Editing Richard Wagner (section)

===== Completing the ''Ring'' =====
When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of ''Siegfried'' and for ''[[Götterdämmerung]]'' (''Twilight of the Gods'') as the final part of the ''Ring'', his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of ''Rheingold'' and ''Walküre'', though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs.{{sfn|Millington|2001a|pp=294–295}} This was in part because the libretti of the four ''Ring'' operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for ''Götterdämmerung'' was conceived more "traditionally" than that of ''Rheingold'';{{sfn|Millington|2001a|p=286}} still, the self-imposed strictures of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' had become relaxed. The differences also result from Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he wrote ''Tristan'', ''Meistersinger'' and the Paris version of ''Tannhäuser''.{{sfn|Puffett|1984|p=43}} From Act&nbsp;3 of ''Siegfried'' onwards, the ''Ring'' becomes more [[chromaticism|chromatic]] melodically, more complex harmonically and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs.{{sfn|Puffett|1984|pp=48–49}}

Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed ''Götterdämmerung'' in 1874. The ''Ring'' takes about 15 hours to perform{{sfn|Millington|2001a|p=285}} and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages.