The Siegfried Seminar 26 June 1999
We met on Saturday 26 June for a full day of Siegfried,
in the company of members of the Wagner Societies of New Zealand and
South Australia, beginning with a seminar at the Goethe Institut and
ending with a concert performance of the work by the Sydney Symphony
Orchestra at the Opera House.
Two addresses were given at the seminar, by Professor
Heath Lees from the University of Auckland and President of the Wagner
Society of New Zealand, and Mr Robert Gibson from the University of
Sydney. We hope the following summaries do justice to their stimulating
and enlightening talks.
Professor Lees suggested three ways in which
we might approach Siegfried, illustrating his points at the
piano and with extracts from recent video-recordings.
Siegfried can be seen as a fairy-tale, where we have a young
orphan struggling, without much reliable guidance, to face the personal
challenges presented to him by the natural world. Perhaps Lehnhoff
directed his recent Munich Ring partly from this point
of view. Or, the opera can be seen as much more of an epic struggle,
where the hero’s role is to restore order in a world gone wrong.
Kupfer in Bayreuth has Siegfried correcting the balance between materialism
and love. Thirdly, whether it is the tale of an innocent young lad
or a decrepit old world, there are elements of tragi-comedy in the
work. Even the dragon-slaying is open to comical stage touches (as
seen in Chéreau’s direction), and deeper in the text and music
there are the inversions which lie at the very basis of comedy: the
apprentice teaches his master, the innocent youth breaks the god’s
authority, and so on.
The music itself, Professor Lees continued, compels us to accept
all three dimensions of the work. The motifs associated with Siegfried
grow as he himself grows: they are introduced tentatively; they soon
develop and transcend those of his foster-father; they eventually
resound with epic force as he conquers the god Wotan; and finally
we hear them in glorious harmony with the motifs that belong to Brünnhilde,
and therefore to love. (BW)
Mr Gibson outlined Wagner’s orchestral requirements for
Siegfried, using recordings and the piano to illustrate interesting
effects, and overheads of the score to show Wagner’s instructions
to players. As much for tonal colour as for volume, Wagner was remarkably
specific in the number of players he required for each section of
the Siegfried orchestra, and scored sections of the opera for many
subdivisions of each section. Forest Murmurs, for example,
has the strings divided into fifteen sections.
Wagner’s demands extended to unusual use of instruments: muting
the strings, bowing at the bridge of strings (sul ponticello),
turning the bow on its side (col legno), and adding an extension
to the bassoon to enable it to reach low A. He even had new instruments
specially manufactured. To his specifications was built the Wagner
Tuba, to bridge the sonority gap between horns and trombones. It is
dominant in the cave and forest scenes, and comes to be associated
with The Wanderer. Wagner also had an alto oboe made for the Ring,
as he thought the cor anglais was too thin.
Demands are also made on the percussion section. Six harpists are
needed to play only twelve bars in the ninety minutes of Act One.
For each hammer blow on the anvil, Wagner has notated the required
intensity. The triangle has one note to play in Act Two, an economy
acknowledged by Richard Strauss!
Siegfried progresses from darkness to light, both musically
and psychologically, Act Three reaching a higher pitch than what comes
before. The soaring violins, up to C#, probably sound much brighter
and piercing on modern instruments than they would have on the gut
strings of Wagner’s orchestra.
Mr Gibson concluded his talk by describing the seating plan for the
Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the concert to follow. (JW)
BARRY AND JANE WALTERS
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