sa's weakness and
curiosity. The characterization is by no means profound or microscopic.
It is, indeed, a question whether music is capable of anything of the
sort, whether it can render anything save bold, simple outlines. In
_Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ Mozart was content with this, and yet his
characterization appears subtle in comparison with that of every other
composer, with the exception of Wagner with his Elsa. Music can express
things that lie outside the range of literature; and perhaps fine and
delicate portrait and character painting are things that lie outside the
range of music.

In the _Dutchman_, I have said, we have the North Sea for a background,
in _Tannhaeuser_ the sultry, scented cave of Venus. In _Lohengrin_ it is
the broad, shining river, flowing ceaselessly from far-away lands to the
distant sea, and on it the swan floats--the swan which throughout is
used as the symbol of the river. In the first act it gives the pervading
atmosphere and colour; in the third it recurs with amazing effect in the
midst of one of Elsa's paroxysms. Here is the simple phrase by which
such magic is wrought:

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

No changes are made in this theme. It occurs again and again, without
wearying the ear; it keeps the atmosphere charged with mystery and
suggestions of that far-away land where it is always dawn. It is the
calm, refreshing, gently-rippling river; the cool, placid water sliding
through many countries, with the swan as symbol and token of all that is
strange and beautiful where it has its source. It is less a theme
capable of purely musical development to form pattern after pattern of
entrancing beauty, like the Grail or Montsalvat theme, than the
equivalent in music of tender colour. It never sings out from the
orchestra without carrying the imagination for a moment from the scene
before one's eyes to the _fernem Land_. It blends the actual with the
dream, and imbues all the drama with a delicious romantic mysticism. I
dwell on it because without this prevailing colour and atmosphere the
story of _Lohengrin_ is a plain prosaic fairy-tale to amuse children.
Further, in the most important musical theme in the opera it is there
also--the Montsalvat theme:

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

The characteristic chords in the second bar cannot escape notice. This
motive, one of the sweetest Wagner invented, is long, and less of the
nature of a _leit-motif_--as I have explained th