Siegfried Idyll

Program notes

About the Work

The Siegfried Idyll is Wagner at his most tender and intimate: a glowing, gentle orchestral serenade utterly unlike his vast music dramas, and the most personal music he ever wrote. It was a birthday present, and a love-letter in sound. On Christmas morning 1870 (the day his wife Cosima celebrated her birthday), Wagner assembled a small group of musicians on the staircase of their villa at Tribschen, on Lake Lucerne, and woke Cosima with the first performance of this piece, a private gift celebrating their love, their home, and the birth of their son, Siegfried, the previous year. Cosima recorded the morning in her diary. Originally a chamber-sized work for a small ensemble, it is now usually played by a slightly larger string-and-wind group, as here.

The music weaves together themes associated with the opera Siegfried (especially the radiant love music from its final scene), a German lullaby (‘Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf’), and motifs of private significance to the couple. The result is a work of serene, sunlit happiness, a domestic, loving counterpart to the cosmic drama of the Ring excerpts that surround it on this programme, and a moment of profound peace at the heart of the concert.

What to Listen For

Listen for the hushed, dawn-like opening: a gentle, rising string melody that seems to wake slowly into being (the same music that crowns the love duet at the end of the opera Siegfried). The whole piece has the quality of a tender, glowing reverie, unfolding without drama or conflict.

Listen for the moment, partway through, when the oboe gently introduces a simple folk lullaby (‘Sleep, little child, sleep’), a touchingly domestic touch for a new father. Listen, too, for the warm horn calls and the way the various themes intertwine and grow, building to a few radiant climaxes before subsiding into peace. This is music of pure contentment and love; let its intimacy and warmth wash over you, a serene island of private happiness between the grandeur and tragedy of Götterdämmerung.