to the Rhine, when Bruennhilde responds that: “(#164) Your meaning seems wild and confused”?]; #19 vari voc & orch? [perhaps the vari associated with Alberich’s remark to Wotan and Loge about his ring: “No joyful man shall ever have joy of it”?]) Fear-ridden ring! (#5/#15 vari>>:) I grasp your gold and give it away (:#164?; :#19 vari?; :#5/#15 vari). (#12) Wise sisters (#59c/#174a>>:) of the watery deep (:#59c/#174a), (#4?:) you daughters who swim in the Rhine (:#4?), (#59c/#174a:) I thank you for your sound advice (:#59c/#174a)! (#59(?):) I give you what you covet (:#59(?)): (#12) (#voc?: [perhaps a reference to music associated with Bruennhilde’s effort to persuade Sieglinde to live for her unborn child, prior to introducing #92 in V.3.1, or perhaps also from Bruennhilde’s effort to persuade Wotan to wed her only to a fearless hero from V.3.3?]) from my ashes take it as your own! (#12 frag) Let the fire that consumes me (#12 frag) cleanse the ring of its curse (:#voc? [possible Bruennhilde references from V.3.1 &/or V.3.3?]): (#174c:; #19 or #101 chords?:) in the floodwaters let it dissolve, (#5?) and (#19 voc?:) safely guard (:#174c) (#19?) the shining gold (:#19 voc?) (#19 vari [or #51?]) that was (#37:) stolen to your undoing (:#19 vari [or #51]; :#37).
We hear a combination of #115 (“Power of the Gods” employed in an ironic sense as the herald of their imminent demise), #54 (Twilight of the Gods), and #2 (The Rhine’s Motion based on #1, informing us that Alberich’s Ring and its curse of consciousness will soon be dissolved in the waters of the Rhine, from where Alberich originally stole the pristine Rhinegold to forge it) as Bruennhilde draws the Ring from Siegfried’s finger and contemplates it as her inheritance. Describing it as the fear-ridden ring, she is accompanied by #5/#15 as she says that she grasps it and gives it away (to the Rhinedaughters). Accompanied by #59c and #174a (both the Rhinedaughters’ original, and newer, laments for the lost Rhinegold, respectively), and #12 (the guileless Rhinegold), she calls upon the sisters of the watery deep, thanking them for their sound advice. From her ashes they will take back what they covet as their own. To a #12 fragment Bruennhilde proclaims that the fire which burns Siegfried and herself will cleanse the curse from the Ring. She calls upon the Rhinedaughters to dissolve the Ring in the Rhine, and to safely guard the shining gold “… that was (#37) stolen to your undoing.”
In the first scene of the Ring, R.1, Flosshilde reminded the Rhinedaughters that their father (Father Rhine) had warned them about a foe like Alberich, and that they should therefore take special care to protect the Rhinegold from such a foe. So Bruennhilde’s warning may be futile too: maybe all of this will happen all over again, and in much the same way. But what is Bruennhilde asking for? Is she not asking that the product of natural evolution, man’s gift of consciousness (the power of the Ring) itself be erased from the world, and that a preconscious phase of life be restored, and therefore evolution - which one would have thought was irreversible - turned back? Was that not Wagner’s entire programme from the beginning? For Wagner himself said that in his music-dramas music would not, like the original mother-melody of animal instinct and feeling, give birth to the word, to the drama, but instead would retreat from thought back into feeling, reversing natural
