Monday Music "The Ride of the Valkryies" By Richard Wagner

 

 I started this theme back in November of 2019?...With a couple of interruptions it has been consistent...Dang.

 

           Saw this meme and *rescued it from farcebook*, why? because I am a humanitarian, that's why.

I am continuing my string of "bugaloo" songs.  This discussion was started in the "Monster Hunter Nation, Hunters Unite", back in November of 2019? it is a Facebook group with enthusiast of the ILOH "International Lord of Hate" A.K.A Larry Correia.  We were talking about what song would we use if we looked out of our window or glanced at our security camera and saw this.....

One of the alphabet bois lining up to take down your house...What would be your "Valhalla" song and you would set it up to play as you load up magazines set up the Tannerite Rover, turn on the water irrigation system and fill it with gasoline instead of water and prepare yourself.

 I figured it would scar the alphabet boys if they come busting in and hearing a song from the 1990's, an excellent Music Decade where we had a President that Loved America and Distrusted Government and made the comment during a speech "The most feared words in the English language to a true American was I am from the government and I am here to help.." and we listen to good music unlike the crap they listen to now sipping their soi latte's and comparing notes on the latest soyburger recipes and who wears the best manbuns in the team.

I went with the a  Soundtrack  song from "Apocalypse Now" I never heard of "The Ride" until I saw that movie in the early 80's, it started the movie off with a splash.  I liked the movie pretty well but to be honest some of the ramblings of "Willard" played by Martin Sheen, got a bit old and long, and Marlin Brando as Colonel Kurtz was a bit of a disappointment to me. Just my opinion.  But overall it was a good movie.   

       The "Ride of the Valkries" was suggested by a reader "Cannon".

The "Ride of the Valkyries" (German: Walkürenritt or Ritt der Walküren) refers to the beginning of act 3 of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas constituting Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

As a separate piece, the "Ride" is often heard in a purely instrumental version, which may be as short as three minutes. Together with the "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin, the "Ride of the Valkyries" is one of Wagner's best-known pieces. 

The main theme of the "Ride", the leitmotif labelled Walkürenritt, was first written down by the composer on 23 July 1851. The preliminary draft for the "Ride" was composed in 1854 as part of the composition of the entire opera, which was fully orchestrated by the end of March 1856.

In the Walküre opera, the "Ride", which takes around eight minutes, begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment until the curtain rises to reveal a mountain peak where four of the eight Valkyrie sisters of Brünnhilde have gathered in preparation for the transportation of fallen heroes to Valhalla. As they are joined by the other four, the familiar tune is carried by the orchestra, while, above it, the Valkyries greet each other and sing their battle-cry. Apart from the song of the Rhinemaidens in Das Rheingold, it is the only ensemble piece in the first three operas of Wagner's Ring cycle. 

The complete opera Die Walküre was first performed on 26 June 1870 in the National Theatre Munich against the composer's intent. By January of the next year, Wagner was receiving requests for the "Ride" to be performed separately, but wrote that such a performance should be considered "an utter indiscretion" and forbade "any such thing". However, the piece was still printed and sold in Leipzig, and Wagner wrote a complaint to the publisher Schott. In the period up to the first performance of the complete Ring cycle, Wagner continued to receive requests for separate performances, his second wife Cosima noting "Unsavoury letters arrive for R. – requests for the Ride of the Valkyries and I don't know what else."^[4] Once the Ring had been performed in Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner lifted the embargo. He himself conducted it in London on 12 May 1877, repeating it as an encore.

 

Uses in film include the original score for The Birth of a Nation (1915), and What's Opera, Doc? (1957).

The "Ride" features in Apocalypse Now (1979), where the 1/9 Air Cavalry squadron plays it on helicopter-mounted loudspeakers during their assault on a Viet Cong-controlled village as psychological warfare and to motivate their own troops