In Die Walküre, Space Becomes Time

Wagner's complete tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen was first presented 140 years ago yesterday. The one part of this music that has probably embedded itself into Western cultural consciousness the most is the beginning of the third act of the second opera Die Walküre, the so-called "Ride of the Valkyries." The image below provides a notation of the first presentation of the melody. While the severe distortion of the notation makes it harder to read, it makes the distance that a measure of time and a semitone of pitch takes up on the image more equal to one another. All of the melody's local maxima (B3-D4-F4#-A4-C#5) divide this 14-semitone span into a 3+4+3+4 organization. The dominant-(5)-to-tonic(1) moments of the melody divide this 14-measure span into a 3+4+3+4 organization.

P.S. My post title cheekily refers to the fact that, in Wagner's last opera Parsifal, Gurnemanz tells Parsifal that that in this realm time becomes space ("Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit").