by a prelude scarce thirty bars
long. Through more than half of this section we get shakes and
arpeggios on one (technical) discord (_e_), with snatches of the
midsummer theme, and the exhilaration of the eve of a holiday given to
us in this very simplest of ways shows the miracle worker in his
happiest mood. Like the opening of the _Rhinegold_, this brief prelude
is an exemplification of Wagner's advice to young composers--never
travel out of the key you are in if you can say in it what you have to
say. The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal--in fact, the
whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the
note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But
presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is
Beckmesser or no one. Dramatically the scene is of the lightest, but
Wagner seizes the opportunity to paint a musical picture of Nuremberg
as Pogner holds forth on the festivities arranged for the morrow;
never did he give us anything more delightful than this picture of a
mediaeval city, anything more beautifully or more fully charged with
the sense of the past. They go in, and shortly Sachs comes out; he
tells David to arrange his tools and get away to bed, and sits down,
intending to work outside. The hammering motive (_f_) sounds out
vigorously for a couple of minutes; but Sachs is already dreaming of
Walther's song, and presently we get a phrase of it in a shape of
superb beauty--the fifty times distilled essence of spring is in
it--then another bit of it is taken and used as an accompaniment with
most enchanting effect: one feels the cool night breeze touching
Sachs' cheek, and, as in the introduction, one scents the aroma of
lime and elder--

"The elder scent floats round me; so mild, so rich it falls,
Its sweetness weighs upon me; words from my heart it calls...."

With its gently rocking motion and the tremolando in the bass it is as
beautiful in its way as the opening scene, already discussed, of the
second Act of _Tristan_--the picture of the brook running through the
darkness from the fountain in King Mark's castle garden. Sachs
abruptly ceases, and sets to work; and the hammering phrase is heard
again, now combined with the beginning of another subject, liker than
ever to Siegfried's great song--the very harmonies as well as the
general rhythm are the same--and this subject is developed before long
into the Cobbler's song. But "and still tha