A list of Motives in the Ring

t is with some trepidation that I offer, as a supplement to the preceding article, yet another list of motives in the Tetralogy. In mitigation I can only plead that this is my list and I offer it for what it might be worth. It was made by distillation and reconciliation of many lists provided by commentators on the four-part drama. I have included all of the motives identified by Dr. Allen Dunning (178), all of those listed by Wolzogen (91), all of those discussed in Sabor's Commentary (80), most of the motives discussed by Stone on his Ring Disc (124) and others gleaned from books respectively by Ernest Newman, Albert Lavignac, Spencer and Millington, Robert Donington, and more recently Roger Scruton (whose list includes most of the motives listed by Dunning). Not least, I have included all of the motives discussed by Deryck Cooke in his books and recordings. The resulting consolidated list includes around 84 musical motives that might be classified as "leading motives", just over 100 motives that are incidental but nonetheless interesting, and a few from Dunning's list that in my view are not well-defined motives or trivial but I have included them anyway.

he names that I have chosen to provide in the column headed Suggested Name were variously selected from traditional names (some of them originating with Wolzogen) and from those given by later commentators such as Newman, Cooke, Holman, Stone and Sabor. In some cases I have combined names from different sources: for example, AD#71 I have called Sieglinde's Compassion. Several commentators have called this motif "Sieglinde" but to make it more specific I have taken "Compassion" from Lavignac. In a few cases I have been able to suggest a name that was used by Wagner himself, according to Porges or Cosima; but it seems that Wagner was not concerned about giving names to his "principal themes".

here is not enough space on this web-page for musical examples. The reader should be able to find examples in the sources that I have referenced in the tables below, namely:

• AD: Dr. Allen Dunning's webpages are no longer online. Paul Heise has taken over Allen's material and included in his Wagnerheim. On this website Paul has published his book, in which he presents a consistently Feuerbachian interpretation of the Ring.
• SM: Stewart Spencer's and Barry Millington's translation and commentary on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, pages 17-24 Thematic Guide contains examples of the core Leitmotive. There is a general consensus among commentators that these are leading motives, although most commentators argue for a few more that are not universally accepted as "leading".
• Cooke: Deryck Cooke's An Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen was recorded to accompany the Decca/Solti/VPO recording of the Tetralogy. Originally it was issued on LP's and it is now available as a CD set: Decca 443 581-2. Musical examples are provided in the booklet.
• JKH: J.K. Holman's Wagner's Ring: A Listener's Companion and Concordance is an indispensable guide for everyone interested in the Tetralogy and it should be of enormous help to anyone experiencing the work for the first time. Chapter 3 is devoted to "The Music" and contains a discussion of 145 motives and motivic complexes. I find Holman's list rather eclectic but I have included most of his motives, and in some cases accepted his suggested names, in my own list below.
• Stone: I have tried to identify in my list the motives as named by Monte Stone and included his names for them in a column of each table below. It might be difficult to find his interactive CD The Ring Disc which although 20 years old, and no longer leading-edge technology, is still a useful study aid. The CD contains a very compressed, complete but monophonic version of the Solti/Decca/VPO recording which is synchronized with the vocal score. Each motif is identified as it appears and there is a reference guide to the motives, in which Monte presents a detailed and insightful analysis of each one.
• Sabor: Rudolph Sabor's poetic translation of the Ring poem (libretto) is in my view the best English translation of the work. In his Translation and Commentary (Phaidon Press, 5 volumes) Sabor provides a discussion of the leading motives prefacing each scene or act, and in the Commentary volume he presents a complete list of motives with musical examples and an analysis of the music. Sabor gave a short name (in English or German) to each of the leading motives (which in his list are a few more than S+M had listed). I have shown Sabor's name for each of his 80 leading motives (which are, for Sabor, those motives that return after the scene in which they first appear) in a column of each table below.

xamples of the leading motives (and some incidental motives too) can be found on YouTube: including this set of 98 musical examples from Jason Pano, which principally uses the names given to the motives by Rudolph Sabor and another set with 127 examples, which uses more traditional names.

Das Rheingold

ome of the musical motives that are introduced in Das Rheingold will return in the later operas of the cycle. Limited space on this page does not allow me to continue the table immediately below into the later operas, so I have only shown in which scenes of the first opera the motives appear. To fill this gap, at the bottom of this page I have included the big table from the English translation of Albert Lavignac's book, which shows the occurrences of 84 motives through the entire cycle.

well as the return of motives heard earlier, later operas in the cycle present variants of motives first heard in Das Rheingold and new motives that Wagner developed from the material of this first opera, which is a kind of "exposition" for the Ring.

Die Walküre

ome motives that were introduced in Das Rheingold also appear in Die Walküre. The table below shows when new motives are heard in this opera alone. Some of these "new" motives are really variants of those that were first heard in Das Rheingold.

Siegfried

ome motives that were introduced in Das Rheingold or Die Walküre also appear in Siegfried. As a result of limitations of space here, in the table below I list only the new motives that appear in this opera.

Götterdämmerung

any of the leading (or principal) motives that were introduced in earlier operas also appear in Götterdämmerung, where Wagner has woven them into a rich tapestry of sound. In the table below I have only listed the new motives that appear first in this opera, some of which are variants of motives heard earlier in the cycle.

Lavignac's Analysis of Returning Motives

lbert Lavignac in his invaluable reference work The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner provided this table, showing the occurrences of 84 motives through the cycle. Please note that the names given to these motives by Lavignac, based on those provided earlier by Wolzogen, may differ from the names that I have used in the tables above and that, in a few cases, Lavignac gave the same name to a different motive. In the left margin I have tried to relate Lavignac's motives to Dunning's list.