What is a leitmotif?—The perfect guide to Wagner music

Wagner did not literally paint by numbers, but he did something extraordinary with his musical palette. Although the association of ideas, characters, objects, places, and emotions with specific thematic material had been a fairly common practice since the Baroque era, Wagner took it to a new level with the leitmotif.

A leitmotif (from the German Leitmotiv, "guiding motif") is a melody, harmony, rhythm, theme — or a combination thereof — whose recurrence helps to structure and narrate what's happening, whether explicitly or subtextually, on stage. For Wagner, this was not just one compositional strategy among many but, in fact, the main structural element in his music, with nearly 100 leitmotifs appearing, reappearing, transforming, and blending together throughout the Ring tetralogy from the very first note: the single low E-flat by the double basses that evokes not only the depths of the Rhine, but also the birth of the world and the act of creation itself. Hear how Siegfried’s stirring leitmotif is presented in Götterdämmerung, the last chapter of the saga, and learn more about Wagner's leitmotifs in this video!

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