,
seriously for a moment: Parsifal--Siegfried grown to manhood--knows
and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is
he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with
suffering--acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never
suffered--that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity.
Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that
the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to
please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion.

Of the music it is not necessary to say more than that some of it is
fine. For the most part it lacks virility, though there are passages
of marvellous loveliness. The flower-maidens' waltz shows what Wagner
could do in that way; the Good Friday music, dating back to the
_Lohengrin_ days, is sweet and fresh. But the quasi-religious music
has no charms for me.

Of course the prelude is in its way, but only in its way, a beautiful
thing. One almost hears the beating of angels' wings; the remnant of
old church melody, fitted into the most modern of modern rhythms,
sings out; the old _Tannhaeuser_ and _Rienzi_ Dresden Amen comes out
pompously if not very effectively. On the whole a splendid _tour de
force_ is accomplished. But as soon as the singers are introduced we
feel the lack of the inspiration of former days; the writing is not
vocal writing at all; it is simply notes chosen at will or at random
to fit in with the chord sequences that were constantly shaping
themselves in Wagner's brain--not sequences that sprang, as he himself
would have expressed it, from "the feeling." The woes of Amfortas are
described by the orchestra with a coldness that would have surprised
or stunned Wagner in his _Tristan_ days: had Meyerbeer done it no
paper would have carried his hot words. When Parsifal shoots the Swan,
Gurnemanz has two or three moments of true emotion: the rest ought to
be silence and is rubbish. The parody of the Lord's Supper is
deplorable: we have already heard enough of the music in the prelude
without having to go through it again. Klingsor's magic music is mere
theatricalism; about Kundry's account of Parsifal's mother I remain in
some doubt: it is certainly beautiful, but to those of us who know the
corresponding scene in _Siegfried_ it is rather beggarly. Parsifal's
denunciation of Kundry after she has kissed him has not a word of the
old truthful Wagner in it: Wagner had wr