The rhythmic hammering of Nibelheim slaves is heard twice in Rheingold: first in the interlude when Wotan and Loge descend to Nibelheim, and again when they depart with Alberich as their captive. The rhythms are precisely notated by Wagner, and you would think that anyone with the slightest dramatic or musical perception would grasp, simply by looking at the score, what he was after. Yet I have never seen a theater production which attempted to meet his wishes. Sometimes you get fobbed off with a sort of electronic compromise; sometimes you get a tinkling sound made by a few people beating metal bars together; but you never get the firm, frightening sound of eighteen anvils hit with rhythmical precision and building into a deafening assault on the nerves which, to quote [Ernest] Newman from a different context, should "approach the threshold of pain". Of course it could be done in the theater; I imagine the reason for its absence is that although Wagner made it quite clear that he wanted a primitive noise for dramatic reasons, most conductors cannot abide noise of any sort. Their instincts tell them that it is unmusical, and so they skirt the problem by making it as inconspicuous, and as inoffensive, as possible. (They cannot, however, omit it altogether, for the anvils have quite a lengthy solo during the first of the two interludes.)

Once again we called upon our friend Adolf Krypl for help. We required eighteen anvils and a few spares, and lots of different hammers to bang them with. We then called Professor Wobisch of the Vienna Philharmonic and said that we needed at least eighteen percussionists for two long rehearsals and a session. It is not easy to find as many capable percussionists in any city in the world, and probably least of all in Vienna, but Wobisch eventually rounded up enough players, though many of them were not percussionists at all, but harpists, trumpeters, and other instrumentalists who were willing, as the saying goes, to have a bash. Adolf Krypl announced that he had discovered something called an anvil school from which we could obtain any number of anvils in all sorts of shapes and sizes. To this day I have failed to discover what goes on at the anvil school, or what career you adopt once you have graduated there, but we were grateful for its existence.

John Culshaw, Ring Resounding
Copyright © 1967 by John Culshaw. All rights reserved.

Posted 10 October 1996

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