Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103

1870 · WWV 103 · Small orchestra

A birthday gift for Cosima, first played on the staircase at Tribschen on Christmas morning. Wagner later published it with provision for a larger string section.

16 min

Recording

Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103Modern Chamber Orchestra; Stanley Chapple · 1925
15:32
Wagner wrote the Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103, as a birthday greeting for Cosima; it opens with a long violin melody and includes a lullaby, a horn call and the song of a bird. Stanley Chapple conducted the Modern Chamber Orchestra in this 1925 recording.
Listening notes · joins
1. Opening, successive string entries
  The first violins begin alone, softly, Ruhig bewegt. Violas and cellos enter beneath the held note, then the second violins add a moving line. The double bass rests.
2. First performance, Tribschen, 1870
  On Christmas morning, 1870, thirteen musicians played on the stairs at Tribschen while Cosima woke upstairs. “Music was sounding, and such music,” she wrote in her diary. When it ended, Wagner came in with the five children and gave her the score.
3. String quartet for Cosima, 1864
  Wagner first sketched the opening melody in 1864 for a string quartet for Cosima. He never finished the quartet. The tune went into Brünnhilde’s music in Siegfried, and later into this family greeting.
4. Oboe lullaby, Sehr einfach
  Wagner marks the oboe’s lullaby Sehr einfach (“very simply”). Its short phrases sit above detached notes in the violins, then in the lower strings.
5. Opening theme and lullaby combined
  Through the middle span the melodies overlap. A wind instrument holds a phrase while a string line moves beneath it, and fragments of the opening theme are fitted around the lullaby. On p. 24 of the Schott full score, horn, clarinet and strings play independent lines.
6. Original title
  The original title was Tribschener Idyll mit Fidi-⁠Vogelgesang und Orange-⁠Sonnenaufgang (Tribschen Idyll with Fidi’s Birdsong and Orange Sunrise). Fidi was the family’s nickname for their son Siegfried, born in June 1869. The name Siegfried Idyll refers both to the son and to the opera.
7. Horn theme and Woodbird figures
  The horn plays Siegfried’s tune in C major. Clarinet and flute follow with quick Woodbird figures from Siegfried, marked lustig — merrily.
8. Sale to Schott, 1878
  Under financial pressure, Wagner sold the Idyll, first played on a staircase, to Schott. The full score was published in 1878.
9. Hans Richter, witness and trumpeter
  On 25 August 1870, four months before the staircase, Wagner and Cosima married; Hans Richter was one of the two witnesses. Richter, Wagner’s copyist, learned the trumpet specially for the birthday performance. The trumpet part lasts thirteen bars.
10. Closing bars, sustained bass E
  The double bass holds E, with a low note in the second horn, while the strings play short final figures. The wind players, silent until now, enter pianissimo on the final chord of E major, which carries a fermata.
Joins
1. Oboe enters with the lullaby
  The horns finish their phrase and stop. Over a few pizzicato bass notes, the strings play a link marked diminuendo, leading to the B major lullaby. The oboe enters, marked Sehr einfach, over detached violin figures. Soon afterwards the bass rests.
2. Change to Lebhaft and horn duet
  The flute and violins finish their quick descending figures. Wagner removes the strings and marks the new section Lebhaft, in C major. One horn holds the bass beneath the other’s melody. The clarinet and flute then enter with the Woodbird’s quick triplets.
3. Rallentando to the E pedal
  The last string phrases slow, first with a Rallentando, then at Bedeutend langsamer (considerably slower). A low horn holds E and the double bass takes up the same pedal. Fragments of the melody continue above it in the strings, marked immer pp.
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