new form of dramatic music must have the unity of the symphonic movement; and this it attains by spreading itself over the whole drama, in the most intimate cohesion therewith, not merely over single smaller, arbitrarily selected parts. So that this Unity consists in a tissue of root-themes pervading all the drama, themes which contrast, complete, re-shape, divorce and intertwine with one another as in the symphonic movement; only that here the needs of the dramatic action dictate the laws of parting and combining, which were there originally borrowed from the motions of the dance.” [989W-{10/79}On the Application of Music to the Drama: PW Vol. VI, p. 182-183]
[990W-{10/79}On the Application of Music to the Drama: PW Vol. VI, p. 185]
[P. 185] “… it has been a real surprise to me, that the restraint I have striven for with increasing vigilance in the modulation and instrumenting of my works has not met the smallest notice. {FEUER} In the instrumental introduction to ‘Rheingold,’ for instance, it was impossible to me to quit the fundamental note, simply because I had no reason for changing it; a great part of the not un-animated scene that follows for the Rhine-daughters and Alberich would only permit of modulation to keys the very nearest of kin, as Passion here is still in the most primitive naivety of its expression.” [990W-{10/79}On the Application of Music to the Drama: PW Vol. VI, p. 185]
[991W-{10/79}On the Application of Music to the Drama: PW Vol. VI, p. 187-188]
[P. 187] “ … I will … draw attention to the metamorphoses in that motive with which the Rhine-daughters greet the glancing Gold in childish glee: ‘Rhinegold! Rhinegold!’ One would have to follow this uncommonly simple theme – recurring in manifold alliance with almost every other motive of the drama’s wide-spread movement – through all the changes it receives from the diverse character of its resummoning, to see what type of variations the Drama can engender; and how completely the character of these variations departs from that of those figured, rhythmic or harmonic alterations of a theme which our masters ranged in immediate sequence to build up pictures of an often intoxicatingly kaleidoscopic effect. This effect was destroyed at once, and with it the classic form of the Variation, so soon as motives foreign to the theme were woven in, giving something of a dramatic development to the Movement’s [P. 188] progress, and fouling the purity, or let us say self-evidence of the tone-piece. But neither a mere play of counterpoint, nor the most fantastic art of figuration and most inventive harmonising, either could or should transform a theme so characteristically, and present it with such manifold and entirely changed expression – yet leaving it always recognisable – as true dramatic art can do quite naturally. Hardly anything could afford a plainer proof of this, than a pursuit of that simple motive of the ‘Rhine-daughters’ through all the changing passions of the four-part drama down to Hagen’s Watch-song in the first act of the ‘Goetterdaemmerung,’ where it certainly takes on a form which –
