Chapter 12

'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'

I

The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing _Tristan_, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the reader, to consider the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ immediately after _Tristan_. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the second opera in its true chronological order. The _Nibelung's Ring_ was still in abeyance; _Tristan_ finished, Wagner, in search of means of subsistence--the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast giving out--undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861 his last hopes of a Paris success with _Tannhäuser_ were extinguished; his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." The _Mastersingers_ had been sketched, as we know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an entirely different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of the _Mastersingers_ his contentment should endure any length of time. No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862 that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say, will occupy us presently.

In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many another city, a guild of minstrels--at once poets and musicians. The name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing _Tannhäuser_, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the _Mastersingers_ that hangs from _Tannhäuser_ I beg the reader not to ask me. There is this similarity: the central scene of each is a minstrel-contest; there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he went ahead and wrote the poem.

All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number of entries--as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter. There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the _Mastersingers_, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and goodly sport is expected. Hans Sachs himself, though past middle-age, loves her, and might well hope to win; Beckmesser, another master of the guild, means to do his best; and a young knight, Walther von Stolzing, has just become infatuated with her and she with him. He cannot strive in the contest, however, not being a master; and when he submits to a trial the guild rejects him with scorn. Things have arrived at this point at the end of the first Act. In the next, Walther and Eva, desperate, resolve to fly under cover of darkness; Sachs overhears them planning and sings a curious sort of warning-song, letting them know that he is on the look-out and will prevent the elopement; Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva, and David, an apprentice, thinks he has come after _his_ (David's) sweetheart and falls to fisticuffs with him; there is a street row, amidst which Eva escapes into her father's house, while Sachs pulls Walther into his. In the third Act Eva, who has already told Sachs quite plainly enough that if only a master may win her, and Walther cannot become a master, she prefers him to any other, practically repeats her hint. But Walther has composed another song and Sachs has devised a scheme: if Walther sings his song he is certain to be the victor, and Sachs has determined that by hook or by crook he must sing it. Beckmesser grabs the song, under the impression it is by Sachs; Sachs, without committing himself, tells him to make use of it at the contest if he can. The people gather to watch and hear and judge; Beckmesser makes a muddle of the song and is laughed off the scene; then Sachs pleads Walther's case, and he is allowed, though not a master, to sing. He triumphs, and by one stroke is admitted to the guild and wins the prize. Virtually the play ends here. Sachs' winding-up address can only be dealt with in connection with the music.

II

The personality, the soul, of Sachs, its conflict with itself, its victory over itself and renunciation--undoubtedly Wagner felt this to be the centre of the action of the play, and undoubtedly without it he could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of old Nuremberg--a vision as indissolubly blent with music as was the vision of the river and the swan with the music of _Lohengrin_. One may say truly that once the germ of the dramatic action was in Wagner's brain he needed the musico-pictorial inspiration of the scenic environment and atmosphere before the thing took final shape and he could compose the music. He says explicitly this was so in the case of the _Dutchman_; in _Tannhäuser_ it is perhaps a little less obviously the case. But even in that second of the great operas we need only read his directions for the right performing of it to see of what importance to him were the different scenes--the hot, steaming cave of Venus, the fresh spring morning by the roadside, the great hall of song--about which he was very particular--the autumn woods in the last act. In his letters to Uhlig this comes out very plainly: for instance, he gives as his reason for cutting down the finale of the last act that it was impossible at Dresden to get a glorious sunrise, with which the work should end. I have already laid sufficient stress on the true source of _Lohengrin_; in _Tristan_ adequate and appropriate scenery is absolutely demanded to sustain the atmosphere; and here, in the _Mastersingers_, music and a series of pictures go together, and the pictures seem to inspire the music--or rather, music and pictures are parts of the first inner vision.

Mediæval Nuremberg, with its thousand gable-ends, its fragrant lime-trees and gardens, its ancient customs, its processions of the guilds and crafts, its watchman with his horn and lantern, calling the hour, its freshness and quaint loveliness by day and its sweetness on soft summer nights--it is these Wagner employed all his superb musico-pictorial art to depict; they are the background to the purely human element of the play, and at the same time they help to express that element. If the _Mastersingers_ was a little less successful as a work of art we should still have to regard it as an amazing _tour de force_. The opera is far too great for that term--one at once of praise and of reproach. The music is full of the spirit of a past world; but the feeling of that world is not got by the use of artificially archaic phrases or harmonies. Kothner's reading of the rules of correct minstrelsy is one of the exceptions, and the night-watchman's crying of the hour is another; but these, as Lamb said of Coleridge's philosophic preaching, are "only his fun." The melodies are often quite Weberesque in contour; the harmonies are either plain work-a-day ones or modern--so modern that no one had used them before. Nor it is by the sadness of the music alone that he gains his end: some of the merriest scenes belong, by reason of the music, to mediæval times. By his art, the intensity of his feeling for those times, and the fidelity with which he could express every shade of feeling, he conjures up this vision out of the dead and dusty past, makes the dead and dusty past live again, takes us clean into it and keeps us there a whole evening without for a moment letting the spell be broken. It is significant that the very title he gave his work is a peremptory warning to us of what to expect: it is not _Hans Sachs_, nor _Walther von Stolzing_, nor even the _Mastersinger_, etc., but in the plural form, the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_. This is not to cast doubt on Wagner's sincerity when he declared that he only got the creative impulse to go on with his work when he had conceived Sachs as Sachs now stands: it is only to say that his extraordinary sense of colour, atmosphere, and his historical sense, led him to do much more than he thought he was doing and perhaps realized he had done.

The overture as plainly as the title of the opera proclaims the composer's purpose: it sums up the solid and pompous old burghers, the impudent apprentices, the love of Walther and Eva, and says nothing about Sachs. As an afterthought, in fact, Sachs is left for the prelude to the third act. As a piece of music, detachable from the opera, and by no means an integral part of it as is the case with the _Tristan_ prelude, the overture transcends every other work of Wagner's. As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of musical art--not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty. The energy of the thing is almost superabundant; the gorgeous colouring is dazzling; and every minutest fibre of it lives. The first theme is another landmark in musical history. The harmonisation is extraordinary, not only for its gigantic strength, but for the free employment of chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so employed throughout the _Mastersingers_ that it sounds diatonic. Throughout _Tristan_ and in the Venusberg music of _Tannhäuser_ chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; but here we have music that is as solid, equable, serene as a Handel eight-part chorus. With consummate skill the stream of music is, so to say, led on to the theme that always accompanies the mastersingers, as distinguished from the citizens, of Nuremberg; next Walther's song is extemporised upon (no other phrase serves) for a couple of minutes--the most passionate page in the opera--and after that come the apprentices. We shall presently observe that Wagner in this opera made light-hearted fun of the pundits, and as if to show them that he had a right to do so he played with the devices that to them were a very serious business indeed. What to them was an end--I mean all the tricks of counterpoint--was to him a means to expression: more expressive music was never dreamed of in a musician's imagination, and at the same time he accomplished with ease part-writing that the most skilful contrapuntists could only perform by labouring long at expressionless, stale old themes first contrived before the Flood to "work well," as the phrase goes. The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the length, so that it sounds four times as fast. The effect is unexpectedly droll, the music skips about in the most irresponsible way, and (when one knows what it is meant for) depicts the gambols of the herd of young rascals who come on the scene in the first act. This contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers' music. There is a good deal of _tour de force_ about this, but the result justifies the means: the superb melody swings over the ponderous bass, both melody and bass singing out clear and strong amidst an animated, bustling and whirling sea of merry tunes.

Composers generally left the composition of the overture till last--as it were doing the thing only because an overture had to be written--but Wagner knew the importance of his work and must have composed this one very early; for in 1862, five years earlier than the completion of the opera and six before the first representation, he directed a performance of it in the Gewandhaus at Leipzig. He never was a favourite in that stodgy city, the headquarters of musical Judea, and the audience is said to have been scanty. In fact, he himself said that, although he gave concerts only to gain money, he never made any profits until he went to Russia. The audience, if small, was enthusiastic. But, without entertaining any delusions about persecution and the deliberate ignoring of his work, it is easy to see that such music as this could not possibly be understood at once. Though this overture is clarity itself to our ears, it is terribly complicated, and the style was absolutely new. I doubt whether the players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time. There was no "form"--no statement of first and second subject, no working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring--these were a mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting. Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his nights to raising a stone wall of misunderstanding between the composer's music and the ears of the audience; and at this game Wagner was an adept. The generation rising up to-day finds it hard to see what an earlier generation found to carp at in Wagner's music; in fifty years' time the war between Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites will be inexplicable, and the story of it may not improbably be regarded as grossly exaggerated, if not a pure myth. Men of my generation know very well it was an ugly and stupid reality; we know also it was brought about by the Wagnerites. Not Wagner's "discords," his "lack of melody," his "formlessness" and so on hindered an almost instantaneous appreciation of his music, but the "explanations" of the music. Things easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were "explained" as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the "revolution" Wagner had brought about in music. No wonder many good folks were distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it, believing the Wagnerites' claim that their master had rejected all the rules observed by previous composers. Wagner's own account of this overture is enough to turn a man's hair grey and to break a woman's heart. Had he only written a good deal less prose--or none at all!

The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest song in existence. Nearly all the characters are supposed to be singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of themselves and a bad song provokes a street riot; the opera winds up with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song. If there must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero. We hear snatches of it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory with a choral accompaniment. There are interludes, of course--Wagner knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained; but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the clear-cut songs interspersed are parts. Even in the 'sixties, when nothing later than _Lohengrin_ was known, the charge was brought against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung --the _Mastersingers_ was his answer. The overture leads into the first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the musical texture as the opera proceeds. We see part of the inside of a church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending to her devotions. Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of hymn-tunes--a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and makes them serve as a voice for Walther's feelings on seeing Eva for a second time: on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in love with each other. The next real song-music begins to flow with the entry of the singers' guild; but meantime there has been some music of the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of _Tristan_. Recitative--often broken sentences and mere ejaculations--merges imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment. The apparatus, in a word, is precisely the same as in _Tristan_. In this first scene Walther pleads his suit with Eva and her maidservant Magdalena; then we have the apprentices, amongst them Magdalena's sweetheart David, to some rollicking choruses and to their own music--the burghers' music played four times as fast; and next David instructs Walther in the rules to be observed if he wishes to compose a master-song and to be admitted to the guild. Here Wagner indulges in positively uproarious satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music Wagner wrote in his _Rienzi_ days, with sneers at the Jewish composers of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he wants to learn how to sing, not to cobble boots.

The entry of the masters is a scene that only Wagner could have executed. A stream of Mozartian melody ripples on as the men shake hands and go through the conventional business of the gathering of people on the stage: what in the operas of the day--a dozen instances might be mentioned--is wearisome stodge is here turned into a thing of surpassing beauty. These shifting shadows of the old world become for the moment alive; yet we see them as though across the centuries through the magical web of music. The steady swaying motion of the accompaniment--and, of course, the whole charm lies in the accompaniment--has a curious resemblance to the duet of the Don and Zerlina in the first act of _Don Giovanni_, though Mozart's score is simplicity itself compared with this. This use of a kind of rocking figure led many younger musicians astray; and I make a comparison between their use of it and Wagner's with no intention of being odious to any one, but to show exactly where Wagner's superiority lay. Take a composer of very fine genius, Anton Dvoràk, and look at a beautiful number (beautiful in a primitive, almost savage way) in his _Stabat Mater_, the _Eia, mater_. The theme of this (_a_, page 318) is a descendant, with several of Wagner's subjects, and three or four at least of Sir Edward Elgar's, of the opening of Handel's "Ev'ry valley." Dvoràk's form of it is quite original, but he never gets any further: he cannot develop his subject. He adds an echoing, antiphonal phrase; but even with this help he gets no further. At a first hearing of this really very sincere and for moments entrancing work one hopes for the best at the end of the first dozen bars; but better is not to be. The theme becomes an accompanying figure to some not very engaging choral passages: in the invention of the theme the whole force seems to have gone out of the man: he has no power of achieving a climax save by the addition of instruments: a growing climax to him means nothing more than growing noise, and the grand climax is only the noisiest passage of all. The one figure is repeated over and over again, always with more instruments, until at last the complete battery of the modern orchestra is hard at it, and Dvoràk's resources are at an end. Now look at our mighty Wagner. He takes the simplest of figures (_b_), plays with it, with seeming carelessness, for a while, then adds what is, technically, a counterpoint to it; he develops that counterpoint, adds melody on melody--always keeping his figure going, that the thing may be held together--until, after a rich and ever broadening and deepening tide of music, he gets his climax at the predetermined dramatic moment; and the climax does not consist of noise, but is in the stuff of the music. Development, real development, is not mere juggling with musical subjects, but continuous invention of melodies, and the driving-force behind it is the ceaseless craving of the spirit to express itself fully.

Even more striking than this instance is the treatment of a figure heard first when Pogner announces to the assembled mastersingers his intention of giving his daughter Eva as the prize in next day's contest. "To-morrow is Midsummer Day," he sings, and this figure (_c_) sounds from the orchestra. It is made up of two distinct sections. That formed by the first two bars is used largely as an accompaniment, but it continually comes round to the third and fourth bars, and counterpoints are added until at last we are far away from the beginning, though, as in the example discussed above, the figure welds all together into a coherent whole for the intellect to grasp apart from the appeal the music makes to "the feeling." This "feeling" of Wagner's was absolutely right, it was infallible; and in consequence we find a curious state of affairs is promptly established. The rich, joyous strain of music, lull of the feeling of summer, immediately becomes what was, so to say, at the back of Wagner's mind--the sense of a spring not known to ordinary mortals, the everlasting spring of Montsalvat, a spring full of promise and just as full of regrets, the spring Tennyson sings of--

Is it regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes?

The enchanting flood of music wells up from the orchestra, and the vocal writing for Pogner is in Wagner's most lordly manner: there is not a hint of the mechanical "faking" which characterises similar passages in the _Ring_. If it was necessary to think that one part was written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived simultaneously. The interweaving becomes ever more marvellous as the speech proceeds, the burgher theme in a varied form being added, until at last, with the acclamations of the masters, it culminates in a passage at once dramatically true, supremely beautiful and as elaborate in its texture as any Bach fugue. We used to hear much of the necessity for ambitious young composers to devote years to the study of text-book counterpoint--indeed, the failure of many youthful gentlemen to achieve anything on the grand scale has often been attributed to their lack of diligence, their want of patience with professorial instruction: yet here we have music which, from the scientific point of view, is as perfect as any in the world, composed by a daring soul who had no more than six months' teaching. It may be remarked in passing that Spohr, in his naïve way a good enough fugue-writer, never received any instruction at all: in point of effectiveness his fugues beat anything coming from the Jadassohn and Hauptmann pupils.

With the re-entry of Walther and his proposal as a member of the guild by Pogner, we get another of these great phrases, half-theme, half-accompanying figure, and then Walther's spring song. He describes how, sitting by the hearth in winter, he first learnt the art of minstrelsy from reading "das alte Buch" of the greatest of minstrels, Walther von der Vogelweide; then when the winter had passed he heard the birds in the green trees singing the selfsame song. Thematically this is much richer than the spring-song in, for instance, the _Valkyrie_, and for the best of reasons--that in the _Valkyrie_ is incidental, part of a long duet woven from quite other material, while that in the _Mastersingers_ is itself the material of a large portion of the opera. The tune of the first stanza in the _Valkyrie_ is only referred to once again throughout the work; and by far the most expressive part is made out of a love-theme previously heard. In the _Mastersingers_ song there is subject-matter enough to make a whole opera. From this point it is impossible to quote themes--they are far too long. In this respect a writer on music is at a disadvantage with a writer on literature; the latter can cite long passages to establish a case or illustrate his meaning; the unfortunate musical writer must refer his readers to scores, and it is inconvenient to sit amidst a pile of these--and Wagner's are the longest and weightiest in existence--and dive now here, now there, to follow the author without danger of mistaking him. The most important passage in Walther's song begins at bar 13 (counting from the beginning of the nine-eight measure); and it is developed in as masterly a fashion as any of the earlier subjects, only now the style is symphonic, in the Viennese way, as the others were contrapuntal. The whole thing is full of the yearning spirit of spring; and, not at all strangely, bears a marked family likeness to Siegfried's song about his mother in the _Ring_. Throughout the deliberations of the masters the music remains at a high level: there are no _longueurs_; dry recitative and barren attempts to treat prose poetically alike are absent. Kothner's delivery of the rules of the art are good-natured fun; Wagner, with his parody of eighteenth-century mannerisms, laughing at the wiseacres who wished to tie down modern musicians to the procedure of their forbears. Walther's trial song, with its gorgeous instrumentation, and the rush of the winds of March through budding woods, is even finer than the first; and it contains passages which are employed with exquisite effect in the next Act. There occurs a deal of what can only be called musical horseplay as Beckmesser, the pedant type, hidden behind a curtain, marks Walther's "mistakes"; then comes the only phrase (_d_) in the opera which can be said to be definitely associated with Hans Sachs. It stands first for Sachs' honest longing for the _new_; and afterwards it is made to express the longing in his soul for other things. With the consummate craftsmanship Wagner possessed at this period he adds to the score the utterance of the masters' disapproval, of Sachs' approval, of Beckmesser's pedantic maliciousness, of the riotous fooling of the apprentices, until we have them all hard at work united in accompanying Walther's song in what is nothing more nor less than a grand operatic finale. The thing is justified theatrically, so to speak, rather than truly dramatically; for though the masters manifest dissatisfaction by their ejaculations, and the 'prentices, seeing the way the wind blows, get out of hand, and chant their scoffing song in the most uproarious fashion, Walther, inspired by a sense that he is right and a determination not to be put down, continues his song to the end. Then he proudly quits the room and the rest follow in confusion, leaving Sachs for a moment to show his vexation; then the curtain drops.

III

The music of this Act is of the highest order of beauty and never falls to the level of mere prettiness; from the first note to the last it is vigorous, sturdy. The combination of strength with delicacy and gentleness is extraordinary: one feels that the reserve of this strength behind it all must be unlimited. The orchestration is like the music: it is always exactly appropriate to the music. One characteristic of the themes should be noted: with the solitary exception of that expressive of the deep longing in the heart of Sachs (_d_) all are singable. Even the burgher motive can be sung and is sung. When we consider the other operas we perceive that this is by no means always the case. The _Dutchman's_ motive is not so much sung as jodelled by Senta; the Montsalvat music is rather orchestral than vocal; all the motives in _Tristan_ are either orchestral or declamatory. In saying this I do not at all underrate the other operas: simply I wish to point out the very marked difference in the quality of the music. The _Mastersingers_ is a long song, and the first act the first verse of it. Such a profusion of melodies has never been scattered over one act of an opera--not songs simply pleasing to the ear, but constituting subjects surcharged with feeling and capable of unfolding, as the opera goes on, into fresh forms of the rarest beauty and splendour. We cannot lay our finger on a superfluous bar, not one that can be cut without badly injuring the whole work. This criticism applies to the other two acts. As new material is introduced it is all singable; though harmonious effects are freely used they are all there to enforce the melody. The swan, or river, phrase in _Lohengrin_ is, of course, purely an effect of harmony; but in this glorification of song Wagner seemed determined to trust entirely to song and use his harmonic resources and devices--which were inexhaustible--another day. Only once does he resort to them: in the third act when Walther tells Sachs he has had a lovely dream, by a single unexpected chord he gets the dream atmosphere he wanted. At the same time the harmonies throughout are freer, more daring, than they are even in _Tristan_. They are managed with consummate mastery, the sharp collisions of the many winding voices of the orchestra occurring infallibly in precisely the right place. As I have said, not Bach himself managed a score of many parts with finer mastery, nor gives one a more satisfying sense of complete security; not Bach, nor Handel, nor Mozart was a greater contrapuntist; instructively, instinctively, he knew the way his stream of music was going, and so mighty a craftsman had he grown that to achieve new harmonies and harmonic progressions by the interweaving of many melodies, each individual and expressive, seems almost like child's-play to him. But the old saying, easy reading means hard writing, is true in the case of the _Mastersingers_. We have only to glance at Wagner's letters to see the labour all his later works cost him, and his incessant complaints about the state of his nerves are significant. The writing of the _Mastersingers_ was spread over six years. It does not matter whether it was written easily or with difficulty--the marvel is that it was written at all.

IV

The first act is the song of spring, the second one of a beauteous summer night. The night slowly falls, and lights are seen at the windows of the gabled houses. The apprentices put up the shutters of the shops and bar the doors. We have old Nuremberg before our eyes; by Sachs' door is the inevitable elder-tree, by Pogner's the just as inevitable lime; and as surely as Schumann caught the scent of flowers from a piece of Chopin's, do we catch the fragrance of those trees in Wagner's music. The 'prentices, hard at work, merrily chant "Midsummer's Eve" ("Johannestag"--not a precise translation), and banter David concerning that very serious matter, his courtship of Magdalena, the accompaniment being spun largely from the midsummer theme of the first act. The atmosphere, sweet, clear, redolent of the old world, and seeming to sparkle with excitement about the coming joys of the morrow, is first created by a prelude scarce thirty bars long. Through more than half of this section we get shakes and arpeggios on one (technical) discord (_e_), with snatches of the midsummer theme, and the exhilaration of the eve of a holiday given to us in this very simplest of ways shows the miracle worker in his happiest mood. Like the opening of the _Rhinegold_, this brief prelude is an exemplification of Wagner's advice to young composers--never travel out of the key you are in if you can say in it what you have to say. The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal--in fact, the whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is Beckmesser or no one. Dramatically the scene is of the lightest, but Wagner seizes the opportunity to paint a musical picture of Nuremberg as Pogner holds forth on the festivities arranged for the morrow; never did he give us anything more delightful than this picture of a mediæval city, anything more beautifully or more fully charged with the sense of the past. They go in, and shortly Sachs comes out; he tells David to arrange his tools and get away to bed, and sits down, intending to work outside. The hammering motive (_f_) sounds out vigorously for a couple of minutes; but Sachs is already dreaming of Walther's song, and presently we get a phrase of it in a shape of superb beauty--the fifty times distilled essence of spring is in it--then another bit of it is taken and used as an accompaniment with most enchanting effect: one feels the cool night breeze touching Sachs' cheek, and, as in the introduction, one scents the aroma of lime and elder--

"The elder scent floats round me; so mild, so rich it falls, Its sweetness weighs upon me; words from my heart it calls...."

With its gently rocking motion and the tremolando in the bass it is as beautiful in its way as the opening scene, already discussed, of the second Act of _Tristan_--the picture of the brook running through the darkness from the fountain in King Mark's castle garden. Sachs abruptly ceases, and sets to work; and the hammering phrase is heard again, now combined with the beginning of another subject, liker than ever to Siegfried's great song--the very harmonies as well as the general rhythm are the same--and this subject is developed before long into the Cobbler's song. But "and still that strain I hear"; and he stops and dreams again over Walther's song. "Springtime's behest, within his breast, on heart and voice there was laid," he sings; and to music compact of sheer loveliness he praises the song, terminating with a passage which I take to be nine bars of vocal writing as fine as can be found in the whole of music--"The bird who sang this morn."

Eva steals out from her father's door, and at once the dramatic motive of the action deepens. We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love. Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the other shaped from a fragment of Walther's first song; these two are gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in expressiveness, until Eva's secret is no secret from the audience, though Sachs himself is supposed not to be at first quite sure about it. When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase (_d_), and its full significance is brought out. The real Hans Sachs, we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily. That, obviously, was too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera--every one would have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this: that Wagner created a soul for _his_ Sachs. Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and disastrous cad. In the trial scene he has already half divined Walther's object, and the theme (_d_) in its application hints not only at his longing to grasp "the new" in Walther's song, but also his longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to renounce her in favour of the younger suitor. Towards the end of the opera, when Sachs brings the young pair together he says (to music quoted from _Tristan_) he would not play the part of King Mark and thus invite his Isolda to find a Tristan. I ask the reader to compare this phrase with one form of the first love-theme in _Tristan_ (_g_). The essential notes are the same; but as a melody is made to sound another and different thing by varying the harmonies, there is in the Sachs phrase a touch of sadness, nearly hopelessness, but no hint of it in the _Tristan_ form. The true meaning is not obvious when it first occurs: Sachs seems simply to be the appreciator of true art and to be standing up for the true artist Walther against the barren pedant Beckmesser.

And I beg leave here to make a digression. I have spoken of Wagner's obsession by the notion that he could by his union of drama, music, pictorial art, etc., make his work clear enough to be understood at a first performance: in his letters he referred to a plan for giving the _Ring_ only once and then burning the theatre and the score--he did not add the composer and the artists. Unfortunately this view has been taken as a tenable one by good critics, and it has been argued seriously that such a phrase as (_d_) is meaningless, because its significance becomes apparent only in the second act. No great work of art can be seen at one glance--least of all Wagner's. If a painter puts before us a picture, say, of Perseus and Andromeda, we know at any rate what it is about; and there is no difficulty in understanding a Madonna. But, with the exception of the _Dutchman_, Wagner reshaped all his subjects so that, for instance, an acquaintance with the Nibelung legends is rather a hindrance than a help to a swift understanding of the _Ring_. At first his King Mark is a puzzle to those who know the Arthurian legends; and in the same way, if the Sachs of history is confounded with Wagner's Sachs, we are at once utterly at sea. But a knowledge of Wagner's Sachs can scarcely be acquired from the words alone: more is told us in the music than in the words; and before we can grasp the drama as well as Wagner's use of phrases we must hear the opera many, many times. I deny that this is an illegitimate mode of appeal to an audience; I deny that the indispensability of knowing an opera thoroughly before you judge it is to imply that it is less than a very great work of art; I affirm that the nobler, profounder, more beautiful a work of art, the more necessary it is to be able to look at every passage with a full consciousness of all that is to come after, as well as of what has gone before. Wagner himself was compact of contradictions, and so, while trying to create his operas in such fashion that a single performance would suffice to reveal their splendour, he took the precaution to write detailed explanations which might serve the same purpose as many previous performances; and he also wrote explanations of Beethoven's symphonies.

Throughout this long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser. A scene of such length, constructed on such a plan, could have been carried through by no other composer than Wagner--the sweetness, variety and dramatic strength and truth are Wagner at his ripest and best. After Eva's heart has been opened to us he takes up (_d_), and though Sachs is a little grumpy--the effort to resign Eva inevitably though insensibly showing itself--we learn all about him and share his secret, too, in a very short while. Then Magdalena calls Eva and tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera. Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin to one of the greatest in _Euryanthe_. As we get on we find it harder to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing. The gentle evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning the masters who compose and sing only by rule--and, by the way, what would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?--works himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise is heard in the distance, the watchman's cow-horn. A minute's silence, and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music--expressive of the love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk to look after their lights and fires: it is ten o'clock (late hours) in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs. Sachs has heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off disaster in one shape at any rate: he places a light so that they cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to perform his serenade. From this point Wagner, without ever ceasing to be the consummate artist or allowing the old-world atmosphere to weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out for a holiday. He begins his splendid song, a parable: Eve was well enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the Lord sent a shoemaker to save her. The words are in the very spirit of the Middle Ages: a materialistic, naïve, literal handling of spiritual things; but the most devout of believers can find no cause of offence. The song opens, as I have mentioned, in the rhythm (4-4 instead of 3-4) of the Sword scene, the harmonies being practically the same. The tune is one of Wagner's finest: indeed, if we did not know what he could do, if we could not hear the opera once in a while, we should refuse to believe that such dignity and beauty of utterance could be kept up alongside of the grave old cobbler's humorous bedevilment. Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva--mistaking Magdalena at the window in Eva's dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser's new shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for every mistake. Before this is arranged there is a long altercation, and as the heat of the men's temper dies down that sweet love melody of the old world creeps in again; but then the farce commences. Beckmesser's song is almost outrageous caricature; the parody of the academics of Wagner's day who made no mistakes from the academic point of view, and yet could write nothing that sounded right, is excruciatingly funny; then David, under the impression that the chief of the academics is serenading Magdalena, comes out, goes in to fetch a stick, comes out again armed, and sets to work with it upon Beckmesser; the good burghers have been annoyed by Beckmesser's caterwauling and Sachs' hammering; out they come to keep their streets in order; and the tumult begins in serious earnest. Every one hits at every one else, as Irishmen hit, it is said, at Donnybrook Fair; Beckmesser is sadly injured; Sachs kicks David indoors, Eva and Magdalena are got in to Pogner's; Sachs gets Walther in with him also; the row dies down. No one save Sachs and David knows how it started; no one knows why it ends. It is--allowing for the lapse of four centuries--rather like a cab accident in London or any other great city: ladies in night attire look out of windows, and, seeing their husbands engaged in deadly warfare, in the very spirit of Miss Miggs begin to empty pails of cold water over the combatants indiscriminately. Apparently this cools the ardour of everybody. One by one the crowd makes for shelter; the watchman's horn is heard a few streets away; and when he arrives with his lantern and stick a few minutes later the alley and platz are deserted. The moon shines out on the lovely scene; the old man chants his call--it is eleven of the night; all the world should be in bed; all the lights and fires should be out; he goes off, leaving us the wondrous picture of old Nuremberg sleeping in the heart of old Germany; and the curtain slowly falls. A very ineffective "curtain" it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in the 'sixties, and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of the dramatic works of the world.

It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now. I have referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this mastery. Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with nobility. Sachs' song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its joviality we feel the greatness of the man--a man so great in character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving banners are needed to make him impressive: he remains, even while he works at his last and sings a sort of club-dinner song, the simple cobbler-poet, great by reason of his sincerity and his artist-soul. The street scrimmage is the most realistic thing of the sort ever attempted, not to say achieved. It is customary to describe the music as a fugue, and, if that is so, no more unfugue-like fugue was ever penned. It begins with a parody of a fugue, the answer being announced before the subject--that is, what purports to be the answer occurs a fifth instead of a fourth below; then what purports to be the subject is re-announced one tone above its first statement, and answered, as before, a fifth below. Then the melody of Beckmesser's grotesque is brought in and treated contrapuntally, with what theorists call free imitation in the accompaniment. Fugue, real or tonal, there is none.

V

This midsummer night's orgy over, we next have midsummer day. The curtain rises; the early morning sun shines through the windows of Sachs' house; Sachs sits there, a book on his knees, but dreaming, not reading. But before the rising of the curtain there is a prelude to tell us of his musings. When we know the opera this piece is easy enough to follow. He thinks over the events of the past night, and passes through thought into dream, getting clean away from earth into a serener air--and coming slowly back to earth again. Structurally this piece is on the same plan as others of the preludes--that of the third act of _Tannhäuser_, for example. It is nonsense to say the piece is meaningless because it cannot be fully grasped at a first hearing: I have already spoken of the fallacy involved in that contention--the fallacy that a work of art should be completely comprehensible at a first hearing. It is equally nonsensical to decry the "literary" method of composition: that method was the method of at least two others of the great composers, Haydn and Beethoven, who "worked to a story." In fact, all these unreasonable reasoners who tell us these fine incontrovertible pieces of absurdity place themselves on the same level as the pundits who pointed out that because Wagner used the piano when composing, therefore he could not compose--forgetting Haydn's explicit statement that he always composed at the piano; forgetting how Mozart spent hours and days at the piano in doing the creative work of a new opera; forgetting that Beethoven used the piano even when he could no longer hear it (see Schindler's or Ries' account of the composition of the "Appassionata" sonata). As a mere piece of music, a succession of tones and combinations of tones, the rare quality of this prelude cannot but be felt; and though we may not at once grasp its full significance, no one can miss the sequence of the emotions expressed--the grave reflection of the opening, the hymn-like succeeding passage, the gradual mounting of the music into a beauteous, calm morning air, some realm of ecstatic peace far above the clouds, the gradual return to the mood of the opening. When we do know what it is all about the expression of the different stages of feeling is felt to be more precise--that is all.

The prelude prepares for Sachs' monologue, a profound thing, and one moreover entirely new--had Shakespeare been a musician he might have done something like it. Then David the Irresponsible enters, and we get some more of Wagner's exquisite fooling; next we have Walther with his "dream," out of which the Prize-song is made. This is a long scene--perhaps a little too long--for Wagner seems to have been determined that if the audience did not feel the beauty of his melody it should not be for want of hearing it often enough. As Walther sings Sachs takes it down in tablature, calling out to him what sections are next required. Sachs then declares that this is indeed a master-song, and will win Walther the prize he so much desires; he and Walther go off to attire themselves for the contest, and Beckmesser limps in. In dumb show he describes his aches and pains and shows how he is thinking of his thrashing of the night before; and what he does not say the orchestra says very plainly for him. There is far too much of it--for English tastes, at any rate--before he is alarmed by discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs' handwriting. He snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great ceremony, and there is a row--Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other. Let me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner's stage craftsmanship at its best. There is nothing conventional in the way Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser his chance: what more natural than that they should go to prepare themselves? Nor is the finding of the manuscript one of those things that give people who don't like opera cause to blaspheme: Sachs simply left it on the table to dry until he returned for it. Compare this scene with that in Verdi's _Falstaff_, where that fat hero, hiding behind a screen, must be supposed not to hear an elaborate ensemble number sung by the other characters--an instance which one might presume to be intended to make the "aside" so ridiculous that no one would ever dare to use it again. Wagner, for the time, at any rate, had ceased to make demands on the credulity of his audiences or their meek acceptance of a preposterous convention. The business is kept up too long, as I have just confessed; and this is perhaps explained by Wagner's evident desire to make fun of the men who for years had called him a charlatan, a bad musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his living. Still, it is a small blot on a big opera. The music for such incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the cases of a _tour de force_. But even its inferiority is made to serve a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of Eva and her conversation with Sachs. Beckmesser has gone away joyfully with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song by Sachs--who has told him he can do what he likes with it--and revealing the fact that, despite all his boasting, in his heart he knows the cobbler to be immeasurably his superior. In music hardly to be matched for sensuous beauty Eva's trembling perturbation and hopes and fears are exquisitely suggested; then with the arrival of Walther, and also of Magdalena and David, we get a little more fooling, followed by one of Wagner's loveliest and most amazing feats, the quintet. If only for one reason it is amazing. Only a few years before the notes were set down, and certainly only a year or two before the thing was planned in the libretto, he had vehemently declared, in essays and letters, that never again would he compose anything in the operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; henceforth music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to his first act--which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to his second act--which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in the middle of his third act--which according to his own theories at any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came to compose _Tristan_ he discovered he had gone far beyond his theories. The justification for the quintet is its beauty and the fact that it finds expression for the feeling of the moment. All the same, I have heard it encored more than once; and an encore in the middle of the act of a Wagner music-drama, or even music-comedy, is almost inconceivable.

VI

The two pairs, Walther and Eva, and David and Magdalena, having been joined together, and David having been freed from his 'prentice servitude by a hearty box on the ear, the quintet having been sung and (as just remarked) sometimes encored, Wagner gathers himself together for a gigantic scene as characteristic of his genius as anything he conceived: no one, indeed, but Wagner could have done or would have thought of attempting such a scene. He has shown us the masters of Nuremberg in conclave, the apprentices romping and joking, the crowd in the street losing its head; and how he gives us a picture of the town on a fête-day, with the trade-guilds marching to the singing-contest. The tailors, the shoemakers, the bakers and the butchers all file past, chanting the merits of their various callings, finally gathering on the meadow outside the town to await the arrival of the chief burghers. It is a picture, not a dramatic scene, and to judge only from the text might suggest the _Rienzi_ way of planning things. It is not, however, a spectacle in the sense in which we apply that word to some of the _Rienzi_ scenes; there is nothing pompous about it, no recourse is made to gorgeous costumes. The artisans march past in their holiday clothes, each guild bearing its banner; the banners wave in the bright sunlight, and there is plenty of colour as well as of bustle and gaiety; but all is homely in style--there is not a noble person in the crowd--and the thing is carried through by the vividly imagined music, the energy and sparkle of it, the positive splendour of the orchestration. The various guild-choruses are full of humour, the many ridiculous things being saved from lapsing into mere horseplay and nonsense by the endless series of beautiful tunes. This part of the business ends with a waltz which shows that Wagner might, had he chosen, have been the finest writer of dance-music in Europe, and driven the Strausses and the rest from the field.

The signal is given of the masters' approach, and as Sachs comes on the whole crowd presses to greet him with a setting of his own song to Martin Luther. The transition from the jollity of the dancing to the solemnity, nay, sublimity, of this chorus is managed with perfect deftness: there is no incongruity. It is this song that passed through Sachs' brain when we found him absorbed in meditation at the beginning of the act. The poem--written by the historical Sachs--is itself beautiful, and Wagner has made it immortal; only he at his ripest and best could combine in an opera-chorus such strength with such sweetness, combine the directness of a part-song with the free play of parts, with never a touch of formalism. It must be held to be one of the most superb things in an opera which is as nearly perfect as ever opera is likely to be.

This over, we are gradually prepared for the ridiculous and preposterous again. Beckmesser is to make his bid for Eva's hand with what he supposes to be a song by Sachs; and to an accompaniment of music which, lively and graceful enough, is purposely of no very distinctive character. The preparations are made. By the time he mounts the heap of turf to address his audience we are ready for him. Of course he makes a fine ass of himself. He has not had time to memorise the poem of the song, and with extravagant fun Wagner makes him change the poetical and serious words into words of most ludicrous significance. Walther's melody he has not got hold of at all, and in a state of intense nervousness tries to fit the words to the burlesque tune of his previous night's serenade. The accents all fall in the wrong place; and as he stumbles miserably along the crowd begins to titter. Wagner of course was parodying and satirising the pedants of his own day, especially the composers of psalms who could not set a straightforward Bible sentence without making nonsense of it. Readers acquainted with the ordinary musical setting of a portion of the Church of England service, or the average organist's anthem, will know what I mean: the average organist seems to consider it a point of artistry, if not indeed of honour, to accentuate the words so as to leave the meaning as little intelligible as possible; and in many cases--I have some before me now--he contrives to make them nonsensical. It was this sort of thing, perpetrated by the very men who denied him any musical gift, that Wagner held up to derision in Beckmesser's song. The tittering swells into a roar, and at last Beckmesser, cursing Sachs for a deceiver and false friend, flies. With that, fooling ends. To music of a rare sweet gravity Sachs invites the "volk" to hearken to the song when given by the man who composed it. Walther steps up and sings; as he goes on the people again make themselves heard, but to praise, not to deride; towards the finish their voices form a choral accompaniment, and we have the counterpart to the finale of the first act. Walther wins the day and Eva; and, slightly against his will, he is made a Master. There is an address from Sachs, in which he exhorts Walther and all present not to despise art, but to honour it as being (for this is what his speech amounts to) the heart's blood of national life. Preachments are not usually stimulating, but this one is mercifully brief, and is accompanied by fine, melodious strains. With its contrapuntal weaving it leads to the final chorus, and also it puts Sachs back again into the position from which the importance of Walther's song has thrust him: it is a last reminder that the opera is a glorification of song, and that the masters have a sacred trust--to guard song pedantry and commercialism. The work closes with a grand chorus made up of familiar music, a glorious blaze and riot of orchestral and choral colour.

VII

The second section of this chapter contains what I have to say by way of summing up. Let me repeat that the _Mastersingers_ is notable for the endless flow of beautiful melodies, neither broken and scrappy nor, on the other hand, approaching monotony: there is infinite variety combined with magnificent breadth; for the nobility hidden under homeliness--a characteristic most marked in Sachs' music; for miraculous colouring now pitched in a low and tender key, now blazing as in the last finale; for the picture of Nuremberg in the old time, and for the vigour and fun with which the old life is depicted. It is Wagner's one cheerful opera, and from some points of view, perhaps, his most perfect; nowhere else did he try to keep on a high and even level of pure song for so long; it does not strain our nerves, and will bear hearing perhaps more frequently than anything else he wrote.