The Woodbird’s songs are Wagner’s symbol for his musical motifs themselves, that womb of music which contains the entirety of the drama, and gives birth to it, as Wagner put it. The Woodbird’s tunes are the link between Siegfried’s unconscious and conscious mind, which granted him entre into those inner processes of unconscious inspiration represented by Bruennhilde.
In the following extracts Wagner describes how his music, and particularly his musical motifs, might provide a window into an inner world formerly hidden, a key to access mysteries of the psyche which normally remain unspoken and unseen, but which are not necessarily inherently inaccessible to the waking mind:
“I would gladly have called my dramas deeds of Music brought to sight (ersichtlich gewordene Thaten der Musik).” [838W-{10/72} On the Name ‘Music Drama’: PW Vol. V, p. 303]
[P. 75] “To gain a glimpse of his [the composer’s] procedure, we … can do no better than return to its analogy with that inner process whereby – according to Schopenhauer’s so luminous assumption – the dream of deepest sleep, entirely remote from the waking cerebral consciousness, … translates itself into the lighter, allegoric dream which immediately precedes our wakening. … the musician is controlled … by an urgent impulse to impart the vision of his inmost dream; like the second, allegoric dream, he therefore approaches the notions (Vorstellungen) of the waking brain – those notions whereby it is at last enabled to preserve a record, chiefly for itself, of the inner vision. (…) [P. 76] Thus, though Music draws her nearest affinities in the phenomenal world into her dream-realm, as we have called it, this is only in order to turn our visual faculties inwards through a wondrous transformation, so to speak, enabling them to grasp the Essence-of-things in its most immediate manifestment, as it were to read the vision which the musician had himself beheld in deepest sleep.” [774W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 75-76]
[T.3.2. E]
Now Gunther leaps up in horror at what seems like Siegfried’s confession that he betrayed Gunther’s trust and blood-brotherhood oath, while Hagen prepares to deliver Siegfried’s death-blow, allegedly to avenge this betrayal, as Wotan’s ravens fly up to carry the news to Wotan of Siegfried’s death:
Gunther: (leaping up in utter horror: #33b?:) What’s that I hear (#33b)?
(Two ravens fly up out of a bush, circle over Siegfried and then fly off in the direction of the Rhine.)
Hagen: Can you also guess what those ravens whispered?
