and to go hunting for these old
themes, to try to recognise them whenever they crop up, is not only to
lose one's enjoyment of the music, but to run a fair risk of
misapprehending it altogether, and the drama as well. This jack-fool
twaddle about there being not a single phrase in an opera which has not
grown out of another is manifestly absurd--for out of what does the
first one grow?--and utterly untrue. In every scene of _Tristan_ an
enormous amount of new material is added; it is the richest thematically
of all the operas. But this labelling of nearly every phrase as the
This, That, or the Other motive has confused thousands of people; they
fatigue themselves by incessantly trying to remember the significance of
a phrase which resembles one that has been heard before; and instead of
letting the music make its natural and proper effect, they grow
bewildered, and blame Wagner for what is in reality the fault of the
analysis-makers. To follow _Tristan_, one need not know more than the
few fragments I have quoted above; in fact, without any knowledge
whatever it can be followed. The themes have no arbitrary significance
attached to them; they are expressive music and tell their own tale.
But, of course, when one has heard the opera many times--and twenty
performances, supplemented by a study of Von Buelow's incomparable piano
arrangement of the score, are hardly enough to enable us to begin to
comprehend the real richness and vastness of _Tristan_--then gradually
new features are found, new lights are thrown by the use of
_leit-motifs_, and slowly the music yields us that multiplicity of
complex delights--delights intellectual, emotional, or purely
sensuous--that only the greatest works of art can give. Take, for
example, the theme which Isolda sings when she perceives death to be the
only cure for her woes. Later, when she is compelling Tristan to drink
the poison-cup, the sailors break out into "Yo-heave-ho!" and he says,
"Where are we?" "Near to the end!" she says, to the accompaniment of
this same theme. To one who barely remembers the phrase the effect is
marked enough, but to one who knows every phrase and its associations
the double meaning is almost horrifying. It is idle to search out such
points as this with the aid of a guide, for while you are waiting for
them you lose the music in which they are set; the prevailing mood
eludes you, and the points themselves fail to make their effect. There
is another danger.