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The Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103, by Richard Wagner is a symphonic poem for Chamber music orchestra.
The original title was Triebschen Idyll with Fidi's birdsong and the orange sunrise, as symphonic birthday greeting. Presented to his Cosima by her Richard. "Fidi" was the family's nickname for their son Siegfried. It is thought that the birdsong and the sunrise refer to incidents of personal significance to the couple.
Wagner's opera Siegfried, which was premiered in 1876, incorporates music from the Idyll. Wagner adapted the material from an unfinished chamber piece into the Idyll before giving the theme to Brünnhilde in the opera's final scene, the "Ewig war ich" love duet between Brünnhilde and Sigurd. This theme, Wagner claimed, came to him during the summer of 1864 at the Villa Pellet, overlooking Lake Starnberg, where he and Cosima consummated their union. He is contradicted, however, by his own obsessive record keeping: the melody was composed that 14 November, when he was alone in Munich. The work also uses a theme based on the German lullaby, "Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf", which was jotted down by Wagner on New Year's Eve 1868 and introduced by a solo oboe. Ernest Newman discovered it was linked to the Wagners' older daughter Eva Chamberlain. This and other musical references, whose meaning remained unknown to the outside world for many years, reveal the idyll's levels of personal significance for both Wagner and Cosima.
Wagner originally intended the Siegfried Idyll to remain a private piece. However, due to financial pressures, he decided to sell the score to publisher Schott Music in 1878. In doing so, Wagner expanded the orchestration to 35 players to make the piece more marketable. The original piece is scored for a small chamber orchestra of 13 players: flute, oboe, two , bassoon, two French horn, trumpet, two , viola, cello and double bass. The piece is commonly played today by orchestras with more than one player on each string part. Modern performances are much slower than those of earlier years.Brown, Jonathan (2012). Great Wagner Conductors – A Listener's Companion. O'Connor, A.C.T.: Parrot Press, pp. 769–770 (a list of timings from Hans Richter, 14 min 30 s, to Hans Knappertsbusch, 20 min 36 s)
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