“The accompaniment of Hagen’s preparation for the ‘Blood-brothership’ calls for a particularly vigorous performance; the sequence based on the Gutrune motive: … should have a powerful forward drive. Special attention must be paid to the moment when we have the feeling that Siegfried’s sudden passion for Gutrune is a force of destiny impelling him.” [888W-{6-8/76} WRR, p. 123]
The point of this, surely, is that Hagen’s potion does not represent merely someone’s arbitrary whim, a mere intrigue or conspiracy foreign to Siegfried’s nature: its influence on Siegfried represents a force from within Siegfried’s own nature as an inspired artist-hero, as if it were a natural necessity of the evolution of human consciousness that Siegfried, the ultimate incarnation of the artist-heroes of history (whose archetype is Loge), who invented the various world-religions and produced all the truly authentically inspired art, should unwittingly and involuntarily reveal, within the context of his own greatest work of art, the culmination of all prior religion and art, the original, true source of inspiration for all prior religious mythology and art, thus retrospectively re-interpreting the meaning of the entire legacy of which Siegfried’s ultimate artwork is the final cause. The motifs which comprise this manically urgent music during Siegfried’s and Gunther’s preparations are #35, #33b, #100 (these last three being Loge’s motifs representing his protective Ring of fire surrounding Bruennhilde’s mountaintop home), #153 (the “Seduction Motif”), and #77, Bruennhilde’s “Valkyrie Motif.” In combination, these reach a pitch of overpoweringly bracing intensity as Siegfried and Gunther get in Siegfried’s boat and push off on Siegfried’s last, tragic adventure, his betrayal of his muse of inspiration. Siegfried has no choice: of his very nature as an artist he must betray the secret of his unconscious artistic inspiration to the light of day.
Gunther instructs Hagen to guard Gibichung Hall in their absence. Gutrune comes out to see them off, and then returns to her chamber as Hagen sits down with his spear and shield to guard the Hall.
[T.1.2: H]
The following orchestral interlude, the musical transition from T.1.2 to T.1.3, generally entitled “Hagen’s Watch,” is I feel the single most impressive of all the so-called “bleeding chunks,” or purely orchestral passages from the Ring, among which are several far more famous ones such as the “Ride of the Valkyries,” “Siegfried’s Dawn and Rhine Journey,” and “Siegfried’s Funeral Procession,” which are played independent of the Ring staging in the concert hall. I am not aware of any instance in which this particular orchestral passage has been played independently in the concert hall, but it is surely the most subtle and impressive of them all. The delicate orchestral transition from one motif to another, in many cases through transformations from one motif into another, materializing and dematerializing likes clouds, is as fine an example of what Wagner considered his greatest orchestral art, the art of “transition,” as any in the Ring. Another would of course be the orchestral transition from R.1 to R.2, during which the Ring Motif, #19, transforms gradually into the first segment of the Valhalla Motif, #20a, but that orchestral interlude is much less sophisticated, complex, and skillful, coming as it did at a much earlier period in Wagner’s development. In our present instance, Hagen's Watch, the portentous, suspenseful, and dark music which expresses Hagen’s meditation on his plan to overthrow the power of the Gibichungs and Siegfried, gradually transitions into the music of Bruennhilde’s reflection on the joy of being
