A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this.  Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has done.  Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and station at great length.  This may be a vestige of the older stage-craft:  certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas that followed the Valkyrie.  It is not for even the minor personages of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience into their confidence.  But, as I say, words were indispensable, and Wagner found the best he could—­I suppose.  The defect is a tiny one; none the less it is a defect.

With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced.  The godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme sounds out—­if, indeed, we may call it a theme—­and then we get a lull after all the hurly-burly.  Bruennhilda and Sieglinda come in; Bruennhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl disturbed the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and horror.  The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the opera—­Bruennhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one after another refusing in very conventional phrases.  The scene is indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate:  music has no tones to express primness.  With the voice of Sieglinda the music at once begins to live in Wagner’s own curious fashion.  She has nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to be left alone to die.  Wagner well knew when the drama could make its effect almost unaided—­when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic music in the older style would be to overdo things.  Sieglinda’s phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung.  Bathos is avoided:  the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched.  In fact the technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous act.  But with Bruennhilda’s announcement to Sieglinda we get the great lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the last act of the Dusk of the Gods, and we get the mightiest of the Siegfried themes.  With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes the Second Act recurs:  the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame; then comes his denunciation of Bruennhilda, another specimen of the lyrical Wagner.  Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down of the storm.  We can see the setting sun and the departing storm-clouds in the music, and with these we are made to feel the abating wrath of the god.  And then comes the noblest piece of recitative in all music.  The words in which Bruennhilda appeals to her father have already been (roughly) quoted:  to give an idea of the musical phrases would require too many pages of this book.  The Sleep theme enters as Wotan sees a