Richard Wagner, master of the very long piece, was also master of the very short. This is it:

[Aristus]

The coda of this short piece has an interesting provenance. It is known as the 'Redemption Through Love' theme, or motif, and it appears at the very end of the final opera in Richard Wagner's four-opera masterpiece, Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Despite its importance to the finale, the theme had appeared only once before in the saga, near the end of Die Walkure, the second of the four operas.

I won't go into the complexities of the story, but suffice it to say that the theme heralds the end of a world-shattering quest for power, and points to the possibility of a world in which love rules, instead. It took Wagner around twenty-eight years to compose all four operas, and at times, scrambling for funds, running from debt collectors or from jealous husbands whose wives Wagner had seduced, or being kicked out of various countries due to his revolutionary fervor, it seemed he would never finish.

He finally wrote the last few notes of the score, featuring this theme, on an afternoon in the early 1870's. As is common after the conclusion of an emotionally draining experience, Wagner lashed out emotionally, picking a stupid quarrel with his wife, Cosima, daughter of Franz Liszt, and the former wife of one of Wagner's admirers. She was very hurt by this naturally, and so Wagner attempted to atone for his behavior by writing this piece.

He had their children perform it for her on Christmas morning, and the short piece concluded with the Redemption theme Wagner had penned on the afternoon of their fight.

Quite a moving way to say 'I'm sorry'...


A short article on the Redemption theme:

http://thewagnerblog.com/2012/03/that-d-flat-theme/