Gotterdammerung, WWV 86D: Act III: Gesang der Reintochter (Song of the Rhinedaughters) [urtext]: Serious Opera, Orchestra Accompaniment, Conductor Score

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) composed Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D, the concluding music drama of his four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen, principally between October 1869 and November 1874, completing the full score at Wahnfried in Bayreuth on November 21, 1874. Historically, however, the drama had been the starting point of the entire Ring, evolving from Wagner's 1848 conception Siegfrieds Tod ("Siegfried's Death"), whose need for an increasingly extensive backstory ultimately led him to create the other three dramas of the cycle. The Act III "Gesang der Rheintöchter" (Song of the Rhinedaughters) occurs at the opening of the opera's final act, on the wooded banks of the Rhine, where the three Rhinedaughters (Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Floßhilde) sing playfully to the sun while lamenting the Rhinegold stolen from them at the very beginning of Das Rheingold. Siegfried, separated from his companions during a hunt, encounters them while searching for game, and they beg him to return the Ring he wears, warning that its curse will otherwise bring about his death that very day. Siegfried initially teases them and appears willing to surrender the Ring, but when they reveal its danger he defiantly refuses to relinquish it out of fear, whereupon the Rhinedaughters depart predicting his imminent death and foreshadowing both his murder later in the act and Brünnhilde's eventual return of the Ring to the Rhine at the cycle's conclusion. Götterdämmerung received its world premiere on August 17, 1876, at the specially constructed Bayreuth Festspielhaus, with Hans Richter conducting, as the final drama in the first complete presentation of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Today, Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D: Act III - Gesang der Rheintöchter remains principally part of complete staged or concert performances of the opera rather than an independently programmed excerpt (unlike such orchestral selections as Siegfried's Funeral Music) but its combination of luminous water imagery, intricate writing for three female voices, recollections of music from Das Rheingold, and crucial dramatic confrontation between Siegfried and the guardians of the Rhinegold makes it one of the most recognizable ensemble episodes in the final drama and a pivotal moment in the Ring's return to the ideas and characters with which the cycle began. Instrumentation: 3.3+1(EH).3+1(BCl).3: 8.3+1(BsTpt).4.1: Timp: Hp(2): Str (4.4.3.3.3 in set): Soli SSMzT. Reprint edition with rehearsal numbers added