Act III., when Elsa has asked the fatal question. The other theme

significant of evil is the motive of Ortrud's influence:

[Music: ORTRUD.]

This is first heard in the introduction to Act II. It reappears when Ortrud begins to reveal her ideas to Frederic, and accompanies each of her suggestions for the overthrow of Lohengrin and destruction of Elsa. It is heard again in the accompaniment to the short ensemble which succeeds Lohengrin's appeal to Elsa in the finale of Act II., when to his dismay he sees that she is wavering. Again it sounds when Frederic whispers to Elsa in the same scene, and when the maid declares her doubts in the chamber scene it is repeated to show that she is acting under the influence of Ortrud. This is a very close approach to the fully developed employment of the leitmotiv, for in the later dramas we find these themes frequently used to connect the passing action with the influences which have led to it or to associate it with an absent personality.

A less important motive, but one whose treatment foreshadows Wagner's later musical method, is that of the ordeal:

[Music: THE ORDEAL.]

This makes its appearance in Act I. after the nobles shout "Zum Gottesgericht!" ("a judgment of God!"), and immediately before the King addresses Telramund asking him if he will do battle. In the major mode it is sounded by the trumpets on the stage as the summons to Elsa's champion to appear, and its fundamental rhythm becomes that of the music to which the six nobles pace off the measurement of the ground. In the fight itself this motive is worked out orchestrally as an accompaniment to the action. It belongs strictly to the music of the scene, yet it is treated thematically and developed as far as needed.

These are all the leading motives of "Lohengrin." The rest of the music is freely composed, but the attentive hearer will note that while ethereal string harmonies intone the Grail motive, Lohengrin's knighthood is announced by the brass, and to the wood wind choir is allotted Elsa's music. For the rest the lover of this opera must seek his intellectual enjoyment in the general fidelity of the score to the thought of the text, to the increasing freedom from the shackles of formularies, and to the flexible, changeful, constantly significant harmonic plan.

The enormous variety of the rhythmic effects is obtained without frequent changes of time. The first act, for example, is all in common time up to the beginning of the King's prayer, which is in three-fourths measure. At the beginning of the combat the common time returns and is continued till the end of the act. The entire second act is in common time. In the third act two-fourths time is used for the "Bridal Chorus" and then the composer returns to common time and retains it to the end. These facts are alone sufficient to show the wide gulf which separates the Wagner score from that of the old-fashioned Italian opera, wherein the elementary dance rhythms are all used with as much variety as possible. Wagner attains an infinitely greater variety of styles and expression with only two interruptions of his original time signature.

Yet the one thing which Wagner felt most keenly in the composition of this opera was his subserviency to rhythm--not musical, but poetical. He admits that he had not yet freed himself from old melodic ideas and that the dominance of the cadence was still felt in his work, but his real difficulty was the inflexibility of verse written in modern metre, which makes such rigorous demands for imitation in the form of the musical setting. He was in later works to find the solution of that problem and enter the kingdom of perfect freedom from textual rule. The music of "Lohengrin," then, must be regarded as standing midway between the style of "Der Fliegende Holländer" and that of "Die Meistersinger." Its extraordinary popularity is due to the external and sensuous charms of its melody, which make their appeal to the aural palate of those incapable of comprehending a dramatic scheme such as Wagner's. This outward attractiveness of the music Wagner himself would have been the first to blame, and he always felt that his own beautiful conception of the character of Lohengrin was not revealed to the public.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

Action in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Munich, June 10, 1865.

_Original Cast._

Tristan Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Kurvenal Mitterwurzer. Melot Heinrich. Marke Zottmayer. Isolde Mme. Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Brangäne Mlle. Deinet.

Weimar, 1874; Berlin, 1876; Königsberg, Leipsic, 1881; Hamburg, 1882; London, June 20, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on December 1, 1886.

_Cast._

Tristan Albert Niemann. Kurvenal Adolph Robinson. Melot Rudolph von Milde. Marke Emil Fischer. Isolde Lilli Lehmann. Brangäne Marianne Brandt. Ein Hirt Otto Kemlitz. Steuermann Emil Saenger. Seemann Max Alvary.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

I.--Sources of the Story

From the dramatic and musical style of "Lohengrin" to that of "Tristan und Isolde" is a far cry, and the reader must brace his intellectual forces to assault a new world. It would be easier for some reasons to take up the consideration of this work after that of the "Meistersinger" and "Der Ring," but such a proceeding would lead to a confusion of historical facts in the mind of the reader, and therefore we shall take it up in the order of its production. We must bear in mind that before writing the score of this work Wagner wrote those of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre," and that therefore he had entered into his fully developed style. Further than that we shall see that he went beyond his own conceptions of his theories, and that in this work he gave us the fullest, freest, and most potent demonstration of the vitality and justice of his methods and his style.

In an undated letter to Liszt, written in the latter part of 1854, Wagner says: "I have in my head 'Tristan und Isolde,' the simplest but most full-blooded musical conception: with the 'black flag' which floats at the end of it I shall cover myself to die." But in the meantime, as we have seen, he was working on the first parts of the "Ring" series. When he had about half written "Siegfried" there came upon him a period of depression. He felt that he was writing works which he would not live to see produced. He hungered for a closer, an active connection with the stage, and he needed money, and so he regretfully laid aside the "Ring" scores and set to work on the poem of "Tristan und Isolde." This was written at Zurich in 1857. The music was begun in the same year, and the score of the first act was finished at Zurich on December 31st. The second act was finished at Venice in March, 1859, and the third at Lucerne in August of the same year.

Many persons labour under the delusion that "Tristan und Isolde" is a new fancy of Wagner's; they do not know that the tale is one of the famous old legends of the Arthurian cycle and that it ranks as one of the great epics of mediæval Europe. First of all, however, this story belonged to the great English cycle of legends, which have supplied material to so many poets down to Tennyson and Swinburne. The latter wrote a version of this very tale under the title of "Tristram of Lyonnesse," which is only a modern adaptation of the earliest known title, "Tristam de Leonois," a poem dating from 1190.

The story is of Celtic origin, yet we find that it first took definite poetic shape in France. The Arthurian cycle consists of the "Romance of the Holy Grail," "Merlin," "Launcelot," "The Quest of the Saint Graal," and "The Mort Artus." From the last was drawn the beautiful "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Mallory, a story of which about one-third is devoted to the life and adventures of Tristram, not properly told in this version. How was it that the French romantic poets were engaged in celebrating the doings of English heroes? In the heart of the Midi the forerunners of the Troubadours sang the deeds of Arthur and Launcelot and Merlin, just as Tennyson did in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As far as we can ascertain at this time, the exploits of Arthur, which had been narrated in scattered song and story for many a long year through all the vales of England, were compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He died in 1154, the year in which Henry II. ascended the throne of England. Henry was of the house of Anjou, and united the crowns of England and Normandy under his sceptre. At about the same period, according to Professor Morley, Walter Map, an Archdeacon of Oxford (1154-89), is believed to have introduced the Holy Grail into the romances which existed before his time.

The conditions were now precisely right for the introduction of the Arthurian legends and the Grail into the romantic literature of France. The Norman Court took great delight in the English tales. The French poets were only too glad to find new material which was sure of favour in high places. And their own blood was not averse to the nature of the poetry. The French of the Middle Ages were a wonderfully cosmopolitan people. Near Tours, far to the north of the sunny land of the Troubadour, Charles Martel crushed and scattered the army of the Prophet, and for centuries after that the Saracen trod the valleys of the Midi. Long before that the Greeks had sent settlers into the region, and the old nature-loving Hellenic spirit found its expression and its means of preservation in the folk songs and dances of the people. But the inhabitants of the Midi were, nevertheless, Celts. Matthew Arnold says: "Gaul was Latinised in language, manners, and laws, and yet her people remained essentially Celtic." And so we need not be astonished at finding the Celtic Arthurian legends taking root in the literature of mediæval France. Robert de Borron, a Trouvère, born near Meaux, wrote about 1170 or 1180 the Provençal version of the Grail legend. Chrétien de Troyes, another of the French romanticists, wrote a version of the Grail legend about the same time as Borron.

Of the oldest French versions of the Tristram tale, two are known. M. Gaston Paris and Dr. Golther have put forth in their books on the Tristram legend studies of what is called the minstrel version of the story. The first was made by Beroul in England out of the scattered traditions relating to Tristan. It dates from 1150 and only a fragment of it remains. There was also a very early German version by Eilhart von Oberge, and from this indirectly originated the unsatisfactory version given by Mallory. The other old French one was that of Thomas of Brittany, an Anglo-Norman. This poem was the previously mentioned "Tristam de Leonois," and from it, about 1210, Gottfried of Strassburg, a German, drew the great mediæval Teutonic form of the tale, the direct source of Wagner's work.

The story as told by Gottfried is briefly as follows: Morold, an Irish warrior, brother of Ireland's Queen, holds Cornwall in fear, and demands a tribute to his King and master. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, challenges him to mortal combat. Morold wounds Tristan, and declares that, as his sword was poisoned, only his sister, Queen Isolt of Ireland, can heal the wound. Tristan smites Morold's head off, but a piece of the sword remains in the skull. Tristan's wound will not heal, so in company with his servitor Kurvenal and several other attendants he sails for Ireland to seek aid of Queen Isolt. Morold's body and head are taken back to Ireland. Tristan appears before the Queen disguised as a harper, calling himself Tantris. The Queen, pleased with his music, agrees to heal him if he will teach music to her daughter, also named Isolt. He consents, is healed, and returns to Cornwall. There he sings the praises of the Queen's daughter, the younger Isolt, and offers to return to Ireland and ask for her hand for his uncle, King Mark. He goes, and, on his arrival, finding the land devastated by a dragon, slays the monster and cuts out its tongue. Being overcome by the creature's foul breath, he sinks unconscious, and the Queen's steward, who has heard the sound of the conflict, comes and cuts off the dragon's head to show as evidence that he slew the beast. The steward claims the hand of the Princess, which has been promised to the slayer of the dragon, but the Queen Mother by her magic discovers that another did the deed, and going forth at dawn finds the unconscious Tristan.

It is now decided that the question between Tristan and the steward shall be settled by combat, and the Princess orders Tristan's armour to be made ready. In looking at the sword she discovers the nick in the blade, and finds that the splinter from Morold's head, which has been preserved, fits it. It also dawns upon her that "Tantris" is "Tristan" reversed. She would slay Tristan, but the Queen desires to know what matter of great import brought him again to Ireland. He makes known his mission, and as the Queen professes herself ready to forgive Tristan for killing Morold, her brother, the compact is made. Princess Isolt goes with Tristan. As they depart for Cornwall, the Queen confides to Brangäne, the Princess's kinswoman and companion, a love potion, to be given to King Mark and the Princess on the marriage night that they may ever afterward love each other. The Princess is loath to leave her own people, and she hates Tristan for having slain her Uncle Morold.

On the way to Cornwall a serving-maid, who is asked for a drink for Tristan and Isolt, ignorantly gives them the love potion, and they love one another. The poem narrates many incidents in the course of deceit pursued by the lovers, but they need not be recapitulated here. The King's steward, Majordo, aided by the dwarf, Melot, watches the lovers and informs the King of their infidelity. But with the help of Brangäne's cunning, they several times avoid detection. The King even banishes them from Court, but, finding them asleep in a forest retreat with a naked sword between them, takes them back, though he orders them to remain apart. Finally he surprises them in the garden, and then Tristan is forced to flee from Cornwall. He finds a refuge in Arundel, the land of Duke Jovelin, whose daughter, Isolt of the White Hand, falls in love with him. As he is always singing of his lost Isolt, she thinks that he loves her. He, hearing nothing from the old Isolt, deems himself forgotten, and concludes that it would be as well to marry Isolt of the White Hand.

Gottfried's poem ends here. In the other versions, however, the tale is completed. Tristan does marry the second Isolt. He receives a poisoned wound while aiding a friend to meet clandestinely another man's wife. Knowing that none save his first Isolt can heal the wound, he sends Kurvenal to bring her, telling him that if he succeeds in getting her he must hoist a white sail when entering port on his return, but if he fails he is to hoist a black one. Isolt of the White Hand hears this, and when the ship is sighted bearing a white sail, she tells her husband that it is black, whereupon he turns his face to the wall and dies. Tristan's Isolt arrives to find him dead. She lays herself on the bier beside him and expires. King Mark, having learned the story of the love potion, has the two buried in the same chapel, on opposite sides. A rose tree grows from Tristan's tomb and a vine from Isolt's, and the branches reach across the chapel and intertwine.

II.--Wagner's Dramatic Poem

The falsehood of the second Isolt has greatly annoyed some of the modern writers. Bayard Taylor simply declined to believe that such a thing happened. Matthew Arnold made the second Isolt faithful to her love. She nursed her dying husband tenderly even while waiting for the first Isolt to arrive. But Wagner wisely ignored this part of the legend. We hear nothing of any second Isolt. As is invariably the case, his treatment of the story draws together all the beauties of the original material and moulds them into a compact, consistent whole, instinct with dramatic force and poetic beauty. In attempting to set forth the Wagnerian arrangement of the materials, I find it difficult to proceed coolly and systematically. There is a witchery in this marvellous drama of fatal love that masters my mind. If the reader finds me wanting in the calm of judicial equipoise, let him forgive me, for I am dealing with that which lies next to my heart. As Louis Ehlert says:

"When in the second act Isolde is awaiting her lover, when the orchestra throbs with a thousand pulses and every nerve becomes a sounding tone, I am no longer the man I am through the rest of the year, nor am I artistically and morally a responsible being: I am a Wagnerian."

For the perfect understanding of the story the first act of the drama is the most important. It is also that which the fewest persons closely study. Edward Schuré, in "Le Drame Musicale," says:

"The fundamental idea of the legend is that of the love-philtre, fatal, irresistible, overpowering and uniting two human beings; of love vanquishing everything, honour, family, society, life and death, but which is itself ennobled by its very grandeur and fidelity. For it bears within itself its own punishment as well as its justification, its religion and its world, its hell and its heaven, supreme sorrow and supreme consolation."

While this may be a correct view of the old legend, it is not true of Wagner's drama. In the latter the philtre performs the office of Fate in the ancient Greek tragedy. In the plays of Sophocles and Æschylus mortals fulfil their manifest destinies, but Fate is the secret agency which hurries them forward to their ends. So, in this drama of Wagner's, Tristan and Isolde are the victims of a fatal love before the action begins, and the philtre is only the instrument through which all restraints are removed and the unhappy pair hurled into the vortex of their own passion, helpless victims of cruel Destiny.

Upon the deck of the ship bound for Cornwall Isolde lies silent on her couch. From aloft floats down the song of a sailor, crooning of his absent Irish love. Isolde, starting up, demands to know where she is. Before night, Brangäne tells her, the ship will reach Cornwall. "Nevermore! To-night nor to-morrow," exclaims Isolde, a dread purpose in her mind. And then she bursts into rage, she who has hitherto been silent and even has refused food. Brangäne begs her to free her mind. "Air!" cries Isolde. The curtain is thrown back, showing the stern of the ship and Tristan at the helm. Isolde gazes at him and murmurs:

"To me given; From me riven; Leal and trusted, True and trait-- Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!"

In these lines we hear a revelation of Isolde's heart. Tristan was hers; he is not. Both must die. She sends Brangäne to summon him to her presence. He offers excuses. Why? Later he tells Isolde, when she asks him why he has avoided her during the voyage, that it was not meet that he who escorted a bride across seas should go near her. She derides the excuse, knowing its shallowness. The man was afraid of himself. He had once wooed this woman and now in her presence he felt the old fascination. He dared not trust his heart.

Brangäne's persistence arouses the squire Kurvenal, who rebuffs her by singing a popular song about Tristan's victory over Morold. Then Isolde in her rage tells the whole story to Brangäne. She tells how the wounded Tristan, calling himself "Tantris," came to Ireland that she might nurse him when he was suffering from a poisoned wound. She tells how she found the nick in his sword and fitted to it the splinter, taken from the head of Morold, not her uncle, as in the old poem, but her lover--making her wrong a much deeper one. She tells how she stood ready to slay him with that sword, but he fixed his melancholy gaze upon her. "Not on the sword, not on my arm; full to my eyes went his look. His misery pleaded straight to my heart." This look was her undoing, and Wagner made its musical symbol one of the salient themes of his score. Tristan swore truth and thanks eternal, yet no sooner had he returned to Cornwall than he suggested the expedition to Ireland to get Isolde as a bride for King Mark, his uncle. It is this for which Isolde craves vengeance. Tristan, having lightly won her love, would present her as a gift to another. She curses him in her rage, and cries, "Vengeance! Death! Death to the two!" Brangäne vainly strives to soothe her. Staring vacantly into space she murmurs: "Unloved by the noblest of men, must I stand near and see him? How can I endure the anguish?" That is the future she dare not, will not face.

What a vast difference already between the original legend and this wonderful dramatisation of it by Richard Wagner! Brangäne says it is foolish for Isolde to fancy that she can remain unloved. Does she forget her mother's magic art, which has provided her with potions of strange power? No, Isolde has not forgotten. She asks for the casket, and when Brangäne shows her the love potion she brushes it aside and declares that the drink of death is for her. Reader, keep this death thought always in mind. It is the basic underthought of the entire drama. In the first act it appears first in the mind of Isolde. She will renounce life, for there is nothing in it for her but misery. In the second act both she and Tristan feed upon the dream of death; and in the third act death unites them.

At last Tristan and Isolde are face to face. She demands revenge for Morold. Tristan offers his sword and bids her slay him. She refuses on the ground that she cannot go before Mark as the slayer of his favourite knight. She invites Tristan to drink atonement with her. He understands, and is ready with her to seek oblivion. Brangäne, bidden to bring the drink of death, hastily substitutes for it the love potion. She will do anything rather than slay her mistress; she condemns her to live and suffer. The words of Tristan as he stands with the cup in hand ready to drink show that he comprehends the situation. He has discovered that Isolde loves him; he knows that he loves her. He prefers death to a life of renunciation or dishonour. He drinks. She seizes the cup and shares the draught. It was not the drink of death. It was for them the drink of hell. Hurled now by the unrestrained passion within them into one another's arms, the man wonders what dream of honour it was that troubled him but a moment ago, and the woman marvels that she trembled at the thought of shame.

_Tristan._--"Was träumte mir, von Tristan's Ehre?"

_Isolde._--"Was träumte mir von Isolde's Schmach?"

"What dreamed I of Tristan's honour?" "What dreamed I of Isolde's shame?" I have purposely dwelt at length on the incidents and dialogue of this wonderful first act, because they furnish the key to the entire drama, and because so many persons, even professed lovers of Wagner, misconstrue the meaning of the action. The ill-fated pair are lovers before the drama begins, but both are labouring under a misunderstanding. She thinks that he does not love her because he has come to carry her home as a bride for his uncle. He thinks that she is athirst for vengeance for the death of Morold. She desires to die rather than face her future. He is ready to die when he divines the true cause of her rage. Better oblivion than a life of misery. Brangäne's unwillingness to be a party to the suicide of her mistress is the motive for the administration of the potion, which simply bursts the bonds of restraint and shows the two hearts to one another free of all disguise.

The rest is simple. In the second act Isolde awaits her lover in the garden. Brangäne warns her of Melot, but she refuses to accept the warning. Is not Melot Tristan's friend? Put out the torch! That is the signal. The burning woman cannot put out the flame of her own passion, but she can and does turn down the torch. What a portentous signal! The turning down of the spear and the torch from time immemorial have meant that death was present. And so Wagner turns down this torch with the awful music of the death motive. Tristan rushes to her arms. They sing to one another in ecstatic accents and in "wrought riddles of the night and day." The torch was the day; it kept them asunder. Its extinction brought night, the only time when they may be together. And so in ever-ascending polyphonic utterances of metaphor, they arrive at last at a naked truth. For them the day is all separation and lies. Only night eternal, the night of death, can make them free. Isolde sings:

"Dem Licht des Tages wollt' ich entfliehn, dorthin in die Nacht dich mit mir ziehn, wo der Täuschung ende mein Herz mir verhiess, wo des Trug's geahnter Wahn zerinne: dort dir zu trinken ew'ge Minne, mit mir--dich im Verein wollt' ich dem Tode weih'n."

Mr. John P. Jackson makes this read in English thus:

"Day would I flee, Away to the Night Take me with thee To end the deception For me and for thee! Where end should all lies That our hearts could sever, Where together we'd drink Of rapture forever-- And in love united there Death all-everlasting share!"

Tristan responds that he drank eagerly what he thought was the draught of death. Isolde complains that the draught was deceitful, for instead of sweeping them both into night, it left them in the cold glare of day, where was only separation for them. Tristan answers that with honour and fame both destroyed in the glare of day, their hearts can have but one vast yearning, the yearning for night. Then he leads her to the embowered seat, and there they sing together that marvellous duet beginning:

"O sink' hernieder Nacht der Liebe, gieb Vergessen dass ich lebe."

"O sink around us, night of love; grant forgetfulness that I live." From the tower floats down the warning of Brangäne. The lovers heed it not. Wrapped in each other's arms, they prate of odious day and love-giving night, the night of eternity. Then comes the awakening. Mark, led by Melot, surprises them. Tristan murmurs: "Der öde Tag zum letzten Mal" ("The hated day for the last time"). A moment later he raves at Mark and his courtiers as "Daylight's phantoms, morning's dreams." When the King has finished his long and pathetic address, Tristan turns to Isolde and asks her whether she is willing to follow him to the land where the sun never shines, the wondrous abode of night. Well she knows his meaning, and as he hesitated not on the ship, so she hesitates not now. Melot's sword is ready, and Tristan hurls himself upon it. The wound becomes a consecration, a deed of expiation and release. It takes the solemnity of the loftiest tragedy, leaving, a comet-flight below its elevation, the melodramatic wound of the legend whence Wagner drew his materials.

This is the wound that will not heal without the aid of Isolde's art. There is no jarring note in the Wagnerian version, no libertine Tristan aiding another in a rude liaison, no Isolde of the White Hand. There is only the one master passion. There is only one tragedy. In the third act we find the wounded, wasting, visionary man lying under a linden tree in the courtyard of his own castle at Kareol in Brittany, whither the faithful Kurvenal has borne him. A shepherd draws a melancholy wail from his pipe, and, in answer to Kurvenal's anxious question sighs, "Lone and bare is the sea." For these two are watching for the ship which shall bear the healer, Isolde, to the side of the stricken man. Kurvenal whispers words of encouragement to his lord, but Tristan shakes his head. He has awakened once more to the glare of sunlit noon, and once more the old fantasies of day and night rush through his brain.

When will the blazing of the torch cease to keep him sundered from Isolde? When shall it be night for these two? Kurvenal reveals that he has sent a ship to bring Isolde. The thought is new strength to Tristan. He bursts into a delirium of joy. He sees the ship, the flag waving at the mast. "Kurvenal, siehst du es nicht?" ("Kurvenal, seest thou it not?") Kurvenal sees no sail upon the sea. Again the weary man sinks back upon his rude couch. He relives the story of his love. He raves again as he curses the magic draught, which was not the drink of death. He faints, and for the moment Kurvenal thinks him dead. But no, he revives. He asks again if the ship is in sight. Kurvenal says to-day it must surely come. "And on it Isolde!" cries Tristan. Once more the waning spirit mounts a mighty billow of emotion. "Isolde, how holy and fair art thou! Kurvenal, man, art thou blind? Dost thou not see what I see? The ship! The ship! Isolde's ship! Seest thou it not?"

A new tune peals from the shepherd's pipe. The ship is sighted! The flag of good tidings streams from the mast, the flag which means that Isolde is on board. Fly thou, Kurvenal, to the strand to help her. To-day shall the lovers be united. Frenzy for the last time seizes Tristan. Once, wounded and bleeding, well-nigh slain by Morold, Isolde found him and nursed him back to life. Again shall she find him so. Off, then, foolish bandages. Let the red blood flow merrily. Isolde comes! He hears her calling. What is this? "Do I hear the light? The torch! The signal! It is extinguished! To her! To her!"

And so the hero sinks dying in her arms, and for him at last the longed-for night of total oblivion has come. Isolde prostrates herself upon his body. A second ship is sighted, bearing Mark. Kurvenal, misunderstanding the purpose of the King, resists the entrance of his guard and is slain, after himself giving a fatal wound to the false Melot. Mark has learned the secret of the potion. He recognises the truth that the unhappy pair have been the victims of Fate, and he has come to unite them. Alas, too late! The mightiest of monarchs, Death, has come before him. Isolde, her soul spreading its wings for flight, sings out her apostrophe to her dead hero, a marvellous pæan of praise, the echo of the duet of love, and sinks lifeless on his insensate form. Night and eternal oblivion have come for both. The tragedy is over.

That is the marvellous poem which Wagner made of the old story of Godfrey, a poem in itself worthy, despite its rugged diction, to stand beside the best dramatic literature of Germany, and never once to be thought of as an opera libretto. I have briefly noted some of the points at which Wagner has separated himself from the sources of his story. The manner in which he has in all his poems utilised the original suggestions stamps him as a dramatist of the highest rank, a poet of lofty gifts. In none is this more beautifully demonstrated than in "Tristan und Isolde." It is true that in some of the later versions of the old poem, when possibly the early faith in love philtres was fading, the idea exists that Tristan and Isolde loved one another from their first meeting; but, as Miss Weston properly notes, "there is little doubt that the Minstrel held the fatal passion of the two lovers to be due to the Minnetranc alone." The frequent appearance of magic drinks in old legends is familiar to all students of folk-tales and sagas. Wagner himself gives us another instance of it in the drinks administered to Siegfried by Hagen, an idea which he obtained from the old tales. In his "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" (which I have been forced to parallel in rehearsing some parts of the story of "Tristan und Isolde") H.E. Krehbiel calls attention to the fact that the existence of the love before the incident of the potion provides that element of guilt which all the ancient dramatists required in order that too much sympathy might not be excited by the sufferings of the hero or heroine. On the whole, then, Wagner's treatment of this much-discussed drink is perfectly clear. There is no excuse for misunderstanding it. And it raises the tragic element of the drama far beyond the level of the early poems.

Another element of the classic tragedy preserved in this work is that of the inevitable doom of the unhappy pair. They are victims of Fate from the outset, and Wagner has kept the prophecy of death constantly before our minds by making it appear to the lovers themselves as the only avenue of escape from their misfortunes. Furthermore, this forethought of death develops in the second act into a conviction and a passionate desire. The exclamations "Let me die" ("Lass' mich sterben") of the lovers are not mere bursts of sensual rhapsodising, but are expressions of their souls' yearning for the plunge into oblivion at the moment of perfect ecstasy. For both dread the turning of the light of day upon them; both foresee a future of separation and misery.

The pessimism of this second act is the feature of Wagner's drama which has aroused the largest amount of discussion. Its peculiarly illogical deduction from a turbulent, passionate, soul-consuming love like that of Tristan and Isolde has frequently called forth unfavourable comment. Yet we are bound to admit that in his treatment of this element of his work the master has been dramatically ingenious. In summarising the story I have indicated his poetic treatment of the cessation of the desire for life and the yearning for death. That he has made it poetic is not to be denied, but it is not consistent. If the lovers had sworn renunciation and had suffered from the enforcement of their vow, there would have been consistency in their desire to die. But in the midst of unbridled indulgence in their passion they would have wished to live, unless there had been surfeit and the subsequent moral reaction. But of this we have no hint. The yearning for death, however, is an outcome of Wagner's absorption of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. This writer was a subjective realist and regarded extant phenomena as the products of the will--that is, the world exists because man wishes to think so. The highest ethical destiny of man is the nullification of the will by the practice of an asceticism which shall remove from him all desire for the objects of sense. These, then, being but creations of the will, shall disappear, and the will, the only reality, shall quietly renounce itself and vanish into the infinite. The doctrine is closely allied to that of the Buddhist Nirvana. Wagner's endeavour to reconcile it with the dramatic ideas of "Tristan und Isolde" was not successful. Asceticism and adultery are not companions. But from the Schopenhauerian pessimism he drew the long-continued harping upon night and death, which is considerably more poetical than the thoughts of the philosopher. In the second act the music of the duet breathes all the pulsing and the languors of consuming passion, and the score effectually masks the dramatic ineffectiveness of the dialogue.

Otherwise the second act is a wonderful conception. In no other part of Wagner's writings is his perfect command of his own union of the arts tributary to the drama more beautifully demonstrated. The picture, the action, the music, combine to create a poetic effect upon the mind of the auditor. The dramatic instincts of Wagner led him to centralise in one meeting of the lovers all the long-drawn passion of the old legend. In the drama we have but one meeting, which brings about the catastrophe. And whatever we may think of the undramatic character of the Schopenhauerian pessimism, which, as I have written elsewhere, is dragged into the story by the neck, it affords ground for a poetic dialogue rich in mysticism and not shocking in suggestion of mere fleshly desire. The dwarf Melot of the legend becomes the faithless friend of Tristan in the drama. He is merely a sketch, for his one action is but a piece of mechanism in the movement of the story.

The substitution of a long harangue for a swift blow of the sword has caused the proverbial finger of scorn to be pointed at King Mark, who comes upon the stage in this act to discover his bride in the arms of his knight. But he is certainly a vast improvement on the Mark of the legend, who was constantly hesitating, who even saw the guilty pair asleep in the forest, but refused to believe because the naked sword lay between them. This Mark at least does not suspect and confide in turns, send them away and then take them back. The long speech explains certain points which are the best defence of Mark's "sermonising," as it is often called. It tells us that he wed a second time only because his court and his people demanded it, and because Tristan himself declared that he would leave Cornwall unless the King yielded. The fact that it was a political marriage, and that the King was old and weary and not prone to emotional flashes, may serve to explain why he talks instead of slaying Tristan on the spot. At any rate Wagner's conception of the voluntary release of the embrace of life by the guilty lovers is carried out, for when Mark does not cut him down, Tristan throws himself upon Melot's sword.

Miss Weston, who makes much of the authority of the old legends and of resemblances in the folk-lore or mythology of antiquity, regrets that the death of Tristan in the third act is less touching than in the legend, where, deceived by Isolde of the White Hand and believing himself forsaken by his own Isolde, he silently turns his face to the wall and breathes out his life with the name of the loved one on his lips. And she furthermore repeats the criticism of Gaston Paris that the final speech of Isolde contains more philosophy than poetry, a weak criticism as one reading of the text will show. Mr. Krehbiel more aptly notes that the elimination of the second Isolde removes from the character of Tristan a stain which was placed upon it by his loveless second marriage, and saves us the shock of seeing the wife and the mistress in contest about his dying couch. Furthermore, the musical treatment of the act is to my mind the most convincing piece of dramatic writing in the literature of the lyric stage. I say this without forgetting the wonders of the first and second acts. There are certain similarities in the musical plans of the three acts. Each begins with a passage intended to create an atmosphere: the first, with the sailor's song floating down from aloft; the second, with the music of the hunt dying away under the black arches of the forest; and the third with the shepherd's pipe wailing the heart-wrecking song of the empty sea. Nothing in the lyric drama excels the potency of the combined scene, action, text, and music at the opening of the second act except the astonishing effect of the preliminary measures of the third.

And then follows a succession of those emotional waves, mounting in foaming crests of tone and sinking in throbbing refluxes, which no other composer ever wrote as Wagner did. Tristan's fevered mind, yearning for the ship, waxes and wanes in crescendi and diminuendi of passion till the suffering and sympathising spectator fancies that his nature will endure no more. And then at the apex of one of the awful upward flights of delirium comes that tremendous climax made by the changing of the melody of the shepherd's pipe. The ship is sighted. Now comes a period of vehement action, ending with the frenzied man's tearing off the bandage, and sinking into Isolde's arms to breathe out his life. Another burst of action follows this crisis, and then the stillness of death itself prevails while the musical finale of the work, the wonderful "Liebestod," falls upon the audience "like the sound of a great Amen." There is nothing in the old legend to suggest the astounding effects which Wagner has heaped up in this last act. It is all the inspiration of a master genius working without trammels in a field created by its own powers.

III.--The Musical Exposition

Let us turn now to a brief examination of the musical structure of "Tristan und Isolde." It is not practicable to make this examination exhaustive, nor would it be profitable. For those who desire to detect each motive of the score as it passes them in the general panorama of tone there are many handbooks. The present writer does not believe that the dramatic influence of Wagner's music upon the auditor is dependent on the latter's full acquaintance with the terminology of the significant themes. That a certain intellectual pleasure is added to the hearing of one of these dramas by a recognition of the identity of the motives is not to be denied, and that their dramatic purport should always be clear to the hearer's mind is beyond dispute; but it should never be the purpose of an auditor to concentrate his attention on the themes. Learn their meaning from the text. Then let them alone, and they will do their work.

In "Tristan und Isolde" we come upon the Wagnerian system worked out to its end. Indeed, the composer went even further. In a letter to Francis Villot in Paris in 1860, afterward published under the title of "Music of the Future," the poet-composer said of "Tristan und Isolde":

"Upon that work I consent to your making the severest claims deducible from my theoretic premises; not because I formed it on my system, for every theory was clean forgotten by me; but since here I moved with fullest freedom and the most utter disregard of every theoretic scruple, to such an extent that during the working out I myself was aware how far I had outstripped my system."

The composer sought in this drama to free himself from all the restrictions of historical detail, and to centralise the music upon the expression of the emotions of his personage, to make the play of emotions, and not the succession of incidents, the real material of the drama. This had always been his ideal of the lyric drama, but he had not been certain of its practicability. In the letter just quoted he says on this point:

"All doubt at last was taken from me when I gave myself up to the 'Tristan.' Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depths of soul events, and from out this inmost centre of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. A glance at the volumen of this poem will show you at once that the exhaustive detail work, which a historical poet is obliged to devote to clearing up the outward bearings of his plot, to the detriment of a lucid exposition of its inner motives, I now trusted myself to apply to these latter alone. Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting action comes about for reason only that the inmost soul demands it and steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner shrine."

In beginning the work, he wrote the text without any thought of operatic style. The reader will note that it is written in a freely formed rhymed verse, the rhythms being few, but elastic, and of such a nature that the poetry suggests the form of the melody without hampering the composer. This result could have been achieved only by the procreation of both verse and music by one mind. The organic union of text and tone was conceived in Wagner's brain before pen touched paper. In reference to this he says in the "Music of the Future":

"Whereas the verses were there [in the Italian opera] intended to be stretched to the length demanded by that melody through countless repetitions of words and phrases, in the musical setting of 'Tristan' not a trace of word repetition is any longer found, but the weft of words and verses foreordains the whole dimensions of the melody, _i.e._, the structure of that melody is already erected by the poet."

At a first glance this seems to be a contradiction of Wagner's theory that the poem should not impose its form on the music. But we must bear in mind that this poetry was prepared with the avoidance of text domination in the poet's mind. Wagner wrote to Villot that he found that his melody and its form were wholly freed from the old shackles. He composed with the utmost liberty.

Before noting a few of the most significant phrases of this score, which is a shimmering web of leading motives, let us take a glance at the general plan. Here is a work constructed upon a model diametrically opposed to the familiar one of Meyerbeer, the one regnant in Europe at the date of "Tristan und Isolde's" production. Meyerbeer built entirely for the succession of incidents, musical and pictorial. The dramatic idea had to conform itself to this scheme. Wagner built wholly on the ground of the thought and feelings of his personages, and the action and the music had to place themselves as explicators wholly at the service of these inner governors. Yet we shall find that each act of the drama has a clear and symmetrical musical shape, and that although this form is prescribed by the emotional movement, it is none the less grounded upon the fundamental laws of musical form.

Each of the three acts begins with a musical mood picture, in which the elements of external description and inner feeling are skilfully combined. The first act opens with the quaint, peaceful song of the sailor, which suggests a calm sea and a pleasant voyage. The second begins with the hunting music dying away in the forest, music which establishes a nature mood, a mood of moonlight and rustling leaves. The third is ushered in with the music of the empty sea, a descriptive lament whose profound melancholy is not equalled in any other score. Starting from each of these pictures, Wagner develops an act. The sailor's song in Act I. is followed by a sudden interruption of the peaceful mood. Isolde's passion begins to play. It bursts into tumult. The curtain is thrown back, and to accompany the motionless picture of Tristan at the helm, the sailor's song is repeated. Again the music gradually rises in emotional force, till another climax is reached, when Kurvenal trolls his ditty and the insulted Isolde has the curtain closed. Another point of repose, and again with Isolde's passion the music rises, but sinks to languorous yearning as she tells of the glance that won her soul. The wave mounts again as she curses Tristan and cries for vengeance. The music sinks into impressive depths as Isolde proclaims her purpose to administer the drink of death, and here Wagner relieves the strain and makes a sharp contrast by introducing the cries of the seamen outside. Then follow Kurvenal's boisterous entrance, and at length the entrance of Tristan, which is heralded by an orchestral passage voicing the heroism and the fate of the hero, a passage of extraordinary power. The scene between Tristan and Isolde begins reposefully and rises to a climax of passion at the taking of the drink. Then comes a moment of expectancy, followed by an upheaval, and then each utters the other's name in a phrase of deepest yearning. The sailor's music again affords the necessary relief, and the act comes to an end in a turmoil of tone.

The musical scheme of the second act is simpler because the emotions are less complex. After the opening mood picture, Isolde has a brief scene of contest with Brangäne, and at the extinction of the torch the musical wave, which has been growing, curls and breaks. The next one starts with Isolde's waving her scarf. Now we have a rapid, agitated movement, depicting the wild haste of Tristan, the eagerness of Isolde. The lover enters and this movement becomes tumultuous. When its climax is reached the necessary point of repose is made as Tristan leads Isolde to the seat. We have had an allegro agitato; now follows an adagio appassionata, the love duet. Its long-drawn, melting measures are broken once by the watch-cry of Brangäne--so composed that it does not interrupt, but intensifies the mood--and at last the rude interruption of Kurvenal. The contrast here is short and sharp. The dramatic situation is enough. Then follows another slow movement,--the coda of the adagio,--Mark's speech, Tristan's answer, his appeal to Isolde, her answer. With the few crashing measures of Melot and of Tristan's self-impalement, the musical scheme is completed. Its form is perfect; its organic union with the mood scheme of the act complete.

The musical plan of the third act has again more detail, because the story is more incidental. With the melancholy music of the empty sea as a starting-point, Wagner develops a long adagio, whose wave-crests are the summits of Tristan's delirious outbursts. This adagio ends when the shepherd's pipe proclaims the sighting of the sail. Then enters the allegro agitato of the act, the wild rhapsody of Tristan, the tearing off of the bandages, and the death of the hero. With Isolde's mourning over the body we get a point of repose and contrast. The shepherd announces a second ship. Descriptive music of rapid movement follows, till the fight is interrupted by Mark's entrance, and the final slow movement is begun. This movement comes to its majestic climax with the "Liebestod," and with a few bars of finale by the orchestra the work ends, like Tschaikowsky's sixth symphony, with its adagio lamentoso.

The drama is prefaced by a prelude, in which some of the most significant themes of the work appear. The thought underlying the prelude is the insatiable desire of the lovers, ever rising higher and higher in emotional waves till it sinks exhausted in its vain endeavour to find its own satisfaction. Several themes are combined in the musical structure of the Vorspiel, but the most important are those of Love and the Glance of Tristan; the glance which, Isolde tells Brangäne, stayed her hand when she had discovered that Tristan was the slayer of Morold and had lifted the sword to slay him.

[Music: LOVE.]

[Music: THE GLANCE.]

These two marvellously expressive themes are heard frequently throughout the drama. The sailor's song, with which the first act begins, contains the melody of the sea music, heard several times in the course of the act.

[Music: THE SEA.]

This theme belongs to what Mr. Krehbiel has well described as the music of the scene, or scenic music. It deals with the externals of the drama, not with its emotions. The next significant motive to appear is that of Death, which is first heard when Isolde exclaims, "Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!"

[Music: DEATH.]

Closely associated with this in meaning is the Fate motive, which is first heard in the harmonic scheme of the prelude.

[Music: FATE.]

We have now before us nearly all the significant thematic material of the first act. Most of the other melodic features are freely composed and do not figure in the subsequent episodes. The repetitions of the motives quoted will explain themselves to the most casual observer. The re-entrances of the Death and Fate motives are unmistakable in purport, while the reappearance of the Love and Glance themes after the drinking of the potion brings back the opening of the prelude with its story of desire insatiable, love immeasurable.

The play upon the contrasting fancies of night and day, which forms the figurative material of the lovers' dialogue in the second act, suggests new thematic devices, and so the act opens with the proclamation by the orchestra of the Day theme.

[Music: DAY.]

Derived from this is the beautiful motive of the Night, which appears in Tristan's long speech dealing with the fanciful contrast of the two. When he says, "Was dort in keuscher Nacht dunkel verschlossen wacht?" ("What watches yonder darkly concealed in chaste Night?") the theme sings softly in the orchestral accompaniment:

[Music: NIGHT.]

This luscious, languorous theme plays an important part throughout the act. The hearer will note how beautifully it serves as the introduction to the cantabile of the duo, "O sink' hernieder," and how effectively the composer has made the day and night variations of the one fundamental musical idea carry out the thought of the dialogue. Another theme which appears in the introductory music of the second act is that of the Triumph of Love:

[Music: TRIUMPH OF LOVE.]

From a development of this theme, by the simple musical device of augmentation, Wagner constructs the climax of the duo, which becomes again the climax of the last speech of Isolde over the dead body of Tristan:

[Music]

Another significant motive heard in the opening measures of the act is the Love Call, which is afterward employed frequently in the action:

[Music: LOVE CALL.]

These are the principal and most significant new motives which appear in the love music of this wonderful act. Of course, some of the themes heard in the first act are employed here again, and nothing in the entire score is more charged with meaning than the combination of the motive of the Triumph of Love with the harmonies of that of Death at the instant of Isolde's extinction of the torch. Such feats of musical depiction the attentive listener will find on every page of the score, yet the actual number of motives to which special meanings have been attached is not large enough to tax the memory. The appearance of King Mark in the action is noted by two motives, one used to indicate his personality and the other his grief:

[Music: MARK.]

[Music: MARK'S GRIEF.]

The third act opens with music descriptive of bitter grief and loneliness. The first phrase, that of grief, is a remarkable thematic development of the second half of the Love motive:

[Music: GRIEF.]

The ensuing long ascending passage expresses loneliness most eloquently. This is interrupted by a new motive, heard frequently in this act, the motive of Anguish:

[Music: ANGUISH.]

The melody played by the shepherd's pipe has received various titles, but it speaks its own language of melancholy. The music allotted to Kurvenal in the opening scene of the act is similar in character to that which he sings in Act I., and at one place is a repetition of it. In the long speeches of Tristan we hear repeated with powerful dramatic significance the motives of Day and Night, the Love theme, the Death theme, the motive of Anguish, and snatches of the love duo of Act II. The musical material of the entire act is now woven of what has already been heard. The motives melt and flow in a stream of marvellous melody, till at the end Isolde proclaims her hero's greatness in the "Liebestod," which is a repetition, with some developments, of Tristan's "So stürben wir um ungetrennt, ewig einig ohne End'," and the motive of the Triumph of Love:

[Music:

So stürben wir um ungetrennt, Ewig, einig ohne End'.

So die that we together blend, Living, loving, without end.]

There are other motives in this stupendous score, but, as I have already intimated, it would be idle for the music-lover to burden his memory with them. Many of them are thematic developments of phrases first heard in the germinal form, and it is in the overwhelming eloquence of these developments that the power of the score is largely to be found. With the themes already given the lover of the true lyric drama should readily understand the purposes of the composer. For the rest, the perfect organic union of text, tone, and action in "Tristan und Isolde" makes it the most directly expressive of all the later dramas. Only those who go to hear it with the conception of an old-fashioned opera in their minds fail to receive its message. "Tristan und Isolde" is a drama of human emotions uttered in tones. As such it must be conceded a place among the mightiest conceptions of the poetic brain.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Munich, June 21, 1868.

_Original Cast._

Hans Sachs Betz. Veit Pogner Bausewein. Kunz Vogelgesang Heinrich. Conrad Nachtigall Sigl. Sixtus Beckmesser Hölzel Fritz Kothner Fischer. Balthazar Zorn Weixlstorfer. Ulrich Eislinger Hoppe. Augustin Moser Pöppl. Hermann Ortel Thoms. Hans Schwartz Graffer. Hans Foltz Hayn. Walther von Stolzing Nachbaur. David Schlosser. Eva Fräulein Mallinger. Magdalene Frau Diez. Ein Nachtwächter Lang.

Weimar, Mannheim, Carlsruhe, Dresden, Dessau, 1869; Berlin, Hanover, Vienna, Leipsic, Stettin, Königsberg, 1870; Hamburg, Prague, Bremen, 1871; Riga, Copenhagen, 1872; Mayence, 1873; Cologne, Nuremberg, Breslau, 1874; Brunswick, 1876; Strassburg, Augsburg, 1877; Gratz, Düsseldorf, 1878; Wiesbaden, Rotterdam, Darmstadt, 1879; Schwerin, 1881; London, May 30, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Jan. 4, 1886.

_Cast._

Hans Sachs Emil Fischer. Veit Pogner Joseph Staudigl. Kunz Vogelgesang Herr Dworsky. Conrad Nachtigall Emil Saenger. Sixtus Beckmesser Otto Kemlitz. Fritz Kothner Herr Lehmler. Balthasar Zorn Herr Hoppe. Ulrich Eislinger Herr Klaus. Augustin Moser Herr Langer. Hermann Ortel Herr Doerfler. Hans Schwartz Herr Eissbeck. Hans Foltz Herr Anlauf. Walther von Stolzing Albert Stritt. David Herr Krämer. Eva Auguste Krauss (Mrs. Seidl). Magdalena Marianne Brandt. Nachtwächter Carl Kauffmann.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

"Tannhäuser" was finished in April, 1844, and in the summer of that year, while at Marienbad, Wagner made the sketch of "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg." He designed this comic opera as a pendant to the serious "Tannhäuser" (see Chapter VI. of the biographical part of this work), and no doubt the historical relations of the minnesingers, who figured in the tragedy, with the meistersingers, who provided him with the characters for his comedy, suggested the nature of the humorous opera and the general manner of the treatment of the subject. The first drafts of the comedy were made in the summer of 1844, but the poem was completed in Paris in the winter of 1861-62. The music was begun in 1862, but, as we have seen, was laid aside when the composer fled from his creditors, as narrated in Chapter XI. of the biography. The work was resumed after King Ludwig had become Wagner's protector, and the score was finished on Oct. 21, 1867.

Something of the character of the German minnesinger we have seen in our study of "Tannhäuser," where Wagner gives an idealised picture of one of their courtly contests in poetry and song. These minnesingers were the German companions and imitators of the French troubadours, from whom they took their origin. Their epoch dates from the reign of Conrad III., of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, who ascended the throne in 1138. In 1148, when he undertook a crusade in company with Louis VII. of France, the nobility of Germany were brought into habitual acquaintance with the nobility of France, who at that time were cultivating Provençal poetry and song in the "gay science" of the Troubadour. The German emperors now began the pursuit of the customs of chivalry. They and their nobles threw open their courts with a brilliant hospitality which rivalled that of France. The splendour of their tournaments, the glitter of their festivals, drew visitors in throngs from far and near. With them came the poet and the singer, and thus the German, who in the crusade had caught the infection of the chanson of Provence, found his first rude attempts brought face to face with the more polished productions of the visiting chanteurs and jongleurs.

The minnelied was the outcome, and for more than a century this form of courtly song was prized by the German people. While the Hohenstauffen dynasty remained on the throne (1138-1272), the literature of chivalry was patronised at court and the song of the minstrel was heard throughout the land. These singers were called minnesingers from the old German word "minne," which means "love"--the topic most dear to the minstrel heart. With the death of the first Frederick, the great Barbarossa, the star of the Swabian dynasty set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre were soon drowned in the turmoil of the internal disorders which beset Germany in the period of the Great Interregnum. This was a time after the death of the last Hohenstauffen, when various minor princes wore the imperial title without exercising its functions or its authority. The customs of chivalry naturally fell into disuse when there was no central home for them, and the minnesinger became a memory. The period of disturbance was ended with the accession to the throne of Rudolf of Hapsburg. This monarch was engaged during much of his reign in putting down the internal disorders, and his chief business was the overthrow of the powerful and independent nobles. He was furthermore largely occupied with quarrels with the Huns. The court language was changed from West Gothic to East Gothic, which was less national, and much of the southern culture which had characterised the reign of the Swabian emperors inevitably disappeared. The customs of chivalry sought shelter in the courts of minor princes, who were unable to give prizes of sufficient value to attract the knightly singers, engaged, as most of them were, in their final struggle for power and privilege.

The field of poetry and song was left to competitors of lower social standing. A versifying mania now began to pervade the lower classes. Blacksmiths, weavers, shoemakers, doctors, and schoolmasters sought to mend their fortunes by making verses. Poetry became dull, mechanical, pedantic; poets, conceited, shallow, and arrogant. The spirit of the age, filled with the instinct of preservation through co-operation against attack from without, led these people to form themselves into corporations, and Charles IV. (1346-78) gave them a charter. They spoke of twelve minnesingers as their models and masters,[37] and themselves they called mastersingers. They held periodical meetings to criticise each other's productions. Correctness was their chief aim, and they seem to have had little real conception of poetry. Every fault was marked and he who made the fewest was awarded the prize and permitted to take apprentices in the meistersinger's art. At the expiration of his apprenticeship a young man was admitted to the corporation and declared a "Meistersinger."

[Footnote 37: This explains the meaning of Kothner's question to Walther in the first act, "What master taught you the art?" To this Walther answers with the beautiful lyric, "Am stillen Herd," in which he declares that Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the minnesingers (see "Tannhäuser"), was his master.]

The first mastersinger of whom we know anything was Heinrich von Meissen, called "Frauenlob" because of his fondness for singing the praise of woman. He founded a guild of meistersingers at Mainz in 1311, and by the end of the fourteenth century most towns in Germany had similar bodies. The school reached its highest development in Nuremberg in the time of Hans Sachs (1494-1575). Sachs is an historical character, and there is abundant opportunity for the study of his style, as 6048 of his works are extant.[38] It was his period which Wagner selected for treatment in his comedy.

[Footnote 38: Many of these works are now regarded as spurious, but the majority of them are undoubtedly from the pen of the famous cobbler-poet.]

The order of meistersingers, however, continued to practise its calling long after this time. At Ulm the institution survived even the changes which the French Revolution effected in Europe. As late as 1830 twelve old mastersingers, after being driven from one refuge to another, sang their ancient melodies from memory in a little inn where the working men used to meet to drink their beer in the evenings. In 1839 only four of the singers survived; and in that year these remnants assembled with great solemnity and, declaring the society of mastersingers disbanded forever, presented their songs, hymn books, and pictures to a musical institution of Ulm. It is said that the last of the four died in 1876.

The meisterlied--mastersong--created by these singers was a lineal descendant of the minnelied, the song of the minnesinger. The latter was constructed in strophes, and each strophe consisted of three parts. The first and second parts were alike in metre and melody, and were called "Stollen." The third part was in a different metre and had its own melody, and it was called the "Abgesang," or aftersong. The minnesingers used three forms: the Lied (song), the Lerch (lay), and the Spruch (proverb). The lay was composed of differently constructed strophes, each with its own melody. The song was in several strophes, all built and set alike. The proverb was in a single strophe. The lied form was that adapted for their use by the meistersingers. Their songs consisted of three "Bars" (staves). Each staff was divided into three "Gesätze" (stanzas). The Gesatz was constructed in three sections, the first two being alike in metre and melody and called "Stollen." The third section differed in metre and had its own melody and was called the "Abgesang," or "aftersong." Thus we see that the "Bar" of the meisterlied corresponded to the strophe of the minnelied. The subjects treated in their songs were usually religious, though secular topics were not excluded. Sometimes didactic or epigrammatic themes were chosen. The tunes were all fixed, and the meistersinger's art was purely poetic. The tunes were called tones and had curious names, such as the blue tone, the red tone, the ape tone, the lily tone. In writing his comedy, Wagner, aiming, as he did, to reproduce in a lifelike manner the customs of the time, adhered to the rules of the meistersingers in the matter of song, and, in selecting a theme to designate the guild, used the melody of the "long tone" of Heinrich Müglin, a meistersinger of the early period. For the construction of the song he lays down the law in the address of Kothner to Walther, when the former reads the rules from the "Leges Tabulaturæ." These laws prescribe the form which we recognise as substantially that of the lied of the minnesinger.

Wagner drew his information as to the manners and customs of the meistersingers from the principal source of all our knowledge of them. This is a book entitled "De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio," written by Johann Christoph Wagenseil, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Altdorf, and published in 1697. Not only did the poet-composer find his facts there, but he took from the volume also the names of his characters, for Veit Pogner, Fritz Kothner, Conrad Nachtigall, Balthasar Zorn, Sixtus Beckmesser, and the rest of Wagner's meistersingers all walked the earth in their day and sang their artificial ditties in imitation of their masters, the minnesingers. Beckmesser, who appears as the "low comedian" of Wagner's work, seems to have been a worthy, though prosaic, person in his time. He was certainly not a butt of derision, such as Wagner's character becomes through his own stupidity and vanity.

The story of "Die Meistersinger" is, of course, Wagner's own. His representation of the characters of the masters is his own. The real Hans Sachs is, perhaps, not so well known as the real Wolfram von Eschenbach, but it is probable that he was only a little better than his fellow meistersingers. His works were more popular, and he was doubtless a man of superior ability. But it is not likely that he excelled the rest in refinement and artistic insight quite as much as he appears to do in Wagner's comedy. The story tells us that young Walther von Stolzing, a Franconian knight, has fallen in love, almost at first sight, with Eva, the daughter of Veit Pogner, the most substantial member of the guild, a man of some means. Pogner has decided that his daughter shall wed a meistersinger, and that she shall be the prize of the winner in the forthcoming contest of song. Her own choice is to operate only in so far as to permit her the liberty of rejecting the winner if she does not like him. But she must, in the end, marry someone chosen by a contest and approved by all the masters. Sachs endeavours to have the voice of the general public added to that of the guild, but Pogner is unwilling to introduce too many novelties into his experiment.

Walther meets Eva at the morning service of St. Catherine's Church, in which the principal meetings of the masters were held. She tells him that she must choose a master, and also that if he be not a master, she will have no other. David, an apprentice to Hans Sachs, arrives with other apprentices to prepare the church for an examination in song, and explains very vaguely to the young knight what he must do to become a master. Pogner and the other masters assemble, and Pogner, declaring that the desire of a knight to become a singer brings back the old times, explains the presence of Walther. He presently announces to the masters for the first time his plan in regard to his daughter's choice, a plan which gravely disconcerts Beckmesser, an aspirant for her hand. Walther is now introduced as a candidate for the degree of master. Kothner instructs him in the rules and appoints Beckmesser marker. The marker was a critic whose business it was to note every offence against the rules. Beckmesser conceals himself in the marker's booth, and Walther, having announced love as his theme, sings his song, which is entirely incorrect according to the laws of the guild, but in which Hans Sachs at once discovers the force of a new genius. In spite of his appeals the youth is declared, according to the formula, "outsung," and the meeting dissolves in confusion, Walther vainly endeavouring to make himself heard, Sachs pleading for him, the other masters objecting, Beckmesser scolding and pointing out more faults, and Pogner deeply troubled lest his daughter's already engaged affections make it impossible for him to carry out his plan.

The second act shows us the street, on one side of which is the house of Pogner and on the other that of Hans Sachs. Pogner brings his daughter home, still troubled in his mind and striving to fathom hers. When he has gone into the house, Magdalena, Eva's companion, tells her of Walther's failure, and she determines to ask Sachs for advice. Presently the shoemaker seats himself at his work in the door of his house. The balmy air of the evening, the scent of the elder tree, turn his thoughts to the poetry which he heard at the trial. What though it outraged the rules of the masters and even puzzled him? Within it lay a real power. The singer sang, not to meet rules, but because utterance was demanded by his feelings. Let the masters rage; Hans Sachs is well pleased. This is the substance of the famous monologue of the second act.

Eva comes from Pogner's house and in a most charming scene with Sachs hints that as an avenue of escape from the possibility of marriage with Beckmesser, who intends to compete for her hand, she would be glad to become Sachs's wife. But he discourages this foolish idea. Then she tries to learn the details of the defeat of Walther, and Sachs, to test her feelings, pretends that he and all the other masters were actuated by mere jealousy in voting against the youth. Eva discloses her real feelings. Sachs leaves her, and the next moment she is in the arms of her lover. They plan to elope. Sachs, who has been listening and watching, throws open his window and lets a flood of light into the street just as they are about to depart. Then Beckmesser approaches for the purpose of serenading Eva. Sachs now brings his bench out into the doorway, and begins to sing lustily at his work. Eva and Walther hide, and Beckmesser inquires the reason of Sachs's outbreak. The cobbler protests that he is trying to finish the pair of shoes which Beckmesser had demanded of him that very day. Magdalena, personating Eva, appears at the window, and Beckmesser endeavours to sing his song to her. Sachs's singing and pounding prevent him.

Then they come to an agreement. Sachs is to act as marker, and correct each error with a blow of his hammer. He vows that the shoes will be finished before the song is. Beckmesser sings and Sachs strikes many blows. The shoes are finished first. Then Beckmesser sings desperately and Sachs shouts lustily. The neighbours, aroused by the outcry, begin to appear at their windows and presently in the street. David, seeing Magdalena, his sweetheart, at the window, and Beckmesser serenading her, attacks the singer with a cudgel. The neighbours take sides, and a general mêlée ensues. Walther decides to cut his way through the throng with Eva and escape, but Sachs intercepts him, sends Eva into the arms of her father, and takes Walther into his own house. At that moment the nightwatchman's horn is heard. The crowd melts. The beaten Beckmesser limps painfully away. The watchman passes up the empty street, startled at his own shadow. The full moon rises over the distant roofs, and as the silent street is flooded with its mild light, the orchestra breathes a passage of perfect peace and beauty while the curtain falls. It is one of Wagner's most potent dramatic and musical achievements.

The third act opens in the interior of Sachs's house. The poet-shoemaker is in a reverie, and the prattling of his apprentice cannot rouse him from it. When he is left alone, he breaks into the second great monologue, "Wahn, Wahn." One must read the entire text of this in order to understand it. At its conclusion Walther descends from the chamber in which he has passed the night, and informs Sachs that he has had a "wondrous lovely dream." Sachs bids him put it into verse, and make a mastersong of it. Walther bitterly asks how he can make a mastersong and one that's good. Sachs reproves him and bids him observe law in his poetry. Walther begins the song which he afterward sings for the prize. At the end of the first stanza Sachs stops him and instructs him as to the nature of a "Stollen." After the second "Stollen" he requires the young knight to make the "Abgesang." Giving him several hints as to the construction of his lay, Sachs writes it down, deeply moved by its beauty.

When Sachs and Walther have left the room, Beckmesser enters, and, finding the newly written song, thinks it is by Sachs and that the shoemaker means to enter the contest. When Sachs returns Beckmesser charges him with this intention, and to his surprise Sachs gives him the song, vowing that under no circumstances will he claim it as his own. Beckmesser departs, almost beside himself with joy. Eva arrives and declares that one of her shoes hurts. Sachs smiles incredulously, but pretends to adjust the shoe. Walther, richly clad, appears and stands spellbound at the sight of Eva. Sachs hints that now the third stanza of the song might be produced, and Walther sings it. Eva, deeply moved, throws herself into Sachs's arms, saying that she has reached a new understanding of him and herself. David and Magdalena enter, and Sachs announces that a mastersong has been made. He promotes David from apprentice to journeyman that he may hear the song, which an apprentice could not honour, and then he invites Eva to speak. Here is introduced Wagner's one quintet in purely lyric style, and it is conceded to be one of the loveliest conceptions of this extraordinary work. The party starts for the field of contest, and the scene changes to an open place on the banks of the river.

The various guilds of artisans assemble, and finally the meistersingers enter in formal procession. Sachs, who is hailed by the people in glad chorus, announces the terms of the contest and Beckmesser is summoned to the singer's stand. Trembling in every limb he makes a futile attempt to sing Walther's song, at which he looks vainly at every opportunity. He makes a farce of it, and is laughed to scorn by the people. In a rage he rushes away, pausing only to declare that the song is by Sachs, and not himself. Sachs, however, says that the song is not his and that it is a good song if correctly sung. He calls for some one who can sing it, and Walther appears. The masters, though they divine Sachs's plan, allow the young knight to sing, and the entire assembly, seconded by the conquered masters, declares that he has won the prize. Eva places the crown of laurel on his head, and with him kneels before the well-pleased Pogner. But when he would hang around Walther's neck the insignia of a mastersinger the youth refuses it. Sachs again intervenes and reads the young knight a little lecture on the importance of honouring what is established in art. Walther yields; Eva places the laurel on Sachs's brow, and the curtain falls as the people acclaim him in joyful chorus.

In a letter to Dr. Franz Brendel, dated Aug. 10, 1862, Liszt quoted a part of a letter from his daughter, Cosima, then the wife of Von Bülow. She said:

"These 'Meistersinger' are, to Wagner's other conceptions, much the same as the 'Winter's Tale' is to Shakespeare's other works. Its phantasy is found in gaiety and drollery, and it has called up the Nuremberg of the Middle Ages, with its guilds, its poet-artisans, its pedants, its cavaliers, to draw forth the most fresh laughter in the midst of the highest, most ideal poetry. Exclusive of its sense and the destination of the work, one might compare the artistic work of it with that of the Sacraments-Häuschen of St. Lawrence (at Nuremberg). Equally with the sculptor has the composer lighted upon the most graceful, most fantastic, most pure form--boldness in perfection; and as at the bottom of the Sacraments-Häuschen there is Adam Kraft, holding it up with a grave and collected air, so in the 'Meistersinger' there is Hans Sachs, calm, profound, serene, who sustains and directs the action."

This charming critical view of the work from the woman who was afterward to be the sharer of Wagner's joys and labours is so apt that, although this is not a book of criticism, but rather of exposition, I give it place with pleasure. As a picture of the pseudo-artistic life and influence of the mastersingers the work, as genuine and great a comic opera as "Le Nozze di Figaro," is perfect. Louis Ehlert, in one of his pregnant essays, has disclosed a belief that Wagner was not a natural humourist, and that the fun of "Die Meistersinger" is laboured. This is a somewhat severe judgment, founded chiefly upon observation of the character of Beckmesser. The unfortunate Marker is, indeed, a somewhat artificial figure, but much depends upon his impersonator. He may be made a burlesque by very slight overaccentuation of his peculiarities, and the temptation to gain the applause and laughter of the unthinking is too strong for any but a great artist. The true humour of "Die Meistersinger" lies in its presentation of the shallow, pedantic, poetic art of the time, the futile methods of the tribunal, the homely bourgeois life, the quaint pageantry of the guilds, and the pretty plot by which Sachs overthrows the vainglorious pretender to the hand of Eva, and smooths the path of true love.

Behind this delightful comedy there lies a symbolism which should not be overlooked. The masters represent the tyranny of formalism in art, the dominance of that opinion which mistakes form for substance, and attributes to the outward shape of every work the credit for its merit. Walther von Stolzing, in his efforts as poet and singer, is the embodiment of the free impulse, the desire for untrammelled expression. Sachs, without the creative power of the young knight, is the truer artist. He represents the influence of enlightened and sympathetic intelligence. He discerns at once the innate power of the new poesy which Walther brings into the dusty circle of masters, but at the same time he perceives its need of discipline. It is he, therefore, who induces the new genius to submit itself to the sovereignty of the fundamental laws of form--a vastly different thing from practising mere formalism.

Students of Wagner's works have often been invited to accept Walther as a representative of Wagner himself. This is not justified by anything in the work or in the other writings of its creator. Nevertheless we have ground, and the support of Wagner, for the assumption that he really designed Walther to represent the spirit of progress in music, while the masters embodied that of pure pedantry. Those two powers have always been at war in the world of art and always will. Theoreticians and critics publish rules, which they deduce from the practice of the great artists. The next original genius who arrives has something new to say and says it in a new way. He throws overboard some of the old formulas and invents new ones, as Wagner did, and the theoretical and critical world bursts into an outcry of indignation at the disturbance of settled principles. After a time the two forces become reconciled, and the new rules find their way into the theoretical treatises, while the critics descant upon the additional flexibility imparted by them to art. Wagner, in "Die Meistersinger," has shown us the spirit of progress in its jubilant youth, scoffing at the established rules of which it is ignorant. One of the finest lessons of the symbolism of the comedy is that a musician, or any other artist, must master what has already been learned of his art before he can advance beyond it.

The musical plan of "Die Meistersinger" embraces such a wealth of detail that a complete exposition of it would consist of a full analysis of the score. There are many leading motives, and these are repeated or developed with all of the wonderful skill which was at Wagner's command when he undertook this work. While impracticable to give an exhaustive analysis of the score, it is not too much to invite the reader to observe the general musical development of the drama. The prelude contains several of the most important thematic ideas, and these we may first consider. The Vorspiel begins with the Meistersinger motive:

[Music: THE MEISTERSINGERS.]

A few measures further on appears the Meistersingers' march:

[Music: THE MASTERS' MARCH.]

These two themes, with their solidity, breadth, dignity, and formality, serve admirably to present all the best musical elements of an art which embodied the glorification of rule and the potency of tradition. The second theme has a special interest for us because Wagner built it on the beginning of a genuine Meistersinger tune (the "long tone" of Heinrich Müglin). This tune begins thus:

[Music]

Throughout the drama these Meistersinger themes are employed by Wagner to typify the art represented by his masters, and, as Mr. Krehbiel has very pertinently pointed out, their majesty and musical beauty are satisfactory evidence that the composer did not wish us to undervalue the artistic movement of which they are typical. Opposed to these themes we hear in the Vorspiel others associated with the uprising of emotion, of passion in the young lovers of the play. These themes, irregular in rhythm, restless in general style, breathe the leaping aspirations of the romantic personages, and thus embody the romantic principles which are constantly urging progress in art. The first of these is a theme designed to express Walther's artistic emotion and its search for expression:

[Music: WALTHER'S EMOTION.]

The second embodies the young knight's love and its longing, and thus becomes the property also of Eva:

[Music: YEARNING OF LOVE.]

Two other themes must here be noted, that of the closing passage of the prize song, and that of Spring. The latter is employed especially to designate spring as a period of emotional blossoming rather than a mere season. It is the springtime of Walther's life and passion and song:

[Music: PRIZE SONG.]

[Music: SPRING.]

To these themes must be added that of Derision, heard in the last act, when the people are amazed at the appearance of Beckmesser as a contestant:

[Music: DERISION.]

Out of this material the prelude is built, and its character is that of a contest of forces with a final reconciliation, which is, as we have seen, the basis of the artistic symbolism of the comedy.

The first act begins with a chorale, in which the old-fashioned style of writing is exhibited. As the congregation disperses, Eva and Walther enter into eager converse, and the themes of Emotion and Spring are heard. And here I must ask the reader to note the wonderful use Wagner has made of this sequence of tones:

[Music]

By a very simple change the first three tones are altered to those of the Spring motive or the closing strain of the prize song. It is by such logical musical processes that Wagner makes the development of his dramas so artistic and so convincing, while at the same time he fascinates the ear by the purely sensuous beauty of the varying melodies. The Spring theme plays a most important part in the score, and it is worthy of note that it is so pregnant with meanings that whether played fast or very slowly it is eloquent, though with a difference. Note, if you will, the extraordinary force with which it sings from the orchestra when Sachs's mind, in the second act, is ruminating on the events of the trial and cannot free itself of the influence of Walther's song. But to proceed with the first act: After the scene of the lovers, with the entrance of David, we begin to hear lively, rhythmic melodies, associated with the youth and gaiety of the apprentices. A portion of this music signifies the chastisement afflicted upon an apprentice by a master, and appears several times in the score to call attention to Sachs's repression of David:

[Music: CHASTISEMENT.]

When David tells Walther of the art of a mastersinger we hear the lovely theme of the Art of Song, plainly enough a variant of the melodic basis of the prize song:

[Music: THE ART OF SONG.]

All of the music of David's scene with Walther is light and airy, but with the entrance of the masters we hear serious ideas again, the first of them being the motive of the Council:

[Music: THE COUNCIL.]

The second, a very tender and gracious theme, is that of St. John's Day, the day of the contest for Eva's hand, and it is developed with wonderful eloquence in the address of Pogner:

[Music: ST. JOHN'S DAY.]

When Walther appears, we hear for the first time the theme of his knighthood:

[Music: WALTHER, THE KNIGHT.]

This is heard frequently in the score, and when Beckmesser, acting as Marker, shows the slate covered with notes of errors in Walther's song, this theme is heard distorted and caricatured. In answer to Kothner's inquiry as to who was his master, Walther sings the lyric "Am stillen Herd," and its second phrase (marked _a_) reveals its foundation on the Spring theme:

[Music: "AM STILLEN HERD."]

The subsequent trial song, as will be noted at a single hearing, throbs throughout with the Spring theme. Note the fine contrast made by Kothner's formal statement of the laws of the mastersong, ending with a fine vocal exfoliation in the old style:

[Music]

The act comes to an end with a general discussion among the masters, while Walther vainly endeavours to make himself heard and the apprentices sing a chorus of derision. As Sachs remains in the foreground, moved by the new music which he has heard, we hear once more its fundamental phrase, the Spring motive.

The music of the second act is simplicity itself up to the dialogue of Pogner and Eva. The score is rich with themes already made known, but when the father tells his daughter how she must on the morrow make her choice before all the citizens, we hear for the first time a peculiarly lovely motive intended to designate the old city itself:

[Music: NUREMBERG.]

Familiar motives, employed to make a mood-picture of great beauty, illustrate the scene between Sachs and Eva. But here, indeed, we must pause to note the wonderful expressiveness of the monologue of Sachs, preceding his scene with Eva. The orchestral part throbs with the Spring motive, which finally swells into a broad and beautiful cantilena. The lyric of the first act is quoted by the orchestra also, and at length Sachs concludes with a bit of new melody of his own. He, too, is filled with the spirit of the new music:

[Music:

SACHS--

The bird who sang to-day, has got a throat that rightly waxes; Masters may feel dismay, but well content with him Hans Sachs is!]

A prominent part is played in the ensuing scene by the tender Eva motive:

[Music: EVA.]

Walther's entrance brings back the Knight theme, and others which have been heard before. The music of the summer night, heard when the watchman is approaching, is very beautiful, and its return at the close of the act, punctuated by phrases of Beckmesser's serenade, is still more lovely. A fine contrast is that between Sachs's uproarious song, which is thoroughly good in the old style, and that of Beckmesser, which is bad. The development of the turmoil in the street is worked out with immense contrapuntal skill, and we hear in the midst of it a new theme, that of the Beating, made skilfully out of the fourths used in the lute accompaniment to the Marker's serenade:

[Music: THE BEATING.]

The gradual building up of the turmoil at the end of the act, when the excited people pour into the streets and the general fighting begins, is wonderfully worked out in the score, in which the Beating motive plays a prominent and humorously expressive part. In the midst of the rumpus, the horn of the returning watchman is heard, its discord making a fine musical effect. After the crowd has dispersed and the watchman has repeated his droning formula, the music of the summer night, as I have already mentioned, steals back in an ethereal whisper, and the act comes to a close with one of those beautiful points of repose which Wagner knew so well how to make after a movement of extreme agitation.

The third act is preceded by an introduction of wonderful beauty and expressiveness. With the chorale of the last scene, the shoemaker song sung by Sachs in the second act, and the "Wahn" motive, the composer paints for us the very soul of the poet-cobbler. The "Wahn" motive is that on which is founded the great monologue of this act, beginning with the words "Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn"--"Madness, madness, everywhere madness."

[Music: "WAHN, WAHN."]

The whole scene between Sachs and Walther is surcharged with melody of the most luscious kind, and we hear the beginning of Walther's mastersong, the song which finally wins for him the prize:

[Music: THE MASTERSONG.]

The music accompanying the entrance of the sore and limping Beckmesser is filled with exquisite humour, and perhaps in it all there is nothing more subtle than the use of the "Wahn" motive when the Marker, after his agitated rush about the room, sits on the bench and vainly strives to think of a new song.

The music of the scene following Eva's entrance is built on familiar motives, whose significance here is easily traced, and the quintette, as will be noted at the first hearing, is made from the prize song. The recitation of Sachs preceding the quintette is one of the most beautiful passages in the opera, but it is unnecessary to think of it as built of motives. The last scene opens with much freely composed music, the entrance of the guilds and the dance. With the advent of the masters we return to the dignified music associated with them. The rest of the scene is simple. The people sing the beautiful chorale, "Wach' auf," Beckmesser makes his foolish attempt to sing Walther's words to the tune of his own serenade, and then Walther sings the song as it ought to be sung, slightly altering the "Abgesang" in his fresh inspiration.

The principal characteristic of the music of "Die Meistersinger" is its lyric quality. There are no tragic passions to be depicted, no evil thoughts to be expressed. Beckmesser alone has malice, and that is of a petty, foolish sort, best treated, as it is in this exquisite work, with ridicule. The other personages are all lovable; the motives all kindly. The underlying elements which are in contest, the opposing principles, whose workings make the ethical basis of the drama, are artistic, the old against the new, the formal against the free. The expression of each must of necessity be lyric, the one in well-regulated rhythms, the other in rushing bursts of apparently spontaneous melody. But the total result is one great spring ode, throbbing with the very heart-beats of young poesy and song, and sure at all times and in all places to captivate those who have ears to hear and souls to understand.

DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN

A Stage Festival Play

for

Three Days and One Preliminary Evening.

First performed in its entirety at Bayreuth, August, 1876; Munich, 1878; Vienna, Leipsic, 1879; Hamburg, 1880; Berlin, 1881; London, Königsberg, Hanover, Danzig, Breslau, Bremen, Barmen, 1882; New York, Metropolitan Opera House, March 4, 5, 8 and 11, 1889.

DAS RHEINGOLD

Prologue to "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Munich, September 22, 1869.

_Original Cast._

Wotan Kindermann. Donner Heinrich. Froh Nachbaur. Loge Vogl. Alberich Fischer. Mime Schlosser. Fasolt Polzer. Fafner Bausewein. Fricka Fräulein Stehle. Freia Fräulein Müller. Erda Fräulein Seehofer. Woglinde Wellgunde Frau Vogel. Flosshilde Fräulein Ritter.

This performance was against the wish of Wagner. The first authorised performance was that at the Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, August 13, 1876, when the cast was as follows:

Wotan Franz Betz. Donner Eugen Gura. Froh Georg Unger. Loge Heinrich Vogel. Alberich Carl Hill. Mime Carl Schlosser. Fasolt Albert Eilers. Fafner Franz von Reichenberg. Fricka Friedericke Grün. Freia Marie Haupt. Erda Luise Jäide. Woglinde Lilli Lehmann. Wellgunde Marie Lehmann. Flosshilde Marie Lammert.

Weimar, Vienna, Leipsic, Hamburg, Brunswick, 1878; Mannheim, Cologne, 1879; Frankfort, London, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Jan. 4, 1889.

_Cast._

Wotan Emil Fischer. Donner Alois Grienauer. Froh Albert Mittelhauser. Loge Max Alvary. Alberich Joseph Beck. Mime Wilhelm Sedlmayer. Fasolt Ludwig Mödlinger. Fafner Eugen Weiss. Fricka Fanny Moran-Olden. Freia Katti Bettaque. Erda Hedwig Reil. Woglinde Sophie Traubmann. Wellgunde Felice Koschoska. Flosshilde Hedwig Reil.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

DIE WALKÜRE

Music Drama in Three Acts.

First evening of the trilogy, "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre in Munich, contrary to the author's wish, on Aug. 26, 1870.

_Original Cast._

Siegmund Vogl. Hunding Bausewein. Wotan Kindermann. Sieglinde Frau Vogl. Brünnhilde Fräulein Stehle. Fricka Fräulein Kaufmann.

First authorised performance in the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, Aug. 14, 1876.

_Original Bayreuth Cast._

Siegmund Albert Niemann. Hunding Joseph Niering. Wotan Franz Betz. Sieglinde Josephine Scheffsky. Fricka Friedericke Grün. Brünnhilde Amalia Friedrich-Materna. Gerhilde Marie Haupt. Ortlinde Marie Lehmann. Waltraute Luise Jäide. Schwertleite Johanna Jachmann-Wagner. Helmwige Lilli Lehmann. Siegrune Antoinie Amann. Grimgerde Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann. Rossweisse Minna Lammert.

Vienna, New York, 1877; Rotterdam, Leipsic, Hamburg, Schwerin, 1878; Weimar, Mannheim, Cologne, Brunswick, 1879; Königsberg, Frankfort, 1882.

First performed in America at the Academy of Music, New York, April 2, 1877.

_Cast._

Siegmund Mr. Bischoff. Hunding Mr. Blum. Wotan Mr. Preusser. Sieglinde Mlle. Canissa. Fricka Mme. Listner. Brünnhilde Mme. Pappenheim.

Conductor, Adolf Neuendorff.

SIEGFRIED

Music Drama in Three Acts.

Second evening of the trilogy, "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

First performed at the Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, August 16, 1876.

_Original Cast._

The Wanderer Franz Betz. Siegfried George Unger. Alberich Carl Hill. Mime Carl Schlosser. Fafner Franz von Reichenberg. Brünnhilde Amalia Friedrich-Materna. Erda Luise Jäide. Forest Bird Lilli Lehmann.

Hamburg, Vienna, Munich, Leipsic, 1878; Schwerin, Brunswick, 1879; Cologne, 1880.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Nov. 9, 1887.

_Cast._

Wanderer Emil Fischer. Siegfried Max Alvary. Alberich Rudolph von Milde. Mime Herr Ferency. Fafner Johannes Elmblad. Brünnhilde Lilli Lehmann. Erda Marianne Brandt. Forest Bird Auguste Seidl-Kraus.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

Music Drama in Three Acts.

Third evening of the trilogy, "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

First performed at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, August 17, 1876.

_Original Cast._

Siegfried George Unger. Gunther Eugen Gura. Hagen Gustav Siehr. Alberich Carl Hill. Brünnhilde Amalia Friedrich-Materna. Gutrune Mathilde Weckerlin. Waltraute Luise Jäide. { Johanna Jachmann-Wagner. The Three Norns { Josephine Scheffsky. { Friedericke Grün.

{ Lilli Lehmann. The Rheindaughters { Marie Lehmann. { Minna Lammer.

Munich, Leipsic, 1878; Vienna, Hamburg, Brunswick, 1879; Cologne, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Jan. 25, 1888.

_Cast._

Siegfried Albert Niemann. Gunther Adolf Robinson. Hagen Emil Fischer. Alberich Rudolph von Milde. Brünnhilde Lilli Lehmann. Gutrune Auguste Seidl-Kraus. Woglinde Sophie Traubmann. Wellgunde Marianne Brandt. Flosshilde Louise Meisslinger.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

(The Waltraute and Norn scenes were omitted. They were first given at the Metropolitan on January 24, 1899, when Mme. Schumann-Heink was the Waltraute, and also one of the Norns. The others were Olga Pevny and Louise Meisslinger. "Der Ring des Nibelungen" was first performed without cuts at the Metropolitan on January 12, 17, 19, and 24, 1899.)

DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN

I.--The Sources of the Poems

The gigantic tetralogy of Wagner must be studied as a single opus, for such indeed it is. A poem in four cantos, a dramatic sequence after the manner of the Greeks, it is the story of a single action, a single crime and its tragic atonement. What that story is we shall presently see. How Wagner conceived and created his new and wonderful version of the Norse mythology, the Volsunga Saga, and the "Nibelungen Lied," is what must first occupy our attention. Wagner's first mention of this work is found in a letter to Liszt, written in June, 1849, when he announces his intention of setting to music his "latest German drama, the 'Death of Siegfried.'" This drama embodied that part of the story now told in "Götterdämmerung," and in the composition of it Wagner found that the necessary explanations of the incidents leading up to the story quickly became too long and complex. He decided that he must write a prefatory drama on the story of the young Siegfried, and in doing this he found himself involved again in explanatory difficulties. Thus he finally decided to make a trilogy with a prologue. In a long letter of Nov. 20, 1851, to Liszt he explains how the completed form of "Der Ring" came into existence.

The books of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre" were finished in the first week of November, 1852. He then set about reconstructing the other two, already written, but now in need of extensive alterations. The story of the completion of the poem in its new form and the beginning of the music has already been told in the biographical part of this work. It is necessary only to recapitulate here that the text was finished in 1853. The music of "Rheingold" was begun in the autumn of 1853 at Spezzia, and finished in January, 1854. He wrote to Liszt on Jan. 14: "I went to this music with so much faith, so much joy; and with a true fury of despair I continued, and have at last finished it." The music of "Die Walküre" was begun in June, 1854, and finished late in the same year. The instrumentation was commenced with the opening of the following year. Then came the visit to London, where the score of the first act was completed in April. The score of the first two acts was sent to Liszt on Oct. 3. Wagner having been delayed in the work by many distractions and by mental depression, it was not till the ensuing year that the score was wholly written.

The music of "Siegfried" was begun in 1857, and the first act was finished in April of that year. The second act was begun, and then came the interruption caused by Wagner's eagerness to return to active touch with the stage, his pressing need of money, and his fear that he would not live to complete his gigantic undertaking. This second act, therefore, was not completed till June 21, 1865, at Munich, "Tristan und Isolde" having been written in the meantime. The third act was finished early in 1869. The music of "Götterdämmerung" was begun at Lucerne in 1870, and completed at Bayreuth in November, 1874. The point at which the work on this tetralogy was suspended for that on "Tristan und Isolde" is designated in a letter to Liszt, dated May 8, 1857. Wagner says: "I have led my young Siegfried to a beautiful forest solitude, and there have left him under a linden tree, and taken leave of him with heartfelt tears. He will be better off there than elsewhere."

Just how Wagner came to take up the subject of Siegfried's death is not known. A recent German writer in one of the Munich newspapers has asserted that the suggestion came from Minna, his first wife. This assertion is in line with the belief of many that Minna was more sinned against than sinning, and that Wagner's complaints of her inability to understand him were intended to divert suspicion from the real causes of the troubles between them. It seems hardly likely, however, that a woman of Minna's simple character would have conceived the availability of the Siegfried legend for Wagner's ideal music drama. The fact that Siegfried had for centuries been the popular mythical hero of the German people and that his deeds and personality had constituted most of the materials of one of the great mediæval German epics, the "Nibelungen Lied," seems sufficient to have attracted the attention of the master to the subject. He himself says in his "Communication" that even while he was at work on "Lohengrin" he was debating which of two subjects, "Friedrich Barbarossa" or "Siegfried," he should take up next. He adds:

"Once again and for the last time did myth and history stand before me with opposing claims; this while as good as forcing me to decide whether it was a musical drama or a spoken play that I had to write."

It was with the decision to utilise only mythical subjects for his serious dramas that he concluded to lay aside "Barbarossa" and work upon "The Death of Siegfried." This poem in its original form is included in the collected writings of Wagner, and is interesting as being the first attempt of Wagner to embody the legendary tragedy in a drama. A reading of it will show clearly why he was obliged to write three other dramas to lead up to this one and make its meaning comprehensible. In working out the plan as a whole he selected and utilised with his customary skill the salient points of the Norse and German forms of the story, and he found more suitable material in the sagas than in the German epic. And out of the Northern mythology, so beautifully stored in the sagas, he evolved those ethical features which raise "Der Ring des Nibelungen" to a position beside the great Greek tragedies of antiquity.

We must study these dramas chiefly by tracing their sources and showing how Wagner utilised his materials. He himself wrote an article entitled "The Nibelungen Myth as Material for a Drama," and in it may be found the germinal form of the entire story as it first took cognisable existence in his mind. In its completed shape, however, it differs from this embryonic outline in many particulars.

First, then, the age of the legends upon which these dramas are founded is not so great as might appear from their mythological nature, and that will explain some of their curiosities. We are prone, when watching the actions of Wagner's gods, to think that these stories date from the antique age of fable, but the truth is that they came into existence in the modern age of fable, the early centuries of the Christian era. Furthermore, although Wagner has used chiefly the Norse forms of the materials, the great Siegfried legend was originally the production of the German people. The Scandinavian bards obtained some of their ideas from Germany, and thus came about the strange mingling of Norse mythology and Teutonic fable.

When the dominion of Rome in the west of Europe was overthrown in 476 A.D., the Teutonic race occupied the country from the banks of the Rhine and the Danube to the coasts of Norway. The invaders who settled in the southern provinces of Europe soon lost their distinctive speech. But in Germany and Scandinavia the old tongues remained, and consequently poetic recitation, the custom of long centuries, continued. Tacitus tells us that the people of these northern lands were accustomed to store their history in rhyming chronicles repeated by the bards. It was not till the reign of the wise and heroic Charlemagne (742-814) that these chronicles were collected. Nothing remains of the collection which he made, but it can hardly be doubted that some of the materials found in the Siegfried legend formed part of the old stories of the bards, for it has been traced back as far as the sixth century, when its germs were recognisable. In the first preserved form of the story of this hero's exploits we find recorded the fabulous history of times not widely separated from those of the conquest of Rome's western empire, for in the sixth century appeared in tradition the names not only of Siegfried and Dietrich von Bern, but Theodoric the Great and Attila.

This first preserved form of the legend is called the "Heldenbuch" ("Book of Heroes"). In its present shape it dates from the latter part of the twelfth century, but there is evidence that it was in existence long before that period. It is a collection of poems dealing with the events of the time of Attila and the incursions of the German nations into Rome. The principal personages who appear in this book are: Etzel, or Attila; Dietrich, or Theodoric the Great; Siegfried, Gudrune, Hagen, and others who reappear in the "Nibelungen Lied." The period of the events which occur in the Wagnerian dramas may be estimated by the formation of a succession of incidents leading back to Attila, an historical personage with an established date. In "The Horny Siegfried," one of the poems of the "Heldenbuch," we find matter which serves as a prelude to the "Nibelungen Lied." In this poem Siegfried appears as the embodiment of manly heroism, beauty, and virtue, as he was known to Teutonic song and story for centuries. From having bathed in the blood of dragons he was invulnerable except in one spot, between the shoulders, on which a leaf had happened to fall. Having rescued the beautiful Chriemhild from dragons (or a giant) and obtained possession of the treasures of the dwarfs, he returns her to her father, King of Wurms, and then marries her.

The "Nibelungen Lied" identifies Chriemhild as the sister of Gunther, the Gutrune of Wagner's version. Chriemhild, in order to obtain revenge for the treachery of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, which I shall recount in the outline of the "Nibelungen Lied," after the death of the former marries Attila. It was twenty-six years after the death of Siegfried when she carried out her plan of revenge. How long this was before the death of Attila is not related, but we know that he died in 453 A.D. He is supposed to have been born about 406, which would have made him forty-seven years old at the time of his death. It was thirteen years after her marriage to Attila when Chriemhild accomplished her revenge. Supposing that Attila's death took place not less than a year later, that would fix the date of the marriage at 439, or when this busy warrior was thirty-three and perhaps ready to rest, and that of the revenge at 452. Therefore, as the "Nibelungen Lied" tells us that the death of Siegfried took place twenty-six years before the accomplishment of the revenge, we may suppose that the hero expired in 426. At any rate, the date of his death must have been in the early part of the fifth century. And equally, therefore, much of the supernatural paraphernalia of "Götterdämmerung" belongs to the store of fable which has come down from that period. If one is curious to establish dates for the earlier dramas he must first discover how long Siegfried and Brünnhilde remained together on the Valkyrs' Hill after the sleeping beauty was awakened by the young hero. The date of "Die Walküre" would be some twenty or twenty-two years earlier, for in the last scene of that work we learn that Sieglinde is to become his mother. As for "Das Rheingold," that must be left to conjecture entirely.

From the _Heldenbuch_ the next step in the German versions of the legend carries us to the "Nibelungen Lied." Here, as I have noted, we find Chriemhild as the sister of Gunther. Siegfried has heard of her beauty and determines to win her as his bride. But all his efforts are in vain. Meanwhile, to the Court news comes of the beautiful Brunhild, Queen of Isenland, a woman of matchless courage and strength. Every suitor for her hand must abide three combats with her, and if vanquished is put to death. Gunther decides to try to win her, and Siegfried accompanies him on his expedition, with the understanding that if they succeed he is to have Chriemhild to wife. Arriving at the Court of Brunhild, Siegfried, in order to increase respect for the standing of Gunther, poses as his friend's vassal. The combats take place, and Siegfried, making himself invisible by the aid of the magic cap which he obtained from the dwarfs, assists Gunther to conquer the Queen.

Gunther weds Brunhild and Siegfried marries Gutrune, but the proud Queen of Isenland does not relish the idea of having for a sister-in-law the wife of a vassal. Gunther tells her that Siegfried is a Prince in his own country, but she disbelieves her spouse, and to punish him for his falsehood denies him her embraces, binds him with her magic girdle, and hangs him on a nail. Siegfried, having pity on Gunther, promises to deprive Brunhild of the girdle and make her a wife in fact as well as in name. So on the following night, disguised by the Tarnkappe, he takes Gunther's place, embraces the unwilling Brunhild, and carries off her magic girdle and her ring. Gutrune misses Siegfried from the chamber, and in the end he is compelled to explain to her. He foolishly gives her the girdle and the ring. The two women subsequently come to hot words on a question of precedence in entering a church (like Elsa and Ortrud), and Chriemhild in her anger charges Brunhild with her relations with Siegfried, producing the ring as evidence. Then Brunhild, discovering the deception of the Tarnkappe, vows vengeance, in the attainment of which Hagen aids her. Having induced Chriemhild to disclose to him the mortal spot on Siegfried's body, he drives a spear into it and slays him. It is to secure revenge for this murder that Chriemhild marries Attila.

This is a very brief and imperfect outline of the mighty epic of mediæval Germany. It breathes the spirit of mediævalism, and it contains none of the mythological features which appear in the beautiful Scandinavian version of the story of Siegfried. Yet it has certain incidents employed by Wagner in the dramas, especially in "Götterdämmerung." The use of the Tarnhelm, the substitution of Siegfried for Gunther in the wedding chamber, the discovery of the deception through the recognition of the ring by Brünnhilde, and the slaying of Siegfried by Hagen's spear-thrust in the back--all appear in the drama in most significant forms.

It is to the Norse forms of the legend, however, that we must turn for the earlier parts of Wagner's story and for the most significant features of the undercurrent of ethical thought. This version in its oldest form is found in the Eddas, some of which are undoubtedly of great antiquity. Yet in these poems we meet with the historic name of Attila. No doubt many deeds performed by earlier and forgotten heroes were attributed to this wonder-worker of the early Middle Ages, and in this way he became a sort of composite figure, and thus was thrust into the later versions of the Eddaic tales. All the other personages in the story are mythical. As Mr. Sparling notes in his introduction to the translation of the Volsunga Saga made by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson,[39] only fragments of the Eddaic poems still exist, but "ere they perished there arose from them a saga," that of the race of Volsungs.

[Footnote 39: London, Walter Scott, 1888.]

How old the original Eddaic stories are can only be conjectured. When the Scando-Gothic races overran Europe they carried at least the germs of these stories with them, but no man knows where they got them. But it is certain that the northern versions of the Nibelung tales, as known to us now, must have originated in the same legends as the "Nibelungen Lied." It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that the collection of the rhymed Eddas made by Saemund the Wise was discovered, and the prose Eddas of Snorre Sturleson (born 1178, died 1224) were written a century later than these. For Saemund the Wise was born in 1056 and died in 1131, and therefore the date of his collection of the rhymed Eddas is not much earlier than that of the "Nibelungen Lied." Both the Eddas and the Lied were widely diverging branches of an old trunk, and that accounts in a measure for both their resemblances and their differences. The southern version is more adulterated with inexact history, while the northern embodies more of the fundamental religious mythology of the people.

Far away in the snowy fastnesses of Iceland were preserved the ancient stories of the hero Sigurd and the heroine Brünnhilde. Even to this day these stories are sung or told by the secluded people of the Faroe Islands. Whence did they procure them? From the scattering of races, which, begun according to religious history at the end of the flood, continued through the Dark Ages. So impressed upon the imaginations of the wanderers were these old tales that they connected historical personages with the actors in them, not only, as we have seen, by attributing fabulous deeds to real beings, but by tracing the descent of actual persons from those of mythical nature. For example, the first King of Dublin was Olaf the White, and, according to tradition, he was the son of Ingiald, son of Thora, daughter of "Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye," son of Ragnar Lodbrok by Aslaug, daughter of Sigurd by Brünnhilde. And the widow of Olaf was one of the settlers of Iceland. It was in the ninth century that Harold Fairhair determined to conquer all Norway. He fought also in the British Isles, and after a long and bloody struggle made himself master of Ireland as well as of the northern coasts. Many of the vanquished, including Olaf's widow, took refuge in the western islands, and with them went the legends, which had come up from the Rhine valley, and which, safely buried in the fastnesses of Iceland and the Faroes, grew into the sagas known to us as the Elder Eddas. "There also shall we escape the troubling of kings and scoundrels," says the Vatsdoelsaga. In their security they made their wondrous songs.

It was in 1643 that Brynjolf Sveinsson, Bishop of Skalholt, discovered the manuscripts of Saemund the Wise, and he christened them the "Edda Saemundar hinns froda," or "Edda of Saemund the Wise." The term "Edda," which is Icelandic for "grandmother," had been applied already to the prose tales of Sturleson, though the latter are of later origin than the former. The two works are frequently distinguished as the Elder and the Younger Edda. The Elder is often called the Poetic Edda, because it consists chiefly of songs, while the Younger is often named the Prose Edda. The first part of the Elder Edda gives the mythology of the North, while the lays of the heroes are found in its second part. One of the translators of the Prose Edda has described it as a sort of commentary on the Poetic Edda.[40]

[Footnote 40: For the substance of the Elder Edda consult "Asgard and the Gods," by Wägner & McDowall; London, Swan, Sonnenschein, Le Bas & Lowrey, 1886. For the Prose Edda, see "The Younger Edda," translated by R.B. Anderson, Chicago; Scott, Foresman & Co., 1897.]

The poems which contain the story of Sigurd and Brünnhilde are a portion of the second part of the Elder Edda. An important part, recounting the story of Sigurd's life from his meeting with Brünnhilde to his death, has been lost, and for that part of the tale we are compelled to go to the Prose Edda and the Volsunga Saga. In the second part of his Younger Edda, Snorre Sturleson rehearsed briefly in simple prose the story of Sigurd the Volsung, which in the Elder Edda ran through several poems, forming in their natural connection an epic of great power. As one of the historians of Norse literature says:

"The sad and absorbing story here narrated was wonderfully popular throughout the ancient Scandinavian and Teutonic world, and it is impossible to say for how many centuries these great tragic ballads had agitated the hearts of the warlike races of the North. It is clear that Sigurd and Brynhilda, with all their beauty, noble endowment, and sorrowful history, were real personages, who had taken powerful hold on the popular affections in the most ancient times, and had come down from age to age, receiving fresh incarnations and embellishments from the popular Scalds."

It is possible that this is true, but the original history of the personages is quite lost. The story told in the "Skaldskaparmal," the second part of the Younger Edda, is a rehearsal of the contents of the "Short Lay of Sigurd," "The Lay of Fafner," and one or two others in the Elder Edda bearing on the Volsung tale. Wagner has utilised certain portions of these original lays, especially that of Fafner. The words of the Forest Bird to Siegfried come very close to those of the Eagles, who sang to Sigurd in "The Lay of Fafner":

"There lies Regin,[41] Contemplating How to deceive the man Who trusts him: Thinks in his wrath Of false accusations. The evil smith plots Revenge 'gainst the brother."

[Footnote 41: Mime.]

Compare this passage with the words of the Forest Bird in Act II. of "Siegfried":

"O trust not in Mime, The treacherous elf! Heareth Siegfried but sharply The shifty hypocrite's words, What at heart he means Shall by Mime be shown."

But it was in the Volsunga Saga that Wagner found his material in its fullest and most available form. None of the editors of the remnants of Icelandic literature makes it clear, so far as I have been able to ascertain, whether the Volsunga Saga is older than Snorre's Edda or not. The facts seem to be that most of the sagas, including this one, had come into settled form about 900 A.D., and were written down between 1140 and 1220, or during the lifetime of Snorre. It is probable, therefore, that Snorre's recapitulation of the Volsung story was founded as much upon the Volsunga Saga as upon the poems of the Elder Edda. In all likelihood he knew both, and accepted the definite outline of the saga as a shape into which to put his recital of the contents of the lays.

The value of the Volsunga Saga in relation to the Nibelung tale lies in the fact that its compiler was acquainted with some of the lays of the Elder Edda, now lost, and that he recounted their incidents for us, and that it supplied Wagner with the principal materials for three out of four of the "Ring" dramas. The origin of this saga is not known, but may easily be surmised. The Norse sagaman was a luxury of every Court, as were the Norman minstrel and the Saxon gleeman, and it was frequently his office to glorify his sovereign in song by connecting him with the marvellous heroes of ancient fable. Students of mediæval epics know that it was common for their makers to seek thus to laud their patrons. An interesting instance of this is the original French story of the Holy Grail, in which an attempt is made by Kiot of Provence to show that the sacred vessel was first consigned to the care of Titurel, a mythical Prince of the Anjou Dynasty. The Volsunga Saga appears to have been arranged largely for the purpose of glorifying the children of Olaf.

As a corollary to the chief saga there may be mentioned the Thidrek (Dietrich) Saga, which includes the Niflunga Saga, and was, as its writer states, made from the German stories. This saga agrees in some parts with the poems of Eddaic origin, and in others with the "Nibelungen Lied." There is also the Nornagest Saga, in which Nornagest (the Guest of the Norns) tells how he witnessed some of Sigurd's deeds and his death. But the fundamental saga is that which tells the story of the Volsung race.

The story of the Volsunga Saga is too long to be repeated in full in this volume, but an outline of its principal incidents must be given. The genealogy of the Volsung race begins with Odin, whose son was Sigi, who begat Rerir, the father of Volsung, a mighty king. In the midst of Volsung's palace, with its branches piercing the roof, stood the great tree called the Branstock. Volsung had ten sons and a daughter, the latter born a twin with the eldest son. Their names were Sigmund and Signy. King Siggeir of Gothland wedded Signy, and at the feast there came into the hall an old, one-eyed man, wrapped in a robe, and he struck a sword into the Branstock so that no man save Sigmund could draw it forth. Siggeir was jealous and when he had returned to his own land with his bride he invited Volsung and his sons on a visit. When they had come, he fell upon them and slew Volsung and set his sons in a wood to be devoured by wolves. Sigmund escaped and dwelt in the wood. Signy, desiring to avenge the slaughter of her kin, sent her sons to Sigmund to be tested as to their fitness for the task. But he, finding them unfit, slew them. Then Signy put a witch to sleep with her husband and in disguise went to Sigmund's house and asked for shelter. Sigmund saw she was fair and he kept her three nights. Then she went to her home. And she bore another son, whom she called Sinfjotli. And when he was grown she sent him to his father, Sigmund.

In time, Sigmund and Sinfjotli slew Siggeir, and Signy, having revealed the fact that Sinfjotli was a full-blooded Volsung, died with her husband. Sigmund now married Borghild, who hated Sinfjotli and poisoned him. Sigmund divorced her and married again, his second wife being Hjordis, who had rejected Hunding, the son of Lygni. Hunding came with his followers and fought Sigmund, whose sword was broken in the battle by the spear of an old, one-eyed man, wrapped in a mantle. Dying, Sigmund gave the pieces of the broken sword to Hjordis to keep for her son, who was to be the greatest of the Volsungs. Hjordis went to the Court of the King of Denmark and bore the son, who was called Sigurd. Alf, the son of the Danish King, wedded Hjordis, and Sigurd grew up at the Court. His foster-father and instructor was Regin, a famous smith, a man of wisdom. Regin saw that Sigurd would be a hero, and hoped to make use of him. Sigurd was sent to the woods to choose himself a horse, and on the way he met an old man with one eye, who bade him drive the horses into the water. One swam across the river and that one the old man told Sigurd to choose. This horse's name was Grani, and it was of the strain of Odin's stable. Now Regin told Sigurd of a dragon, Fafnir, which lay guarding a mighty store of gold, and he urged Sigurd to slay this dragon and get the hoard. And Regin told Sigurd the story of the gold.

One Hreidmar had three sons--Fafnir, Otter, and Regin. Otter was so called because he was wont to take the form of an otter and go into the lake called Andvari's Lake to catch fish. One day Odin, Hönir, and Loki, three of the gods, came to the lake, and Loki threw a stone at the otter and slew it. They took off the skin and went to the house of Hreidmar, who recognised the skin and bade them pay him a ransom of so much gold as should cover the skin as it stood upright. Now Loki knew that Andvari had a great store of gold, and, going back to the lake, he caught Andvari, who was swimming in the guise of a pike, and refused to release him unless he gave up all his gold and also the ring by whose magic power the gold was obtained. And in his wrath Andvari cursed the gold and the ring and declared that they should be the bane of every man who should thereafter own them. Loki and the gods strove to cover the otter skin with the gold, but Hreidmar still saw one muzzle-hair of the otter, and they were obliged to add also the ring to hide this. Then Loki said to Hreidmar:

"Thou and thy son Are naught fated to thrive, The bane it shall be of you both."

"Thereafter," continued Regin, "Fafnir slew his father and murdered him, nor got I aught of the treasure, and so evil he grew that he fell to lying abroad and begrudged any share in the wealth to any man, and so became the worst of all worms, and ever now lies brooding upon that treasure." Sigurd bade Regin make him a sword with which to slay the dragon, but every one which the smith made the youth broke across the anvil. Then Sigurd bade him weld the shards of the sword Gram, which had belonged to Sigmund. And when these were welded Sigurd smote the anvil with the new blade and clove it in twain.

Then Sigurd went to fight the sons of Hunding and slew them to avenge his father's death. Next he went in accordance with his promise to Regin and slew Fafnir, the dragon. And Fafnir told him that the treasure which he would gain would be his bane. At the desire of Regin he roasted the dragon's heart, and in preparing it he wet his finger with the blood and cleansed it with his tongue. Immediately he understood the language of the birds and heard the woodpeckers chattering to the effect that he should slay the treacherous Regin, who desired his death, should secure the gold for himself and ride to Hindfell, where slept Brynhild, for there he would get great wisdom. Sigurd slew Regin and rode off in search of Brynhild, who lay in a castle on a mountain surrounded by fire. Sigurd rode to her through the fire. He took off her helm and cut the byrny (breast-plate) from her with his sword. And she awoke and asked the name of her awakener. And when she had learned it she sang:

"Long have I slept And slumbered long, Many and long are the woes of mankind. By the might of Odin Must I abide helpless To shake from off me the spells of slumber.

"Hail to the day come back! Hail, sons of the daylight! Hail to thee, night, and thy daughter! Look with kind eyes adown On us sitting here lonely And give unto us the gain that we long for."

She told Sigurd how she had struck down in battle Helm Gunnar, whom Odin had selected to be victorious. "And Odin, in vengeance for that deed, stuck the sleep-thorn into me and said I should never again have the victory, but should be given away in marriage; but thereagainst I vowed a vow that never would I wed one who knew the name of fear." Then she taught him all her runes, and they two plighted their troth. He went his way, but they met again and renewed their vows and he gave her a ring, the ring of Andvari. Before he departed again she prophesied that he would wed Gudrun, the daughter of King Giuki.

Giuki ruled south of the Rhine. He had three sons, Gunnar (Gunther), Högni (Hagen) and Guttorm, and one daughter, Gudrun. His wife was Grimhild, skilled in magic arts. Sigurd went to their court and stayed five seasons, and Grimhild perceived how dearly Sigurd loved Brynhild, for he spoke much of her, and she also saw that he was a goodly man and she wished to have him wed Gudrun. So she mixed him a drink which caused him to forget Brynhild and he began to love Gudrun. He married her and swore the oath of brotherhood with Gunnar and Högni. Brynhild was well known to all these persons, and one day Grimhild, seeing that Gunnar was still unwed, urged him to go to court Brynhild, and take Sigurd with him. Gunnar's horse, however, would not go through the fire. Then he mounted Grani, but he would not stir. So he and Sigurd changed shapes after a manner taught them by Grimhild, and Sigurd in the guise of Gunnar rode through the flames and, reminding Brynhild that she had sworn to wed no one except him who pierced the fire, claimed her as his bride, and she, being bound by the oath, yielded. He took the ring of Andvari and her girdle from her, and rode away. And she went to Gunnar's home and was married to him. Sigurd gave the ring and the girdle to his wife Gudrun, and when, some time afterward, the two women fell into a dispute as to which one's husband was the greater, Gudrun declared that it was her own husband, Sigurd, who had overcome Brynhild on the mountain and made her wed Gunnar. And in proof of her words she showed the ring which Sigurd had taken from Brynhild's finger and given to her. Brynhild was now eager for revenge, and conspired with Gunnar and Högni to put Sigurd to death. But they had sworn brotherhood, and so Guttorm, the youngest brother, who had not sworn, was chosen; and he slew Sigurd as he lay asleep in his bed. And Brynhild, aweary of life and the deceits of it, loving no man but Sigurd, drove a sword into her bosom, and, dying, asked Gunnar to burn her body with Sigurd's. And it was so done.

Such is the story of the Volsunga Saga as far as it concerns the incidents of "Der Ring des Nibelungen." In the remaining part of it is told how Gudrun became the wife of Atli (Attila) and how he schemed to get possession of the treasure which Sigurd had taken from Fafnir. But Gunnar and Högni sank the gold in the Rhine, and thus it disappeared. Atli slew them, but they had not revealed its hiding-place. I have rehearsed the tale of the Volsungs at more length than that of the "Nibelungen Lied" because from it Wagner obtained much more of his material. It now becomes necessary to review the mythological elements of the dramas taken from the Eddas and connected by Wagner with this story from mere hints in the original. When that is done, we shall be ready to survey the dramas in their entirety and see what use Wagner made of his materials.

The injection into the northern legends of the gods and goddesses of Scandinavian mythology and of the stories of the sins of Wotan and the certainty of future destruction of the gods furnished Wagner with the material for all the early portion of his mighty drama. It provided him with the ethical basis which makes Wotan the real hero of a tragedy, to end in the extinction not only of himself and his associate gods, but of the entire old order of the world, and the establishment of a new one. This last idea is found in the songs of the Elder Edda, "Odin's Raven Song," and "Song of the Way Tamer." These relate to the death of Baldur, the favourite son of Odin, and are dark with the mystery of an unknown terror. The gods are disturbed to the depths of their beings, and Odin mounts his steed and rides to Hell to consult the Wala (Erda) and force from her by means of runes some information as to the death of his son. Compare this incident with the first scene of the third act of "Siegfried." Read the "Havamal," the High Song of Odin, which contains also the rune song and expounds the entire scheme of Norse ethics. As one of the commentators on it has well said, "It shows a worldly wisdom, experience, and sagacity to which modern life can add nothing." The power of runes is explained in this song. It was by runes that the wicked princesses of mediæval tales cast spells over their enemies, that sickness was healed, that flying spears were checked in battle, that ships conquered the storms of Old Ocean. Yet these runes were nothing but letters of the alphabet, and their mysterious power was that of knowledge, denied to many in those dark times and seemingly magical in its use by the few.

In order that we may understand the true plot of "Der Ring des Nibelungen," we must briefly examine the mythological basis of it, as furnished by the Eddas.

According to the Eddas, then, the gods dwelt in Asgard (the place of the Ases or Aesir), in the castle named Walhalla, the abode of slain heroes. These gods were not immortal, but were extraordinary beings gifted with wonderful length of days. But they knew that at some time they must meet in final conflict their enemies, of which the chief were the giants. There was also in the far south a mysterious Surtur, with a flaming sword, and the sons of Muspel, who would join in the last great assault on the gods. Allied with these giants would be the horrible children of Loki--the Midgard Snake, which encircled the earth, and the Fenris Wolf. Loki was the spirit of evil, the god of fire, yet he was received among the gods because of his wonderful cunning. The dwarfs dwelt in the subterranean places and were wondrous makers of weapons for the gods, whom, nevertheless, they hated.

The master of all the gods was Odin, or Wotan, the lord of war and the hunt. Upon the field of battle he was followed by his Valkyrs, Wish-Maidens, choosers of the slain, who consecrated the fallen heroes with kisses and carried them away to Walhalla. There they ate of the feast of the blessed and waited to aid Wotan in his final battle with the powers of evil. The mother of the gods was Fricka, the wife of Wotan, the Juno of the Norse mythology. Freya was the goddess of Love, the Venus of the assembly. Iduna, another goddess, had care of the golden apples of endless youth, which the gods ate. Thor was the wielder of the mighty hammer, made for him by the dwarfs.

The story runs thus: Fear of the giants led the gods to desire to have the mighty burg Walhalla surrounded by a strong wall. By the advice of Loki they swore a great oath to give the goddess Freya and the sun and the moon to the builder of this wall, provided that he had it finished before the coming of summer. If the work was then incomplete, the contract was void. The builder, a Frost-Giant in disguise, asked only the aid of his horse Svadilfare, and this was allowed him. The horse carried such vast stones that the work was almost done several days before the time expired. The gods held a council, "and asked each other who could have advised to give Freya in marriage in Jothunheim (the giant's land) or to plunge the air and the heavens in darkness by taking away the sun and the moon and giving them to the giant; and all agreed that this must have been advised by him who gives the most bad counsels,--namely, Loki, the son of Lauffey,--and they threatened him with a cruel death if he could not contrive some way of preventing the builder from fulfilling his part of the bargain."[42] Loki changed himself to the guise of a mare the next night, and the giant's horse ran after the mare and did no work. The giant, seeing that he was to lose his bargain, resumed his natural form, and the gods called upon Thor, who slew him with his hammer. So, as the "Wala's Prophecy" in the Elder Edda says:

"Broken were oaths, And words and promises-- All mighty speech That had passed between them."

[Footnote 42: "The Prose Edda"; translated by R.B. Anderson.]

Thus did sin enter among the gods, and by the breaking of the oath they burdened themselves with guilt inexpiable. Evil portents came. Iduna sank with her golden apples of eternal youth to the lower depths, and could not be recalled. Baldur, the second son of Wotan, the holy one, into whose presence no impure thing might come, had terrible dreams. Hel, the goddess of the lower world and of death, appeared to him and beckoned him to come to her.

Now the last scenes begin. Wotan rides to the realm of shades and summons the Wala, who foretells the death of Baldur. Fricka begs all things living or inanimate to swear that they will not injure Baldur. She overlooks the mistletoe. Loki, noting the omission, makes a dart of this wood and gives it to Hödur, the blind god. He in sport shoots the dart at Baldur, who is supposed to be safe from harm, and the bright one falls dead. The death of Baldur is the foreshadowing of the end of the gods, and the dissolution of the universe. Sin has entered among the gods, and they and all else must pay the penalty. Then comes Ragnarök, the German Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods. The hostile forces assemble for the last great battle. The sons of Muspel, led by Surtur with the flaming sword, gallop from the south. The Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Snake are loosed. Wotan leads the gods in battle. A mighty conflict ensues, and all are slain. Surtur's flames burn the world, and from the ashes arises a new one, purified by fire. A youth and a maiden, Lif and Lifthrasir, come out of the wood of Hoddmimir, where, in the innocence of childhood, they have slept through all the battle, and they begin the population of the regenerate world. And the gods themselves, purified by the fire, reappear and dwell in eternal peace on the plain of Ida, on the site where once stood the mighty Walhalla.

II.--The Story as Told by Wagner

We may now briefly review the four dramas of "Der Ring," and trace the connection of their incidents. "Das Rheingold" is the prologue of the whole, and it is essential that we should thoroughly understand its story, for it lays down the basis, the motive, of the entire tragedy. We see the Rhine maidens sporting around the Rhine gold at the bottom of the river. They are interrupted by the appearance of Alberich, the Nibelung, who comes up from the nether regions of Nibelheim, and is at once overcome with the desire to possess one of the maidens. The rising sun lights up the gold. Alberich's curiosity in regard to it brings out the story of its nature. Here enters Wagner's first original and highly poetic touch. Only one who renounces love can make the ring of gold by which power is to be obtained. That idea is not found in the old legends. Alberich, failing in his attempt to win one of the maidens, forswears love and snatches the gold from its resting-place.

One of the maidens tells us that their father had warned them of a foe to come from the bottom of the river, but we never learn who was that father. Nor is any light thrown on the origin of the gold itself. In the Volsunga Saga we find it in the water, the possession of Andvari. In the "Nibelungen Lied" Siegfried wins the gold from two brothers, Schilbung and Nibelung, who brought it forth from a cave. It had been stored there for centuries. In the Thidrek Saga Siegfried wins it from a dragon, which he kills. But none of the versions account for the origin of the gold. All agree that it finally returned to the Rhine, and that may have been the source of Wagner's idea. Nor is there any slightest foundation for the proclamation that only he who forswears love will be able to profit by the gold. Wagner has simply allowed his fancy to work with the old maxim that money is the root of all evil, and to represent the gods themselves as ignorant of the power of gold and innocent of wrong till they acquired a knowledge of this power. Wotan, in his desire to save Freia, is ready to yield to the tempter, and his temptation and fall form the subject of the second scene.

In order to get at the full meaning of these Nibelung dramas we must keep ever in mind Wagner's intent to follow in a measure the methods of the Greek dramatists. Æschylus, the greatest of the Greek tragic writers, excelled in showing the inexorable workings of Fate, which in the Greek mind corresponded to the modern conception of the inevitable punishment for sin. Wagner is purely Æschylean in his method of constructing his tragedy, and he sets forth the inflexible processes of Fate with the same high purpose. But as he addressed himself to a modern audience he offered to it that conception of Fate with which it was familiar, namely, the absolute certainty of punishment for transgression of the moral law. That he found in the old Norse legend a foundation for this idea was fortunate. It simplified his work, yet left room for him to introduce striking original matter. The rape of the gold by one who has renounced love is original with Wagner.

In the second scene of the prologue, then, we find Wotan and Fricka before the completed castle of Walhalla, which Wotan salutes in a speech of majestic dignity. Fricka at once reminds him of the price to be paid. When Freia enters, calling upon Wotan to release her from the giants, we quickly learn that it was Loge who devised the bargain and who is depended upon by Wotan to find a way out of it. The giants demand their pay. Wotan tells them they cannot have Freia. Then even the "stupid giant," as he calls himself, warns the god of the consequences of violating the faith by which he rules. Loge arrives in the height of the discussion and at once shows the evil, cunning, flickering nature of his character. The arch-enemy of the gods, trusted only by Wotan who confesses to a lack of cunning, Loge has planned a temptation to work the downfall of the Aesir. He tells the story of his wanderings. In all the earth none values aught more than the worth of woman--save one, black Alberich alone, who has forsworn love, stolen the Rhine gold and made from it a ring to give him the mastery of the world. Donner exclaims that such a ring may make Alberich master of the gods themselves, and Wotan cries that he must have the ring. But the giants have also heard, and they offer to accept the Nibelung hoard, the stolen Rhine gold, in ransom for Freia, whom they carry off till such time as Wotan is ready to pay. Here we see that Wagner has followed none of the original material exactly. In the Eddas the giant is not allowed to complete the burg, and the hoard does not enter into the matter at all. In the Volsunga Saga the gold is paid in ransom for the gods held by Hreidmar for the murder of Otter. The connection of the Rhine gold with the entry of sin among the gods, as narrated in the Eddas, is Wagner's own work, and it adds immeasurably to the strength and poetic beauty of the drama.

Wotan and Loge in Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs, is the next picture. Alberich has welded the ring and is the master of his race. Mime has made for him the Tarnhelm, which is to be the instrument of much evil. He prates of the power which is yet to be his, and even threatens the gods. The dwarfs and the giants are alike hostile to the Aesir. Tempted by Loge's cunning to show the magic of the Tarnhelm, Alberich changes himself first to a serpent and then to a toad, and in the latter form the gods make him a captive and drag him away to the surface of the earth before Walhalla. Then they demand of him as ransom the Nibelung hoard. He gives it, for with his ring he can get more. They call for the Tarnhelm. He gives that, too. Then they demand the ring. Alberich warns Wotan not to rob him of it.

"Say I have sinned; The sin on myself but falls: But on all things that were, Are, and will be, Strikes this evil of thine, If rashly thou seizest my ring."

The dwarf, like the giant, knows what must be the consequence of the infraction by the presiding god of the law above all gods. But Wotan tears the ring from his finger. Then Alberich curses the ring. It shall deal out death, not power. It shall bring misery, not gladness. But this curse is, after all, only a piece of stage property. It makes a theatrical effect, and it marks a climax for the auditor. The real curse already exists the moment Wotan stains himself with crime. The thought of the Norse mythology, as set forth in the Eddas, but lost by the maker of Volsunga Saga, is preserved by Wagner in the prophecy of Alberich. The law will do its own work; but the curse has an external and incidental value in the construction of the drama. Alberich puts into words the inevitable operation of the law.

The prologue now moves swiftly to its end. The giants return with Freia, and it is arranged that they are to receive for her enough gold to hide her. This is Wagner's adaptation of the incident of the filling of the otter skin in the Volsunga Saga. The hoard proves insufficient, and the Tarnhelm goes to swell the heap. Fasolt, the giant who is smitten by the charms of the goddess, still sees the glorious glance of her eye, and demands that Wotan put the ring on the pile to stop this last cranny. Compare Hreidmar's discovery of the muzzle-hair with this poetic idea! The haughty god refuses. The giants declare the bargain off, and start away again with Freia. Loge's plan is working perfectly. He never loses any opportunity to fasten more firmly upon Wotan his burden of guilt. When the giants demand the ring, Loge interposes, saying that the gods must retain that because Wotan means to restore it to the Rhine maidens. Wotan at once falls into the trap, and says:

"What pratest thou there? The prize so hardly come by I shall keep, unawed, for myself."

When Wotan has flatly refused to give the ring to the giants, Erda, the embodiment of the earth itself, the impersonation of primeval elements, arises in pale light and mystery. She warns Wotan to flee the curse of the ring. She declares herself to be the all-knowing prophetess, and says:

"Alles was ist, endet. Ein düsterer Tag dämmert den Göttern."

"All that exists, endeth. A dismal day Dawns for the Aesir."

This brief scene, so charged with dramatic and musical potency, is Wagner's use of the prophecy of the Wala, as contained in the Elder Edda. That prophecy foretells the end of the gods, but its situation in the story is similar to that of the Erda scene in "Siegfried." It comes near the end of the tragedy. Nevertheless from it Wagner obtained the character of Erda and the prediction made by her in "Das Rheingold." The prophecy of the Wala in the Edda does not touch upon the sin of the gods, but it sets forth in detail the story of Ragnarök, as I have already given it. Wagner, however, connects the Wala's utterance with the ethical basis of his tragedy. Wotan, impressed by the prediction, gives up the ring and ransoms Freia. The curse at once begins to operate. The giants quarrel over the division of the hoard and Fafner kills Fasolt. In the Volsunga Saga, from which this incident is adapted, Fafner slays his father, while his brother Regin plays the part allotted by Wagner to Mime in "Siegfried," as we shall presently see. Fafner goes off to the forest with his hoard, and there, as in the saga, becomes a dragon, by the aid of the Tarnhelm, and lies guarding the hoard, which he does not know how to use, for he is too stupid to employ the power of the ring.

Donner raises a thunderstorm to clear the air after the murder, and when the rain is gone a rainbow is seen spanning the valley of the Rhine. The new castle stands forth in all its glory, and Wotan, inviting Fricka to enter with him, for the first time calls it Walhalla. The goddess asks the meaning of the name, and Wotan replies:

"What might 'gainst our fears My mind may have found, If proved a success Soon shall explain the name."

The thought in Wotan's mind is that of raising up a race of free heroes who shall perform vicariously the expiation denied to him. One of them shall of his own volition rescue the ring and restore it to its rightful owners, thus satisfying the demands of the law and removing the curse. The conception of the hero in the mind of Wotan is made known to us only by the orchestra, which intones the Sword motive here for the first time. In recent years, with the sanction of Mme. Wagner, a new idea has been introduced into this scene. In the hoard is the sword, which is discarded by Fafner as valueless. When Wotan conceives the hero-thought, he picks up this sword and raises it aloft while the trumpet peals out the motive. This was not Wagner's idea, but it is not an unpardonable concession to the demands of the theatre. It was just a little too much for Wagner to expect that his auditors would carry the Sword motive in their minds from "Das Rheingold" to the first act of "Die Walküre," and remember when hearing it in the latter how it was used in the former and thus find out what it meant there.

Over the rainbow--Bifröst, as it is called in the Eddas--the gods enter Walhalla, the Rhine maidens vainly pleading from the valley below for the return of their ring, and Loge gloating over the end to which, as he says, the Aesir are even now hastening. And thus ends the prologue, to which I have devoted much space because it contains the foundation of the tragedy. It presents to us the hero foredoomed to destruction, the crime, and the certainty of its inevitable punishment. That is the subject-matter of the propositional part of a classic tragedy. We are now ready to observe the workings of Wotan's futile plans.

With the passage from "Das Rheingold" to "Die Walküre" we enter upon the struggles of the innocent human beings who have been created by Wotan to work his will. The beautiful drama in which Wagner sets forth the events leading to the birth of Siegfried and the slumber of Brünnhilde on the mountain is built from mere hints in the Volsunga Saga. Volsung is no longer the great-grandson of Wotan, but is Wotan himself. Siegmund and Sieglinde are Sigmund and Signy of the saga, twin children of Wotan. The name Sieglinde is that of Siegfried's mother, according to the "Nibelungen Lied." It is Hunding, not Siggeir, who marries Sieglinde. The fight between Hunding and Siegmund takes place, not because of the former's rejection by the maid, but because of the latter's flight with her. The mysterious one-eyed man strikes the sword into the tree at the wedding-feast, and on his spear the sword of Siegmund is broken in the fight. Siegmund Wagner substitutes for the warrior whom Brünnhilde in the saga once struck down, contrary to Wotan's wishes, and when she is put to sleep on the mountain it is for protecting, not slaying, the wrong man. We find that she is surrounded by fire at her own request, that Wotan rules that she shall marry only the hero who will know no fear and can pierce the fire, and that this hero is to be the offspring of Siegmund and Sieglinde--Siegfried, the full-blooded Volsung, in whose veins flows the blood and in whose heart, freely and unconsciously, works the impulse of Wotan. Let the reader review the story of the saga, and compare it with that of "Die Walküre."

The first act of the drama is taken up with the mutual recognition of Siegmund and Sieglinde, their strange love for one another, the reception of the sword by the hero for whom it was struck into the tree, and the flight of the lovers. Then comes the deeply significant opening scene of the second act. The Valkyr Brünnhilde, revealed to us in all the glory of her divine beauty and strength, starting to the field, is warned not to carry Hunding to Walhalla. To Wotan now comes Fricka, stirred to the bottom of her nature by the deep affront in the action of Siegmund and Sieglinde to her dignity as the goddess of marriage. She demands the punishment of the erring pair. Wotan vainly pleads that the gods need the aid of a hero working of his own free will in their defence. Fricka brushes aside this plea with the declaration that heroes have no powers which are denied to gods. She tells Wotan that it is he who breathes courage into Siegmund, that it was he who struck the sword into the tree, devised the need into which Siegmund should fall, and guided him to the house of Hunding. She stands upon her dignity as the celestial queen and demands that the outrage of her especial laws shall be punished. Wotan must not protect Siegmund in the coming fight and he must forbid Brünnhilde's doing so. By hard-wrung oath she binds her spouse to abandon his own plan and submit to the demands of the inexorable moral law.

Brünnhilde returns to his side only to learn the story of her sire's grief. He tells her the history of the rape of the gold, of the endless scheming of Alberich for the downfall of the gods, of his own plan to fill Walhalla with defenders, of his search for Erda, and her becoming Brünnhilde's mother. If Alberich recovers the ring Walhalla is lost, for only he who forswore love can work evil with the circlet of Rhine gold. The ring must be taken from Fafner, but Wotan dare not take it himself because to do so would be a violation of faith and bring more suffering upon him. Only the free hero can accomplish this end. But Fricka has unmasked the truth. Siegmund is but the slave of Wotan's will. And in his final outburst of grief and impotent rage the god sums up his misery:

"I have wrested Alberich's ring, Grasped the coveted gold! The curse I incurred Doth cling to me yet:-- What I love best I must relinquish, Slay him I hold most sacred; Trusting belief Foully betray! Glory and fame Fade from my sight! Heavenly splendour, Smiling disgrace! Be laid in ruins All I have reared! Over is my work: But one thing waits me now-- The ending, The ending! And for that ending Looks Alberich! Now I measure The meaning mute Of what the witch spake in wisdom:-- "When that love's defiant foe Grimly getteth a son, The sway of the gods Full soon shall end!" The Nibelung dwarf I now understand To have won him a woman, By gold gaining his hopes. In lust she bears, Loveless, a babe, And hatred's fruit From her draws life. The love-scorner well Can work such wonders; But he I long for fondly-- The free one--doth lack me yet! Then now take my blessing, Nibelung's babe! What thus I fling from me Hold as thy fortune: Walhalla's sumptuous halls Shall sate thy unhallowed desires!"

How Wagner builds upon his material! Hagen, the hatred-born son of Alberich, offspring of gold, shall cause the downfall of the gods. He, the child of evil, shall be the instrument of law! And all this is original with Wagner. To mere hints in the sources he adds the details of a complete poetic story, and always the development of the fundamental ethical thought on which the whole tragedy rests is his. Yet these scenes, in which the god is revealed to us as so intensely human, are the ones to which the average attendant at Wagner performances give the least thought. Wagner was much concerned about this scene, and indeed about the whole act. On October 3, 1855, he sent the first two acts to Liszt and wrote to him thus:

"I am anxious for the weighty second act; it contains two catastrophes, so important and powerful that there would be sufficient matter for two acts; but then they are so interdependent and the one implies the other so immediately, that it was impossible to separate them. If it is represented exactly as I intend, and if my intentions are perfectly understood, the effect must be beyond anything that has hitherto been in existence. Of course it is written only for people who can stand something (perhaps in reality for nobody). That incapable and weak persons will complain cannot in any way move me. You must decide whether everything has succeeded according to my own intentions. I cannot do it otherwise. At times, when I was timid and sobered down, I was chiefly anxious about the great scene of Wotan, especially when he discloses the decrees of Fate to Brünnhilde, and in London I was once on the point of rejecting the whole scene. In order to come to a decision I took up the sketch and recited the scene with proper expression, when fortunately I discovered that my spleen was unjustified, and that, if properly represented, the scene would have a grand effect even in a purely musical sense."

The remainder of the drama is taken up with the development of what has been prepared. Brünnhilde's mind is distracted. She feels that Wotan, against his own inclinations, is about to sacrifice Siegmund to the wrath of Fricka. Presently the fleeing and guilty lovers approach. Sieglinde, overcome with shame and terrified at the prospect of Hunding's attack, sinks senseless in the arms of Siegmund. Brünnhilde appears, and in the beautiful scene, usually named by its German title, the "Todesverkündigung," announces to Siegmund his coming death. He passionately refuses to die or to go to Walhalla without his bride, and Brünnhilde, overcome by his pleading, promises to aid him in the fight. She does so, and Wotan thrusts his spear between the combatants, so that Siegmund's sword is shattered upon it. Hunding slays Siegmund and is himself stricken to death by the sword of Wotan. Brünnhilde flees to the Valkyr's rock with Sieglinde, gives her the pieces of the broken sword, foretells the birth of a son, whom she names Siegfried, and sends Sieglinde to secrete herself in the forest to the eastward, where Fafner lies brooding on the hoard. Wotan arrives in hot pursuit of his disobedient daughter, drives off her frightened, pleading sisters, and sentences her, as already told. And all this Wagner has evolved from a few scattered lines in the saga. The marvellous beauty of the scene between Wotan and his beloved child cannot be described.

But let the reader remember that the punishment inflicted on her is not solely because of her disobedience of a command, but also and chiefly because the salvation of Siegmund would have violated Wotan's oath to Fricka and thus have increased the burden of guilt already upon the conscience of this unfortunate and very human god. Again the ethical basis of the tragedy comes to the front, and the moral law, operating as Fate, demands a victim. Brünnhilde becomes the Sleeping Beauty, so familiar to us in the fairy tales, and waits for her prince to wake her, a prince who shall be without fear, and who shall see no terrors in the point of All-Father's dread spear. This hero will be free, "freer than I, the god," as Wotan tells us, while the majestic pealing of the young hero's motive by the orchestra reveals, what the text does not, that Siegfried will be the awakener.

None of the sagas or legends in any way connect Brünnhilde with the fate of Siegfried's parents or the birth of the hero. Wagner's invention is here truly dramatic. He has welded separate incidents into a sequence of beautiful poetry and immense dramatic significance. In doing so he has greatly increased the splendour of the character of Brünnhilde. He has enlarged the aspect of her divinity, and has painted with the hand of a master the strange commingling in her of godhood and womanhood. Her sympathy with the doomed pair is wholly womanly, and it leads to her becoming entirely a woman when Wotan, in the enforcement of the demands of law, kisses the godhood from her. None of the old poems suggest such a Brünnhilde as Wagner's. She is a creation as distinct as Shakespeare's Juliet, as great as his Hamlet. In all dramatic literature there is no more majestic female figure than the Brünnhilde of "Die Walküre" and "Siegfried." In the final drama she diminishes in stature, by reason of the loss of her virginity. Then she is only a weak woman, except in the last scene, when she rises once more on the wings of grief to the proudest heights of self-sacrifice.

And so we pass to the next drama of the trilogy, the second act of the tragedy. The story of this is simple. Few ethical questions arise. All is concerned with the acts of the free hero, working without knowledge of Wotan, while the Nibelungs vainly strive to divert the results of the action to their own benefit. Again we meet with the warring forces,--gods, giants, and dwarfs,--but the gods are passive. Wotan, disguised as a wanderer, watches the progress of events, but does not interfere in it. The first act takes place in the cavern occupied as home and smithy by Mime,[43] no longer subject to his crafty brother, but now in business for himself and scheming to make the young Siegfried his instrument for the recovery of the gold and the ring. Sieglinde died in childbirth in Mime's cavern, and the dwarf, knowing well who she was, has taken good care of her son. Mime is an infinitely more picturesque character than the Regin of the saga, and the cavern a far more romantic home for the nurture of a forest hero than the Court of the Danish King. Wagner keeps clear of historical surroundings and conventionalities and presents to us a primal, elementary youth, a being whom we cannot fail to love. For Siegfried is the free, untrammelled youth of all time, the young man rejoicing in the strength of his youth, and arriving at the fundamental laws of life and love by observation, introspection, and the mighty workings of natural passion. He is a type, freed from every convention of clothes-philosophy and custom, from every condition of time or place. Siegfried is Young Manhood. His every utterance demands of the impersonator a largeness of conception far and away beyond the requirements of the ordinary operatic rôles. These are the petty puppets of libretto machinists, who cut and fit more or less dramatic stories according to the specifications of the Meyerbeerian plan. But Siegfried must be conceived along the lines of Brünnhilde's apostrophe:

"O Siegfried! Herrlicher! Hort der Welt! Leben der Erde, Lachender Held!"

[Footnote 43: Wagner obtained the name of Mime from the Thidrek Saga, in which Mimir is a cunning smith, the brother of Regin. In this saga Regin is the name of the dragon. A naked child comes to Mimir, and because a hind runs out of the wood and licks the child, Mimir knows that it is a stray which the animal has cared for. He takes the child and rears it and calls it Sigfrid. This youth slays the dragon, and then the tale proceeds along the same lines as the other sagas connected with Siegfried.]

"O Siegfried! Lordly one! Shield of the world! Life of the earth! Smiling hero!" He must be big in every way--big in the brawn of his brandished limbs, big in the bursts of his blithesome enthusiasm, and big in the beauty and bloom of his song. For Wagner, in his "Communication," tells us how, in the endeavour to discover what it was that drew him to the heart of the sagas, he drove into the deeper regions of antiquity,

"where, at last, to my delight and truly in the utmost reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young form of Man in all the freshness of his force. My studies thus bore me through the legends of the Middle Ages right down to their foundation in the old Germanic Mythos; one swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus, at last, to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw was no longer the figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside, but the real, naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion; the type of the true human being."

It was the recognition of Siegfried in his perfection, not as belittled in the "Nibelungen Lied," that made Wagner conceive him as the hero of his drama. That conception, once formed, was not lost in the subsequent development which made Wotan the real protagonist. Siegfried, in the first drama in which he appears, stands as the type of the utmost freedom of human impulse and action, the complete foil to the far-seeing, law-constrained god. He represents the complementary element in the ethical basis of the tragedy. He is the pure one, over whom Fate, in the shape of the inexorable moral law, has yet no control. He is himself. He makes his own deeds. He is the free agent for whom the despairing god has yearned.

Thus, then, we see him in the first act of the drama,--an impulsive, discontented youth, eager for larger fields of action, moved by strange emotions which he does not comprehend, and for whose meaning he vainly questions the cunning dwarf. A sword he needs, but none which the dwarf makes will bear the force of his blow. At last he wrings from Mime the true story of his birth, and the pieces of the broken sword, which Siegmund in his hour of need christened "Nothung" ("Needful"), are produced as evidence. These shall Mime weld, declares Siegfried, and then the free youth will make his home in the wide world. But weld that particular sword, the sword which Wotan struck into the tree Branstock, is just what Mime cannot do. Wotan, in his wanderer's guise, comes to prophesy to Mime that only one who never knew fear shall accomplish the task. To him is forfeit the head which Mime has staked on answering Wotan's questions.

The scene of the questions between Wotan and Mime was probably suggested to Wagner by the "Vafthrudnersmal," one of the poems of the Elder Edda, which shows Odin holding a similar conversation with the omniscient giant, Vafthrudner. Odin appears as a poor traveller named Gangrader, and engages in a contest of knowledge with the giant. Gangrader, in answer to Vafthrudner's questions, tells the names of the horses that carry Day and Night across the sky and of the river which divides Asgard from Jotunheim (Riesenheim, the giant's land) and the field where the last battle is to be fought. The giant tells the origin of the earth, the story of the creation of the gods, what the heroes do in Walhalla, what was the origin of the Norns, who will rule after the world had been destroyed and what will be the end of the father of the gods. Finally the god asks: "What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son before he ascended the funeral pile?" The giant recognises Odin by this question, and says, "Who can tell what thou didst whisper of old in the ear of thy son? I have called down my fate upon my own head when I dared to enter on a strife of knowledge with Odin. All-Father, thou wilt ever be the wisest." We are not told whether the giant lost his head, but we are led to believe that the whispered word was "Resurrection."

When Siegfried returns, Mime vainly endeavours to teach him the meaning of fear, for he would save his head. Siegfried laughs at the conception, and forthwith forges anew the broken blade of Nothung, cleaving in twain the anvil and shouting in the joy of his strength. As for Mime, he now sees that Siegfried will surely slay Fafner, of whom he has told the youth. Yet the dwarf is in terror, for if Siegfried does not learn fear from the dragon, then the dwarf dies; and if he does learn it, who is to rescue the hoard from Fafner's grasp?

To the forest, then, in the second act, we follow the youth and his scheming preceptor.[44] Alberich lies in watch outside Fafner's cave, and Wotan comes to warn the giant that his fate draws near. Alberich listens, wondering, while Wotan addresses the dragon in his lair. Anon Mime conducts Siegfried to the spot and leaves him. Alone the hero muses on his life, his birth, his mother's death, his own lack of a mate. He hears the song of a forest bird and thinks, could he but understand it, it might tell him of his needs. He fashions a reed pipe wherewith to talk to the bird, but his effort is futile. The scene is one of strange beauty, the orchestra imitating the weaving of the forest leaves and shadows in a wondrous tone-poem, the "Waldweben." Despairing of success with the reed, Siegfried winds a blast upon his horn, and Fafner, the dragon, emerges from his concealment.

[Footnote 44: In the locale of this scene Wagner follows the Thidrek, not the Volsunga Saga. The latter makes the place a heath.]

Siegfried attacks and slays the monster. Dying, the giant tells him to beware of Mime. Plucking his sword from the beast's heart, the youth wets his finger with the blood and cleanses it with his lips. At once he understands the language of the bird. And here we meet with one of Wagner's dramatic makeshifts, which has often been ridiculed. Before the hero understands the bird its tones are represented by the clarionet; afterward it sings German text in a soprano voice. This is Wagner's plan for conveying the language of the bird to the audience. It is awkward, but there was plainly no other way to let the hearer into the secret. One needs the help of his imagination here, and must bear ever in mind that he is listening to one of the world's fairy tales. The bird sends Siegfried to get the helm and the ring and warns the youth to be wary, for Mime is treacherous.

And now comes another makeshift. Mime approaches, knowing that Siegfried has slain the dragon and obtained the helm and the ring. The dwarf plans to sink the youth in sleep by a potion, slay him, and secure the treasure. But as he would prattle of his love and fidelity, he unconsciously reveals the inner workings of his mind, and to do this he has to utter them aloud. Siegfried and the audience hear them. It is clumsy, but again there seemed no other way. Siegfried slays Mime, and again lays himself down under the linden tree. The "Waldweben" is heard again, and once more the bird sings to the hero, this time to tell him that Brünnhilde sleeps on the fire-girt rock, where only he who knows not fear can reach her. Siegfried springs forward on the path, the bird showing him the way. The whole structure and fancy of this beautiful act are original with Wagner. The saga gave the dramatist only the facts of the slaying of the dragon and the understanding of the language of the birds, which warned the hero of the dwarf's treachery and told him of the sleeping beauty. The treatment and development in the drama are infinitely more poetic than in the original story.

The third act opens with an interview, suggested by the Elder Edda, between Wotan and Erda at the foot of the Valkyr's mountain. Wotan once more consults the Wala, but she tells him naught of value. The god, now ready to resign the empire of the world and prepared for the ending of the Aesir, awaits the hero's coming. Siegfried, led by the bird, confronts him, and with the sword Nothung smites the opposing spear in twain. I have seen it asked why this sword, which was shattered upon the spear in "Die Walküre," now cleaves the runic haft. The ethical basis of the tragedy explains this. Siegmund was doomed to expiate his crime, a victim to Fricka, the avenger, and to the law behind her. But, welded anew by the hand of a spotless hero, the sword is resistless.[45] The law has no hold upon it. Crying "In vain! I cannot stop thee," Wotan disappears from the tragedy. We hear of him, but see him no more till the flames of Walhalla reveal him to us in the blazing sky.

[Footnote 45: Rassmann holds that the name "Gram" ("Wrath") was given to the sword in the Volsunga Saga because only Odin's wrath could break it. See Rassmann's "Heldensage," vol. i.]

Siegfried penetrates the fire, and finds the sleeping beauty. He cuts the byrny from her bosom, as in the saga, and wakes her with a kiss. She sings her hymn to the sun and the light and the earth, and proclaims herself Siegfried's from the beginning. One last struggle for her maidenhood, and she yields herself. The union is made. The old order is done. The new race is to come and rule the world. The drama closes with a duo of passionate beauty, and we are ready for "Götterdämmerung," the last act of "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

No doubt the legend of Sigurd's penetration of the flames was taken from the old story of Freyr, the sun-god, who rode through a hedge, guarded by fierce dogs, and a flame-circle within it, to win Gerda for his bride. In the later form of the legend, as told in the Elder Edda, Freyr once saw Gerda afar off and fell in love with her. He pined, and his son told Skirnir, his faithful servant, of this. Skirnir took Freyr's horse and magic sword, rode through the flames, and conquered the unwilling Gerda by means of runes. Among the things she refused before he employed the runes was the magic ring which the dwarfs had made. From it eight new ones dropped each ninth night. Thus we see that the myth is related to both of Sigurd's exploits,--that in which he penetrated the flames for himself, and that in which he represented Gunnar. The ring made by the dwarfs, of course, became in the saga tale the ring of Andvari, carrying its curse, and was given to Brünnhilde after the hero had won her.

The last drama of the series opens with a scene taken directly from the Norse mythology. On the Valkyr's rock sit the three Norns, weaving their rope of runes and peering into the events of the past, the present, and the future. For such is their vocation. They are the Fates of older legend. In the Scandinavian mythology they were called Urd, who looked into the past; Verdandi, who surveyed the present, and Skuld, the youngest, who gazed into the future. Wagner does not use the names, nor does he discriminate in the occupations of the three. Indeed, the scene has no close dramatic relation to the drama about to be enacted, but is rather a pictorial and musical mood tableau, designed to fill the mind of the auditor with portents. In the narrative of the first Norn we hear how Wotan lost his eye, selling it for a draught from the fountain of knowledge, and how he broke a limb from the great ash Yggdrasil itself to fashion his spear. These are incidents in the old mythology. The ash tree was watered daily from Urd's fountain, and it could not wither till the last battle was about to be fought. From the first Norn's tale we learn that the tree has withered and the fountain dried. This is a portent of the end.

From the stories of the other Norns we learn that as soon as Siegfried had broken Wotan's spear the god summoned his heroes to the world's ash tree and cut it down. From it were hewn fagots, and these were piled high in Walhalla. Wotan and the heroes sit in state, waiting for the flames which shall consume their abode. The dusk of the gods is at hand. While the Norns are trying to fathom the outcome of the curse on the ring, their rope breaks. With frightened cries they sink into the earth, declaring that the world shall no more hear their wisdom.

Siegfried and Brünnhilde, in the dawn of the new day, come forth from their cavern home. The young hero has matured into a man. He is clad in Brünnhilde's armor and wears her cloak. How long they were together on the mountain no one knows. It was long enough for the youth to become a man, and to learn all Brünnhilde's wisdom. She is sending him forth to new exploits, fearing only that she may not hold his heart in absence. She has taught him all her runes, and surrendered to him her maidenhood's strength. What these runes were we can learn from the Lay of Sigdrifa in the Elder Edda, but they have no bearing upon the story of Wagner. The statement that Brünnhilde has lost her maiden strength is of importance, for it helps to explain why Siegfried is afterward able to snatch the ring from her. With her maidenhood, departed the last vestige of her divinity, her strength. Henceforth she is all woman. The decree of Wotan is fulfilled. She says:

"My wisdom fails, But good-will remains; So full of love But failing in strength, Thou wilt despise Perchance the poor one, Who, having giv'n all, Can grant thee no more."

Siegfried gives her the ring with a casual and insignificant remark that he owes all his strength to it. Brünnhilde gives him her steed, Grani, which has lost its magic powers together with her. Compare this with the saga story of Sigurd's choice of a horse. The hero now sets forth, and as the scene changes we hear his horn echoing down the Rhine valley, and the orchestra paints his journey. The second scene shows us the interior of the home of Gunther, the son of Gibich, who is seated at a table with his sister, Gutrune, and his half-brother, Hagen. Gunther is the Gunnar of the saga, but Wagner uses the name from the "Nibelungen Lied" because it is German. The name of Gibich is obtained from the "Lex Burgundionum" of Gundohar, a Burgundian king of the fifth century, who in it names, as one of his ancestors, Gibica. The word is derived from the same root as Giuki, the name used in the Volsunga Saga. Wagner gets the character of Gunther from the "Nibelungen Lied," where he is represented as a weak person, usually under the influence of others. Gutrune is the Gudrun of the saga, the daughter of Grimhild, who employs magic to win Siegfried for her child's spouse. In the "Nibelungen Lied" Chriemhild is Gutrune; the two personages have been moulded into one and the magic eliminated. Wagner, as we shall see, identifies the characters of Gutrune and Chriemhild as the Lied does, but retains the magic, which is wielded by Hagen in furtherance of the Nibelung's plan to recover the ring. He also retains the fact that Grimhild was Gunther's mother. She was also the mother of Hagen, having been overcome by an elf--an idea which Wagner borrowed from the Thidrek Saga.

This idea was essential to his plan of making Hagen appear in the drama as the son of Alberich. It does not consist with Wotan's statement that the Nibelung had won a woman with gold, but that discrepancy is unimportant. The point is that Gunther's half-brother is a Nibelung, and has been entrusted by his father with the task of bringing about the downfall of Siegfried. Wagner has developed the character of Hagen according to this idea, and not according to the original sources. In the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied" Hagen is represented as a crafty villain, while in the Volsunga Saga he is of noble nature and will have naught to do with the plot against Siegfried. In the other two poems he has no motive but malice, while Wagner raises the character to a high tragic plane by giving Hagen the purpose of the Nibelungs' revenge.

The second scene opens, then, with Hagen telling Gunther that he is too long unwed, and that there sleeps on a mountain surrounded by fire the woman who should be his bride. But she is to be reached only by him who never knew fear. This leads to a narration of the exploits of Siegfried, suggested by the narrative of Hagen in the "Nibelungen Lied," when he sees Siegfried approaching the Court of Gunther. Neither Gunther nor Gutrune learns what Hagen has already been told by Alberich, that Siegfried has wed Brünnhilde; and so they readily fall in with his suggestion that Gutrune administer a magic potion to bind this great hero's heart to her. Siegfried arrives at the castle, and is welcomed by Gunther, who in the mediæval style says in effect: "All that I have and am is yours." Siegfried answers that he has nothing but his good limbs and his home-made sword to offer in return. Hagen immediately asks him where the Nibelungs' hoard is. The hero replies that he deemed it worthless and left it in the cave, except the Tarnhelm, which he has with him, but does not know how to use. Hagen thereupon explains the virtue of it, and inquires where the ring is. Siegfried says it is worn by a woman, and Hagen mutters, "Brünnhilde." Gutrune proffers the magic draught. Siegfried drinks to Brünnhilde and--forgets her. For the drink, artfully prepared by Hagen, was one of forgetfulness. And here we come upon a weak spot in the drama. The drink does not, as we shall see, make Siegfried forget all the incidents leading up to his winning of Brünnhilde, but only their relations. The only plea that can be entered here is that if we accept a magic drink at all, we must not put logical limitations on its powers.

Siegfried now falls in with Hagen's plan. He agrees to go through the fire and get Brünnhilde for Gunther, provided he, in return for the service, receives the hand of Gutrune. There is no talk of a futile attempt on the part of Gunther to penetrate the flames. Siegfried and Gunther swear blood-brotherhood, and the two start for the Valkyr's rock, where, with the help of the Tarnhelm, they are to exchange shapes, as in the saga. Hagen, left alone, gloats over the fact that Siegfried will bring him the ring. Once more the scene changes to the Valkyr's rock, and we meet with an episode in the story entirely original with Wagner, an episode of great beauty and significance. Brünnhilde hears once again the sounds of the passage of a wind-horse, a Valkyr steed. A moment later her sister, Waltraute, is clasped in her embrace. Why has she broken Wotan's command against visiting Brünnhilde? Waltraute says she has fled hither from Walhalla in anguish. "What has befallen the eternal gods?" asks Brünnhilde, in fear. Then Waltraute gives a majestic description of the last gathering of the gods in Walhalla, as already narrated in the Norns' scene. Deep dismay has fallen on the gods. Wotan has sent his ravens out to seek for tidings. This, according to the Eddas, he did daily. Waltraute, weeping on her father's breast, has heard him say:

"The day the Rhine's three daughters Gain by surrender from her the ring, From the curse's load Released are gods and men."

This is why Waltraute has come. Wotan dare not act, does not dream of doing so; for the atonement must be the work of a free agent. But a Valkyr is a wish-maiden, Wotan's will, and so Waltraute, like Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre," strives to realise her father's wish. Will Brünnhilde give back the ring? But Brünnhilde is no more a virgin Valkyr, a mere daughter of the gods. She is a beloved and loving woman. The ring is Siegfried's bridal gift. Perish the world; perish the eternal gods; but the ring shall not leave her finger where love kissed it into place. Even as Brünnhilde speaks, the orchestra sings the motive of Renunciation, for, as Waltraute flees in despair, the fire springs up in defence of Brünnhilde and the beguiled Siegfried comes in the Tarnhelm, wearing the face and form of Gunther, to wrest the ring from her and make her the bride of the son of Gibich. This is tremendous tragedy; tenfold more tremendous than anything that entered the minds of the sagamen or the fashioners of the "Nibelungen Lied." The Waltraute scene, accentuating, as it does, Wagner's connection of the Nibelung ring with the burden of guilt resting on the gods, presents in a powerful light the human tragedy leading to the restoration of the ring to its rightful owners. Furthermore, the scene is essential to a complete understanding of the character of Brünnhilde in the final drama of the series. The last despairing appeal of Waltraute for the Aesir meets with an answer which fully exhibits the change wrought in Brünnhilde. When Wotan put her to sleep, saying, "So küsst er die Gottheit von dir," he was the familiar Wotan of the trilogy, planning, but seeing only half the issue of his plan. When Siegfried laid the kiss of human love upon the virgin lips of the Valkyr, he it was who truly kissed the godhood from her, and left her with a wholly human disregard for the fading Aesir. All she has given for love, and now comes a second claimant for her. Stricken with horror and shame, she is driven into the cavern. Siegfried, following, announces that his sword shall lie between them.

The second act brings us back to the castle of Gunther. Hagen, still watching, is visited by Alberich, who urges him to persistence. Alberich's speeches impress upon us two important points, namely: that the curse cannot fall upon Siegfried, because he is ignorant of the powers of the ring, and therefore does not use them; and, secondly, that if he should give the ring back to the Rhine maidens no art could fashion a new one. Both of these ideas are Wagner's. The first is a natural outgrowth of the ethical basis of the drama; the second was doubtless suggested by the old legends, which always finish the story of the hoard by returning it to the waters. Siegfried returns and announces his success, quieting the fears of Gutrune by telling her that his sword lay between him and Brünnhilde. Here we have an alteration of the original stories to suit modern taste. In the legends there was no question of the relations of the disguised Siegfried and Brünnhilde, and they existed with the consent of Gunther. But in Wagner's drama it is made plain to us that Siegfried was loyal in the modern sense, though he used an ancient symbol of honour, the sword.

Gunther arrives with Brünnhilde, and she, seeing Siegfried there with Gutrune, at once suspects treachery. She perceives the ring on Siegfried's finger, and demands an explanation as to how he came by the circlet which Gunther had wrenched from her hand the previous night. This episode of the ring is entirely different, as the reader will note, from those of the Volsunga Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied." But it had to be so, because Wagner had already omitted the incident which, in the sources of his story, led to Siegfried's presenting the ring to his wife. Brünnhilde's questions about the ring evoke no satisfactory answers, and she bursts out with the charge that not Gunther, but Siegfried married her. "He forced delights of love from me!" she cries. Siegfried avows that his sword lay between them. But Brünnhilde is talking of a night long previous to that just passed, a night of which only she and Siegfried should know, but which he, under the influence of the drink, has forgotten. Brünnhilde knows that her hearers are ignorant of that night, but she is bent upon implicating Siegfried, and she lets the assembly believe that she is speaking of the night just passed. Much good ink has been spilled over this scene, one party contending that Brünnhilde was guilty of deceit, and the other that Siegfried had been false to his trust. The intent of the scene is, it seems to me, perfectly plain, but to quiet all doubts we may go to Wagner's own sketch, "The Nibelung Myth as Sketch for a Drama." He describes this point thus:

"Siegfried charges her with shamelessness: faithful had he been to this blood brothership,--his sword he laid between Brünnhilde and himself:--he calls on her to bear him witness. Purposely, and thinking only of his ruin, she will not understand him."

In a speech of double meaning, she declares that the sword hung in its scabbard on the wall on the night when its master gained him a true love. Siegfried swears to his truth on the point of Hagen's spear, calling upon it to pierce him if he is false. This is a purely theatric touch. This spear does pierce him, yet was he not false. Brünnhilde swears upon the same spear that Siegfried has committed perjury. Thereupon Siegfried lightly says that she is daft, and bids the guests to let the festivities proceed. Brünnhilde now suspects some deviltry, but her runic wisdom is gone and she cannot fathom it. But she can and does confide to Hagen that she had made her hero invulnerable, except in the back. Gunther discerns that he has been dishonoured, yet he is loath, for his sister's sake, to be revenged upon Siegfried. This makes Brünnhilde all the more furious, and she readily assents to Hagen's proposition that Siegfried must die. The vacillating Gunther is overcome. Hagen shouts in triumph; the ring and the power will soon be his.

The last act shows the Rhine maidens sporting on the surface of the water in a little cove of the river. Siegfried, hunting and strayed from his party, appears on the rocks above them. They beg him to return the ring, and he is almost on the point of doing so when they warn him of its curse. He refuses to be scared into parting with it. This meeting with the Rhine maidens is not found in any of the old stories, because the ring which causes the trouble in "Götterdämmerung" is not in any way associated in the legends with the end of the gods. In both the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied," Hagen is warned of an evil by mermaids, and this may barely have suggested this scene, which so accentuates the immediately succeeding tragedy of Siegfried's death.

The hunting party arrives, and to cheer the gloomy Gunther Siegfried volunteers to tell the story of his youth. All this is original with Wagner. The hero narrates the incidents of the drama "Siegfried" to a wonderful epitome of its music, up to the slaying of Mime. Then Hagen administers an antidote to the drink of forgetfulness, and the hero reveals his discovery of Brünnhilde. Gunther is shocked as he realises Hagen's perfidy. Wotan's ravens fly past, and Hagen calls on Siegfried to interpret their tones. As the hero turns his back, Hagen drives the spear into it. Siegfried dies apostrophising his Valkyr love. To the strains of the great funeral march, the body is borne back to the home of the Gibichs, and laid at the feet of Gutrune, who is told, as in the Thidrek Saga, that a wild boar slew her lord. She accuses Gunther, who promptly denounces Hagen. The Nibelung demands the ring; Gunther opposes him; they fight, and Gunther is slain. Hagen reaches for the ring, but the dead hand of Siegfried rises in solemn warning, and sends him staggering back in terror. At this juncture Brünnhilde, who, as we vaguely learn from the text, has heard the truth from the Rhine maidens, enters the hall, a picture of outraged majesty.

After informing Gutrune that she was never the real wife of Siegfried, Brünnhilde sums up the dénouement of the entire tragedy in a speech which must be carefully read by anyone desiring thoroughly to understand Wagner's design. She perceives the whole of Wotan's plan, and upbraids him for throwing on a guiltless man the curse of his own crime. Let the ravens tell Wotan that his plan is accomplished. And let the weary god have rest. She takes the ring from Siegfried's finger, and places it upon her own. When she is burned with him on the funeral pyre, the Rhine maidens may get the ring again. And now fly home, ravens. Pass by the Valkyr's rock and bid the flickering Loge once more visit Walhalla, for the dusk of the gods is at hand, and with this torch will the bride of Siegfried fire the towers of Asgard. Then she addresses the wondering retainers and bids them, when she is gone, to put aside treaties and treacherous bonds as laws of life, and in their place to let Love rule alone. With her steed, Grani, she mounts Siegfried's funeral pyre. The flames rise to heaven. Upon the Rhine are seen the three maidens, one of them holding aloft the ring. Hagen madly springs into the water after the accursed bauble, and is drawn under by the maidens and drowned. The sky blazes and we see the assembled gods, as described by Waltraute, sitting in the burning Walhalla. It is the "Götterdämmerung."

So ends the tragedy. Nothing in the final scenes closely resembles the original legends except the burning of Walhalla. In the legends the gods are destroyed in battle with the powers of evil. Here they die in solemn atonement for sin. And their punishment, which is their release, is accomplished by the voluntary sacrifice of a woman through love. Brünnhilde, wiser in the end than Wotan himself, perfects and completes his plan. The death of the hero, innocent and unoffending, was not enough. The intentional sacrifice, hallowed by love, accomplishes what all Wotan's schemes failed to achieve. The ethical plot of the drama is finished. "The eternal feminine leadeth us upward and on."

This glorious Brünnhilde of Wagner is a grander figure than any conceived by the sagamen. Dimly, indeed, may her sacrifice be connected with the death of Nanna, the wife of Baldur, the bright one, who could not outlive her husband. But that death was merely from a broken heart. This one is a magnificent atonement.

Baldur's horse, fully caparisoned, was led to his master's pyre. Wotan placed on the pile his ring, Draupner, which every ninth night produced eight other rings. But none of these incidents have the enormous significance of Wagner's final scene. His reconstruction of the story of the end of the gods, of their release from the burden of sin by a voluntary, vicarious sacrifice, raises the poetic issue of his drama to a plane far above the conceptions of the old Norse and Teutonic skalds. With "Der Ring des Nibelungen," in spite of its defects, Wagner set himself beside the Greek dramatists.

III.--The Music of the Trilogy

In "Der Ring des Nibelungen" the leitmotiv system is found at its best. In this gigantic and complex drama it provides a musical aid to an understanding of the intent of the dramatist. It is a running commentary on the action, a ceaseless revealer of inner thoughts and motives. And, owing to the development of plot and character, the musical device of thematic development is employed with admirable effect in this work. Unfortunately for the credit of Wagner, the typical handbook of these dramas, and the fashionable "Wagner Lecture," which consists of telling the story and playing the principal motives on a piano, have gone far to convey wholly erroneous ideas of this unique musical system. The hearer of the lecture and the reader of the handbook are led to suppose that the score consists of a string of disconnected phrases, arbitrarily formed and capriciously titled, and that this is the whole result of the system.

The truth is that the score becomes symphonic in scope. The various motives are invented with a profound insight into the philosophy of musical expression and are repeated or developed according to the principles of musico-dramatic art formulated in the mind of Wagner when he had fully elaborated his theory of the organic union of the text and the music. Reading the handbooks or hearing the lectures and afterward recognising the motives as they appear in the dramas, even when their significance is known, is not all that Wagner asks of one who attempts to understand his system. It is necessary to study the scores very thoroughly, to note the intimate union of text and music, to observe the changes which motives undergo when new shades of meaning are to be expressed, to grasp the treatment of rhythm and tonality and the formation and expansion of themes, and generally to follow the composer through the various ramifications of the most elaborate plan for dramatic expression in music ever invented.

On the other hand, none of this study is essential to a mere enjoyment of these dramas. For that, only a perfect comprehension of the text is necessary; if you know what the characters are saying and doing, the music will do its own work. It will create the right mood for you, though you do not know the name of a single leading theme. But the thematic system is there, and to understand it will add enormously to your intellectual and artistic pleasure and give Wagner a far higher position in your estimation than he would otherwise occupy. Only, if you intend to study it, do not treat it as if it were nothing more than a thematic catalogue. What I am about to put before the reader cannot claim to be more than some pertinent hints. An exhaustive study of these scores would fill a volume.

Let the reader refer to the classification of motives given in