ere distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it,
believing the Wagnerites' claim that their master had rejected all the
rules observed by previous composers. Wagner's own account of this
overture is enough to turn a man's hair grey and to break a woman's
heart. Had he only written a good deal less prose--or none at all!

The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest
song in existence. Nearly all the characters are supposed to be
singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the
second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of
themselves and a bad song provokes a street riot; the opera winds up
with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song. If there
must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero. We hear snatches of
it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory
with a choral accompaniment. There are interludes, of course--Wagner
knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained;
but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the
clear-cut songs interspersed are parts. Even in the 'sixties, when
nothing later than _Lohengrin_ was known, the charge was brought
against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung
--the _Mastersingers_ was his answer. The overture leads into the
first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the
musical texture as the opera proceeds. We see part of the inside of a
church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending
to her devotions. Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the
custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of
hymn-tunes--a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid
use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and
makes them serve as a voice for Walther's feelings on seeing Eva for a
second time: on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in
love with each other. The next real song-music begins to flow with the
entry of the singers' guild; but meantime there has been some music of
the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of _Tristan_.
Recitative--often broken sentences and mere ejaculations--merges
imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way
to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly
continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment. The apparatus, in a
word, is precisely t