# Leitmotives for "Der Ring" cycle



## ClassicalPower (12 mo ago)

Hi! I wanted to share with you a work I've made, it's just a small collection of leitmotives from Der Ring des Nibelungen which is aimed to non-experts of classical music in order to give them just a glimpse of the legendary world of The Ring, and maybe it can also be a small presentation about how Wagner uses and characterizes his leitmotives. This is the link to the video:






I've taken the sheet notes of each leitmotive from another youtube channel which made a wonderful work of puttin them together (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAqWi_YT0VEkZ41ojy4RAdA) and then I've added some images or video to enhance the listening experience 

I may do a more extended version in the future, if someone has his own lists of favourite leitmotives or knows other nice ones, that can be very useful to me; also, some important leitmotives are still missing, (such as Siegfrieg's) but I first wanted to se if the Internet shows some kind of interest for the topic, since it's not the easiest thing to make such a video.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

https://smile.amazon.com/Introducti...o+der+ring+des+nibelungen+,popular,138&sr=1-2

Thanks for sharing, you might be interested in the above


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> https://smile.amazon.com/Introducti...o+der+ring+des+nibelungen+,popular,138&sr=1-2
> 
> Thanks for sharing, you might be interested in the above


I second this recommendation. As I remember it (after many years), Deryck Cooke lays out the leitmotivs of the ring quite thoroughly and clearly, and shows the musical relationships between them.

It's worth remembering that Wagner didn't give his themes names (and didn't use the term "leitmotiv"), and it pays to be careful about what we identify as a leitmotiv as well as what we call it. Wagner's music is highly descriptive, but not every passage that characterizes something onstage actually functions as a leitmotiv.


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## ClassicalPower (12 mo ago)

MAS said:


> https://smile.amazon.com/Introducti...o+der+ring+des+nibelungen+,popular,138&sr=1-2
> 
> Thanks for sharing, you might be interested in the above


Great! It looks very interesting, thank you, I hope it's available for my country too.


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## ClassicalPower (12 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> I second this recommendation. As I remember it (after many years), Deryck Cooke lays out the leitmotivs of the ring quite thoroughly and clearly, and shows the musical relationships between them.
> 
> It's worth remembering that Wagner didn't give his themes names (and didn't use the term "leitmotiv"), and it pays to be careful about what we identify as a leitmotiv as well as what we call it. Wagner's music is highly descriptive, but not every passage that characterizes something onstage actually functions as a leitmotiv.


However I thinks there's a marked attitude from him to use musical themes as leitmotives even though he called them "ground themes" or something like that. I immeditely got the very meaning of "leitmotiv" the moment I heard Wotan sing about a future "man without fear who shall pass through the fire" on the notes of Siegfried's leitmotiv, when we still don't know about Siegfried but we are introduced to his character this way, and this is such a wonderful idea, both musically and from a story-telling perspective, which Wagner uses continuosly maybe not even being fully aware of the concept of "leitmotiv", but of course he had envisioned the idea very similarly.


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