The Instrumentation Draft of Wagner's "Das Rheingold"

Abstract

F OR MANY YEARS, one of the most interesting of Wagner's autograph manuscripts has been part of a private collection in the United States. This document represents a substantial part of Richard Wagner's instrumentation draft for Das Rheingold. It was purchased by John H. Scheide of Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1927 and is now the property of his son, William H. Scheide, whose collection is housed as a separate but adjoining unit of the Princeton University Library. Although there are other Wagner autograph manuscripts in this country, notably those in the Burrell Collection of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (mostly early works),x the Scheide autograph is an unusual example of a stage in the creation of a mature Wagner work. Scholars have known of its existence for some time, but not until recently when the Wahnfried archival material in Bayreuth became more readily available, has it been possible to piece together more exactly the history and provenance of this valuable and important document. The story goes back to the genesis of Der Ring des Nibelungen itself. It is well known that Wagner wrote the librettos to the Ring in inverse order, starting with Siegfrieds Tod (Gdtterddmmerung) and working backwards to include the other three operas. The music, however, was written in regular order, starting with Das Rheingold. Although the first prose sketch for Siegfrieds Tod was written by Wagner in October I848 in Dresden before he went into exile, and the poem for it was completed there the following month, the bulk of the work on the full Ring poem was done in Switzerland during the years I85o-I852.2 After the Rheingold poem was finished on November

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