When the storm-beaten Wälsung has sunk upon the rug the Siegmund Motive is followed by the Storm Motive, _pp_--and the storm has died away. The door of the room to the left opens and a young woman--_Sieglinde_--appears. She has heard someone enter, and, thinking her husband returned, has come forth to meet him--not impelled to this by love, but by fear. For _Hunding_ had, while her father and kinsmen were away on the hunt, laid waste their dwelling and abducted her and forcibly married her. Ill-fated herself, she is moved to compassion at sight of the storm-driven fugitive before the hearth, and bends over him.
Her compassionate action is accompanied by a new motive, which by Wagner's commentators has been entitled the Motive of Compassion. But it seems to me to have a further meaning as expressing the sympathy between two souls, a tie so subtle that it is at first invisible even to those whom it unites. _Siegmund_ and _Sieglinde_, it will be remembered, belong to the same race; and though they are at this point of the action unknown to one another, yet, as _Sieglinde_ bends over the hunted, storm-beaten _Siegmund_, that subtle sympathy causes her to regard him with more solicitude than would be awakened by any other unfortunate stranger. Hence I have called this motive the =Motive of Sympathy=--taking sympathy in its double meaning of compassion and affinity of feeling:
The beauty of this brief phrase is enhanced by its unpretentiousness. It wells up from the orchestra as spontaneously as pity mingled with sympathetic sorrow wells up from the heart of a gentle woman. As it is _Siegmund_ who has awakened these feelings in _Sieglinde_, the Motive of Sympathy is heard simultaneously with the Siegmund Motive.
_Siegmund_, suddenly raising his head, ejaculates, "Water, water!" _Sieglinde_ hastily snatches up a drinking-horn and, having quickly filled it at a spring near the house, swiftly returns and hands it to _Siegmund_. As though new hope were engendered in _Siegmund's_ breast by _Sieglinde's_ gentle ministration, the Siegmund Motive rises higher and higher, gathering passion in its upward sweep and then, combined again with the Motive of Sympathy, sinks to an expression of heartfelt gratitude. This passage is scored entirely for strings. Yet no composer, except Wagner, has evoked from a full orchestra sounds richer or more sensuously beautiful.