cing work one hopes
for the best at the end of the first dozen bars; but better is not to
be. The theme becomes an accompanying figure to some not very engaging
choral passages: in the invention of the theme the whole force seems
to have gone out of the man: he has no power of achieving a climax
save by the addition of instruments: a growing climax to him means
nothing more than growing noise, and the grand climax is only the
noisiest passage of all. The one figure is repeated over and over
again, always with more instruments, until at last the complete
battery of the modern orchestra is hard at it, and Dvorak's resources
are at an end. Now look at our mighty Wagner. He takes the simplest of
figures (_b_), plays with it, with seeming carelessness, for a while,
then adds what is, technically, a counterpoint to it; he develops that
counterpoint, adds melody on melody--always keeping his figure going,
that the thing may be held together--until, after a rich and ever
broadening and deepening tide of music, he gets his climax at the
predetermined dramatic moment; and the climax does not consist of
noise, but is in the stuff of the music. Development, real
development, is not mere juggling with musical subjects, but
continuous invention of melodies, and the driving-force behind it is
the ceaseless craving of the spirit to express itself fully.

Even more striking than this instance is the treatment of a figure
heard first when Pogner announces to the assembled mastersingers his
intention of giving his daughter Eva as the prize in next day's
contest. "To-morrow is Midsummer Day," he sings, and this figure (_c_)
sounds from the orchestra. It is made up of two distinct sections.
That formed by the first two bars is used largely as an accompaniment,
but it continually comes round to the third and fourth bars, and
counterpoints are added until at last we are far away from the
beginning, though, as in the example discussed above, the figure welds
all together into a coherent whole for the intellect to grasp apart
from the appeal the music makes to "the feeling." This "feeling" of
Wagner's was absolutely right, it was infallible; and in consequence
we find a curious state of affairs is promptly established. The rich,
joyous strain of music, lull of the feeling of summer, immediately
becomes what was, so to say, at the back of Wagner's mind--the sense
of a spring not known to ordinary mortals, the everlasting spring of
Montsalvat, a