had called him a charlatan, a bad
musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his
living. Still, it is a small blot on a big opera. The music for such
incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the
cases of a _tour de force_. But even its inferiority is made to serve
a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of
Eva and her conversation with Sachs. Beckmesser has gone away joyfully
with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song
by Sachs--who has told him he can do what he likes with it--and
revealing the fact that, despite all his boasting, in his heart he
knows the cobbler to be immeasurably his superior. In music hardly to
be matched for sensuous beauty Eva's trembling perturbation and hopes
and fears are exquisitely suggested; then with the arrival of Walther,
and also of Magdalena and David, we get a little more fooling,
followed by one of Wagner's loveliest and most amazing feats, the
quintet. If only for one reason it is amazing. Only a few years before
the notes were set down, and certainly only a year or two before the
thing was planned in the libretto, he had vehemently declared, in
essays and letters, that never again would he compose anything in the
operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; henceforth
music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first
opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to
his first act--which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to
his second act--which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in
the middle of his third act--which according to his own theories at
any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came
to compose _Tristan_ he discovered he had gone far beyond his
theories. The justification for the quintet is its beauty and the fact
that it finds expression for the feeling of the moment. All the same,
I have heard it encored more than once; and an encore in the middle of
the act of a Wagner music-drama, or even music-comedy, is almost
inconceivable.

VI

The two pairs, Walther and Eva, and David and Magdalena, having been
joined together, and David having been freed from his 'prentice
servitude by a hearty box on the ear, the quintet having been sung and
(as just remarked) sometimes encored, Wagner gathers himself together
for a gigantic scene as characteristic of his genius as anything he
conceived: no one, ind