And finally, Wagner argues that music is most fitted to be the messenger of the purely-human because it is a language understood by all, through which the artist’s thought, Wotan’s confession of his aim, can be transmuted into a universal message:
“Though as regards Literature the diversity of European tongues presents an obstacle, yet in Music, that language understandable by all the world alike, there would be supplied the great conforming force, which, resolving the language of abstractions into that of feelings, would transmute the inmost secret of the artist’s thought (Anschauung) [Wotan’s confession of his unspoken secret to Bruennhilde] into a universal message … .” [679W-{9/60} Music of the Future, PW Vol. III, p. 302]
[S.3.3: F]
Now we have all the background - in Wagner’s thinking about the nature of his unique art, the music-drama - which we need, in order to grasp the meaning of Siegfried’s otherwise perhaps inexplicable remarks below:
Siegfried: (#140 varis repeated:) Wondrous it sounds what you blissfully sing, yet its meaning seems obscure to me. (tenderly: #140?:; #106 hint in the bass? [or some other music associated with Siegfried’s loneliness after killing Mime?]) The light of your eye is clear to see; the sigh of your breath is warm to feel; the sound of your singing is sweet to hear (:#140; :#106 hint in bass?): (#?: [perhaps a musical reference to Siegfried’s comment: “So listen to my horn” from S.2.2, when he was trying to understand the Woodbird’s song by imitating it, and thought he might find a boon companion with his youthful horncall, but woke Fafner instead?]) but what you say to me singing (:#?), stunned, (#87:) I cannot understand (:#87). (#66?:; #137a: [agitated but slow]) With my senses I cannot grasp faraway things [“Nicht kann ich das Ferne sinnig erfassen”], (#140?:) since all these senses can see and feel only you (:#140?). (#137: [but sounding like #164? – is there any #96 in this?]) You bind me in fetters of anxious fear; (#137 vari:) you alone have taught me to dread it (:#137 vari). (#?: [perhaps Wellgunde’s Rhinedaughter music, her vocal line which transformed into #17 in R.1]) No longer hide that courage of mine (:#Rhinedaughter music &/or #17?) (#37:) which you bound with powerful bonds (:#37)!
Siegfried has just finished describing Wagner’s concept of the “Wonder,” or the miraculous in art, which is attained by the music-dramatist when, by associating characters, events, symbols, and images with specific musical motifs in evolutionary transformation, he is able to condense a immense array of experience, widely disbursed in time and space (i.e., all those things with which, during the dramatic action, the musical motif is associated), into a specific motif, which is a
