niebelungen

Updated: October 1, 2025

But had the North American continent been able to produce musical art, it could have produced none more indigenous, more really autochthonous, than that of Richard Wagner. Whitman was right when he termed these scores "the music of the 'Leaves." For nowhere did the forest of the Niebelungen flourish more lushly, more darkly, than upon the American coasts and mountains and plains.

Paul Rosenfeld - Musical Portraits: Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers

Attila's exploits, and the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic sword, repeatedly occur in the Sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the celebrated Niebelungen Lied, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is full of them. There Etsel or Attila, is described as the wearer of twelve mighty crowns, and as promising to his bride the lands of thirty kings, whom his irresistible sword has subdued.

Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy - The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo

It was as though I had been given a selection from Die Niebelungen Lied when I had looked for rag-time. But the natives are passionately fond of them, it being by no means uncommon, I was told, for a dance to begin in the late afternoon and continue without interruption until daybreak.

E. Alexander (Edward Alexander) Powell - Where the Strange Trails Go Down: Sulu, Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Straits: Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Cambodia, Annam,: Cochin-China

We must therefore say no longer "this child is growing nicely" but, "he composes himself splendidly," and we congratulate Herr Duehring upon the fact that he is not only a peer of the author of the Niebelungen Ring in his opinion of himself but in his own particular capacity is also a composer of the future.

Friedrich Engels - Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"