s gigantic strength, but for the free employment of
chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so
employed throughout the _Mastersingers_ that it sounds diatonic.
Throughout _Tristan_ and in the Venusberg music of _Tannhaeuser_
chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; but here we have
music that is as solid, equable, serene as a Handel eight-part chorus.
With consummate skill the stream of music is, so to say, led on to the
theme that always accompanies the mastersingers, as distinguished from
the citizens, of Nuremberg; next Walther's song is extemporised upon
(no other phrase serves) for a couple of minutes--the most passionate
page in the opera--and after that come the apprentices. We shall
presently observe that Wagner in this opera made light-hearted fun of
the pundits, and as if to show them that he had a right to do so he
played with the devices that to them were a very serious business
indeed. What to them was an end--I mean all the tricks of
counterpoint--was to him a means to expression: more expressive music
was never dreamed of in a musician's imagination, and at the same time
he accomplished with ease part-writing that the most skilful
contrapuntists could only perform by labouring long at expressionless,
stale old themes first contrived before the Flood to "work well," as
the phrase goes. The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner
takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the
length, so that it sounds four times as fast. The effect is
unexpectedly droll, the music skips about in the most irresponsible
way, and (when one knows what it is meant for) depicts the gambols of
the herd of young rascals who come on the scene in the first act. This
contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when
the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an
accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers'
music. There is a good deal of _tour de force_ about this, but the
result justifies the means: the superb melody swings over the
ponderous bass, both melody and bass singing out clear and strong
amidst an animated, bustling and whirling sea of merry tunes.

Composers generally left the composition of the overture till last--as
it were doing the thing only because an overture had to be
written--but Wagner knew the importance of his work and must have
composed this one very early; for in 1862, five year