Ride of the Valkyries

Three minutes of orchestral theater so effective it has become synonymous with momentum itself — Wagner's entrance music for the warrior women of Norse myth, first played by eight French horns in unison before the full orchestra joins in a galloping compound meter that simply refuses to slow down. The harmonic language is straightforward, almost crude by Wagnerian standards, but the piece's power lies in its elemental simplicity: ascending arpeggio figures in the bass, sustained dissonances in the brass, woodwinds in whirling sixteenth-note patterns. The emotional character is pure kinetic energy — it sounds like what it depicts, something enormous approaching at great speed. Culturally it has migrated so completely into film, advertising, and popular culture that the original operatic context is almost irrelevant. Used in Apocalypse Now, the original context was restored: an approach of overwhelming military force. The piece achieves its effect in any context because its mechanism is physical, not narrative.