Horsing Around with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries
The Backstory
Ride of the Valkyries, WWV 86B
I'm Richard Wagner, and I'm glad to welcome you to the backstory of my Ride of the Valkyries. You'll learn how the Ride first reached the stage in Munich in 1870 while I stayed away in protest, which makes its early days livelier than you might expect. Whenever you want to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, give the Trainer a go , where my fellow composers and I will teach you on this site.
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A Composer Without a Country
To understand this piece, you have to picture me in Zürich, where I lived in exile after the failed uprising in Dresden in 1849. I couldn't go home, and I was often short of money. Friends and patrons kept me going, and Otto Wesendonck was one of the kindest of them. So this loud, galloping music was written by a man sitting quietly in a rented room, hoping the bills would wait.A Tune in My Notebook
The galloping main theme came surprisingly early, because I wrote it down on 23 July 1851. I labelled it Walkürenritt, which simply means the Valkyries' ride, so I clearly knew what it was for. At that point there was no opera around it yet, only the idea and a sketch. I find it rather satisfying that the most famous tune in the piece was waiting for years until the story caught up with it.Words Before Music
I always wrote the words of a drama first, and I finished the text of Die Walküre in June 1852. It's the second of the four music dramas in my Ring cycle, which I had planned as one enormous work. Nobody had commissioned it, and there was no royal event or festival waiting for it. I was building something far too big for any ordinary evening, and that was exactly the point.Starting the Music in Earnest
I began composing the music for Die Walküre in June 1854, right after I had finished Das Rheingold the month before. That same year I came across the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which gave me plenty to think about. My friendship with Mathilde Wesendonck was also growing at the time, so my life was anything but calm. Strangely, none of that turmoil seems to have slowed the Valkyries down one bit.The Long Job of Orchestrating
Writing a tune is one thing, and dressing it for a large orchestra is another. I made a preliminary draft in 1854, and then came the slow work of deciding who plays what. By the end of March 1856 the whole opera was orchestrated. That is a lot of ink for a few minutes of music that sound as if they were thrown together in one wild afternoon.A Rare Chorus in My Ring
Here is something that surprises many people who know the piece only as a thrilling orchestral blast. In my Ring, apart from the Rhinemaidens' song in Das Rheingold, this is the only ensemble piece in the first three operas. I normally preferred my characters to sing one at a time, so a whole band of Valkyries singing together is quite unusual. That makes this scene a special occasion, and I think you can hear it in the sheer joy of their battle-cry.Eight Minutes or Three
In the opera itself, the Ride takes about eight minutes, because the stage action needs room to unfold. When it's played alone in a concert hall, it can be as short as three minutes. Conductors who trim it down keep the thrilling parts and lose some of the slow build-up. Both versions work, though I confess I prefer the longer one, where the tension has time to grow.A Premiere I Skipped
Die Walküre was first staged in Munich on 26 June 1870, at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater, with Franz Wüllner conducting. This happened because King Ludwig II of Bavaria insisted on it. I objected to the whole idea, since I wanted the Ring to be presented as a complete cycle, so I stayed away. It's a little odd to say it, but the world first heard my Valkyries without me in the audience.The Cycle Comes Home
My real wish came true six years later, when the first Bayreuth Festival presented the Ring as a complete cycle. Die Walküre was given there on 14 August 1876, with Hans Richter conducting. This was the setting I had dreamed about, with the four operas played in order and the audience following the whole story. Seeing the Valkyries gallop through it, as one part of something so large, meant more to me than any single success.Galloping Through the Movies
These days many people know the Ride without ever having seen the opera, and that still makes me smile. It turns up in Apocalypse Now from 1979, where it blasts from loudspeakers during a helicopter attack on a village. It also appears in the 1957 cartoon What's Opera, Doc?, and as far back as The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Whenever someone wants to suggest grand opera in a hurry, they reach for this tune, which tells me the horses are still running.---
I hope you enjoyed learning about the backstory of my Ride of the Valkyries. I wrote it as one small part of a much larger work, and I find it moving that a piece born in a quiet room in Zürich has travelled so far from there. Did you enjoy discovering how it came to be, from a tune in my notebook in 1851 to the stage in Munich in 1870? There is still a good deal more to explore in this music. You could listen for how the layers build up before the curtain rises, or notice how the Valkyries' battle-cry sits on top of the orchestra. You might also enjoy finding out where else this piece has turned up, from films to cartoons, long after I wrote it. If you'd like to go further, please click on the links below and keep exploring the Ride of the Valkyries. I'd be glad to have you along.