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Motive Quiz -- Motive Families -- Motive Indexes
Ring
Motives
The
four Ring operas were the first to make use of motives (signature tunes)
in a systematic manner. A motive can refer to a character, a thing, a place
or a psychological mood.
There are many such motives in the Ring operas -- upwards of two hundred depending on how you count. A deeper appreciation of the Ring becomes possible if one learns to recognize the motives, yet learning so many different motives would seem to be a daunting task. However, help is on the way!
Most of the motives belong to families of motives where each motive in a given family is related to the other motives in that family -- they sound alike in some way. Perhaps they share the same melody or similar harmonies. When you listen to the motives of a particular family, one against the other, you can hear that they are related. This greatly simplifies the task of learning them.
Deryck Cooke's book I Saw the World End: A study of Wagner's Ring (Oxford, 1979) has an excellent introduction to motives "The Unsolved Problem." Amanda Morris (d. 2002) and Ben Bell created a summary of that introduction and made .mp3s of all the musical examples. To read their summary and listen to the examples click here.
To download an MP3 version of a motive click and hold the mouse button on the name and choose "Save link as." To hear a particular motive click on the note below the name.
Motive Types
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In the following pages you will find the motives divided into their respective families. Here we follow Deryck Cooke's wonderful An Introduction to der Ring des Nibelungen. For each motive you will see the notation. Click on the notation to hear the motive. Then listen to the motives in its family and hear how they are related.
