ully brief, and is accompanied by
fine, melodious strains. With its contrapuntal weaving it leads to
the final chorus, and also it puts Sachs back again into the position
from which the importance of Walther's song has thrust him: it is a
last reminder that the opera is a glorification of song, and that the
masters have a sacred trust--to guard song pedantry and commercialism.
The work closes with a grand chorus made up of familiar music, a
glorious blaze and riot of orchestral and choral colour.

VII

The second section of this chapter contains what I have to say by way
of summing up. Let me repeat that the _Mastersingers_ is notable for
the endless flow of beautiful melodies, neither broken and scrappy
nor, on the other hand, approaching monotony: there is infinite
variety combined with magnificent breadth; for the nobility hidden
under homeliness--a characteristic most marked in Sachs' music; for
miraculous colouring now pitched in a low and tender key, now blazing
as in the last finale; for the picture of Nuremberg in the old time,
and for the vigour and fun with which the old life is depicted. It is
Wagner's one cheerful opera, and from some points of view, perhaps,
his most perfect; nowhere else did he try to keep on a high and even
level of pure song for so long; it does not strain our nerves, and
will bear hearing perhaps more frequently than anything else he wrote.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII

KING LUDWIG

In resuming Wagner's biography we may conveniently take it up after
the completion of _Tristan_ in August, 1859. I summarised the events
leading up to his beginning on the _Mastersingers_; but it is
necessary to go over some of the ground in a little more detail to
show in what a terrible plight Wagner had been landed when King Ludwig
II of Bavaria sent for him. He was bankrupt financially, in health and
in hope. Like the nose of his boyish hero, everything turned to dust
the moment he touched it. Concerts in Paris nearly brought utter
ruin--would have brought utter ruin had not a woman friend and admirer
come to the rescue. He gained no money by his concert tour until, as
he said, he got to St. Petersburg, and there the amount cannot have
been stupendous. He laboured with brain, heart and hand to give the
world masterpieces; the world responded by not responding at all--by
taking absolutely no notice. In Paris he made many valuable friends,
but they were useless to him for the realisation