"And ere her ear might hear, her heart had heard,

Nor sought she sign for witness of the word;

But came and stood above him, newly dead,

And felt his death upon her: and her head,

Bowed, as to reach the spring that slakes all drouth;

And their four lips became one silent mouth."

VI.

The story of Tristan and Isolde, as it was sung by the minstrel knights

of the Middle Ages, is a picture of chivalry in its palmy days. We need

to bear this in mind when we approach the ethical side of Wagner's

version. In the music of the love duet and Isolde's death lies,

perhaps, the most powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. No

one will stray far from the judgment which the future will pronounce

on Wagner's creations, I imagine, who sets down Isolde's swan's song

as the choicest flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination

of his powers as a composer. I do not believe that the purifying and

ennobling capacity of music was ever before or since demonstrated as it

is here. While listening to this tonal beatification, it is difficult

to hear the voice of reason pronouncing the judgment of outraged law.

Yet it is right that that voice should be heard. It is due to the

poet-composer that it should be heard. Wagner's attitude towards the

old legend differs vastly from that of the poets who preceded him in

treating it.

In the days of chivalry depicted by Gottfried von Strassburg and the

other mediæval poets who have sung the passion of these lovers, the

odor which assails our moral sense as the odor of death and decay was

esteemed the sweetest incense that arose from a poet's censer. Read

the _Wachtlieder_ of the German _Minnesinger_. The German _Wachtlied_,

the Provençal _alba_, is the song sung by the squire or friend watching

without, warning the lovers to separate. Brangäne's song in the second

act is such a _Wachtlied_. Read the decisions of the Courts of Love,

which governed the actions of chivalrous knighthood when chivalry was

at its zenith. Again and again was it proclaimed by these tribunals

that conjugal duty shut out the possibility of love between husband

and wife. In the economy of feudal castle life there was no provision

for women. The place was the domicile of warriors. Daughters of the

lord of the castle were married off in childhood. Who, then, could

be the object of knightly love? The answer is not far to seek. The

service of woman to which mediæval knighthood was devoted, the service

which is celebrated in words which we can scarcely accept, except as

wildest hyperbole, was the service paid to another man's wife. And

the fact that the knight himself had a wife was not a hinderance but

an incentive to the service which was the occupation of his life. Now

think for a moment on Wagner's modification of the Tristram legend.

From it he eliminates the second Iseult. His hero cannot contract a

loveless marriage, and at one stroke one element in the attitude of the

sexes which appears strange, unnatural, and shocking to us, is wiped

from the story.

The versions of Gottfried von Strassburg, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne,

Tennyson, and Wagner present three points of view from which the love

of the tragic pair must be studied. With the first three the drinking

is purely accidental, and the passion which leads to the destruction

of the lovers is something for which they are in no wise responsible.

With Tennyson there is no philter, and the passion is all guilty.

With Wagner the love exists before the dreadful drinking, and the

potion is less a maker of uncontrollable passion than a drink which

causes the lovers to forget duty, honor, and the respect due to the

laws of society. It is a favorite idea of Wagner's that the hero of

tragedy should be a type of humanity freed from all the bonds of

conventionality. It is unquestionable in my mind that in his scheme we

are to accept the love-potion as merely the agency with which Wagner

struck from his hero the shackles of convention.

Unquestionably, as Bayard Taylor argued, the love-draught is the Fate

of the Tristan drama, and this brings into notice the significance of

Wagner's chief variation. It is an old theory, too often overlooked

now, that there must be at least a taint of guilt in the conduct of a

tragic hero in order that the feeling of pity excited by his sufferings

may not overcome the idea of justice in the catastrophe. This theory

was plainly an outgrowth of the deep religious purpose of the Greek

tragedy. Wagner puts antecedent and conscious guilt at the door of

both his heroic characters. They love before the philter, and do not

pay the reverence to the passion which, in the highest conception, it

commands. Tristan is carried away by love of power and glory before

men, and himself suggests and compels by his threats Marke's marriage,

which is a crime against the love which he bears Isolde and she bears

him. There is guilt enough in Isolde's determination and effort to

commit murder and suicide. Thus Wagner presents us the idea of Fate

in the latest and highest aspect that it assumed in the minds of

the Greek poets, and he arouses our pity and our horror, not only

by the sufferings of the principals, but also by making an innocent

and amiable prompting to underlie the action which brings down the

catastrophe. It is Brangäne's love for her mistress that persuades

her to shield her from the crime of murder and protect her life. From

whatever point of view the question is treated, it seems to me that

Wagner's variation is an improvement on the old legend, and that the

objection, which German critics have urged, that the love of the pair

is merely a chemical product, and so, outside of human sympathy, falls

to the ground.

CHAPTER III.

"DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG."

Once upon a time--if I were disposed to be circumstantial I would

say in the early summer of the year of our Lord 1560, for it was the

year of Hans Sachs' widowerhood--Veit Pogner, desiring to honor the

craft of the master-singers in Nuremberg, to whose guild he belonged,

offered a rare prize as the reward of the victor in a singing contest

to be held on St. John's Day. Pogner was a rich silversmith who had

travelled much, who had loved the arts of song and song-making, and

whose pride had been hurt by the discovery that the gentry and nobility

of the German nation affected to despise the humble burgher for his

too great devotion to money-getting, unmindful of the fact, which

Pogner knew full well, that what there was of art-love and devotion and

talent was possessed and encouraged by the common people. It was for

this reason that he resolved to stimulate a supreme effort in the form

of art which most interested him, and the prize which he offered was

nothing less than his only child Eva in marriage, with all his great

wealth as a dowry. But Eva, dutiful in the main if rather forward and

self-willed, was little inclined to be bestowed as a prize unless she

had the picking of the winner. The fact is, she had lost her heart to

a handsome young knight from Franconia--in the course of a flirtation

carried on during divine service, I regret to say--and had told him

so in a somewhat impetuous manner, scarcely consistent with modern

notions on the subject of young women's behavior. She had not thought

it necessary to take her father into her confidence, and so the young

Franconian knight, who had come to Nuremberg to repair his fortunes,

was reduced to the extremity of entering the Guild of master-singers,

so that he might be qualified to go into the competition on the morrow.

A trial of candidates for admission to the guild had been announced for

that very day after divine service, and Walther von Stolzing (that was

the young knight's name) entered the lists. But, alas! he knew nothing

of the code of laws which governed the structure of master-songs and

prescribed the thirty-two offences which must not be committed. Nor did

he count on the fact that the adjudicator who would keep tally of his

violations of those laws would be Sixtus Beckmesser, the town-clerk,

whose longing glances were also turned in Eva's direction--or, at

least, towards her father's gold. He went into the contest trusting

to the inspiration of his love and his memory of the spirit which

breathes through the songs of that ardent old nature-lover, Walther von

der Vogelweide, whom the master-singers counted among the founders

of their guild, to carry him through. When the time came for him to

improvise a song which was to determine whether or not he was fit to

be a master-singer, he sang: now pouring out an ecstasy of feeling,

and anon scorching with scornful allusions the jealous pedant behind

the judge's curtain. In a burst of enthusiasm he rose from the chair

in which the code required the singer to sit, and this completed his

discomfiture. Hans Sachs, who, as he used to say, was "shoemaker and

poet, too," indeed had recognized evidences of genius in the song, and

its newness of style and indifference to ancient formula seemed to him

to weigh little as against its freshness and eloquence and ardor. But

Sachs could not prevent judgment going against the singer. That night

the young couple resolved to elope and seek their happiness outside

the code of laws of the Master-singers, but were interrupted by the

circumstance that Sachs, haunted by the song of the knight whose cause

he had espoused, was unable to sleep, and had resolved to finish a pair

of shoes ordered by Beckmesser. Sachs was kindly disposed towards the

lovers, but he had a strong sense of the duty due to parents. He saw

the pair in the shadow of a tree while he was musing on the occurrences

of the day, and suspected their purpose, as, indeed, he well might, for

Eva had changed her head-dress for that of her maid, Magdalena. As if

without special purpose, he drew his bench to the door, and threw a

ray of light across the street, through which they would be obliged to

pass. In another moment the malicious town-clerk appeared on the scene

with a lute. He had come to serenade Eva, in the hope of making an

impression which would be useful to him on the morrow, for it had been

stipulated that though the winner of the prize must be a master-singer,

yet Eva was to have a voice in the decision. While Magdalena took

her place at the window to delude Beckmesser with the belief that

his serenade was being listened to by its object, Sachs interrupted

the malicious clown by lustily shouting a song as he cobbled at the

bench, pleading in extenuation, when Beckmesser remonstrated with

him, that he must finish the shoes, for want of which Beckmesser had

twitted him at the meeting in St. Catherine's Church a few hours

before. Finally, having reduced the boor to the verge of distraction,

Sachs agreed to listen to his serenade, provided he were allowed the

privilege of playing adjudicator and marking the errors of composition

by striking his lapstone. The errors were not few, and, as you may

imagine, each critical tap threw Beckmesser into more of a rage, until

he lost his head altogether, and Sachs beat such a tattoo on his

lapstone that he had finished his work when Beckmesser came to the

end of his song, which, we may believe, was comical enough. And now,

to complete Beckmesser's misery, David, an apprentice of Sachs' and

Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking that the serenade had been intended

for her, began to belabor the singer with a club; the hubbub called the

neighbors into the street, and, as many of them bore little grudges

against each other, they took occasion to feed them all fat. A right

merry brawl was in progress when the watchman's horn was heard. Quick

as a flash the brawlers disappeared, and when the sleepy old watchman

entered the street none of the peace disturbers was to be seen; the

old Dogberry stared about him in amazement, rubbed his eyes, sang the

monotonous chant which told the hour and cautioned the burghers against

spooks, and walked off in the peaceful moonlight.

Next morning Walther, who had been taken in by Sachs, sang the recital

of a dream which had enriched his sleep. It was as beautiful in the

telling as in the experience, and Sachs transcribed it, punctuating

the pauses with bits of advice which enabled Walther easily to throw

it into the form of a master-song which would pass the muster even of

the pedantic code, though a few liberties were taken in the matter

of melody. While Sachs was absent from his shop to don clothes meet

for the coming festivities, Beckmesser came in and found the song,

which he conveyed to his own pocket. Sachs, returning, discovered

the theft, and gave the song to the thief, who, knowing Sachs' great

talent in composition, secured a promise from him not to claim it as

his own, and to permit him to sing it at the contest. This suited

Sachs' purposes admirably. A few hours later all the good people of

Nuremberg were gathered on the meadow just outside the walls, which

was their customary place of merrymaking. The guilds were there--the

cobblers and tailors and bakers and toy-makers--God bless 'em!--with

trumpeters and drummers and pipers, and hundreds of spruce apprentices;

and the master-singers with their banner and insignia, headed by Sachs.

Beckmesser was there, too, with the words of Walther's song whirling

in a hopeless maze in his addled pate. He tried to sing it, but made

a monstrously stupid parody, and when the populace hooted and railed

and jeered at him for presuming to aspire to the hand of the beauteous

Eva he flew into a rage, charged the authorship of the song which had

caused his downfall on Sachs, and left the field to his rival Walther,

who, to vindicate Sachs' statement that the song was a good one when

well sung, presently burdened the air with its loveliness, adding, in

his enthusiasm, an improvised apostrophe to Eva and the Parnassus of

poetry. Master-singers, people--and Eva--were agreed that the gallant

knight had won the prize, and Sachs gently compelled him, in spite

of his protest, to take the master-singer's medallion along with the

bride, and charged him never more to affect to despise the German

masters of song, whose works shall live though the Holy Roman Empire go

up in smoke.

I.

The story of "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" furnishes more food for

reflection than one might think at first blush, and opens a channel

of thought not commonly used when Wagner is in mind. It is a comedy,

and it is easiest to think of Wagner as a tragedian. Yet it is not the

smallest of his achievements that, more thoroughly and consistently

than any dramatist of our time, he has in his works restored the

boundary line which in the classic world separated comedy from

tragedy. In "Tannhäuser," "Tristan und Isolde," and "The Niblung's

Ring" are found examples of the old tragedy type. They deal with grand

passions, and their heroes are gods or god-like men who are shattered

against Fate. His only essay in the field of comedy was made in "Die

Meistersinger," and this is as faithful to the old conception of

comedy as the other dramas are to the classic ideals of tragedy. It

deals with the manners and follies and vices of the common people, and

exemplifies the purpose of comedy as it was set down in one of the

truest and best definitions ever written. It aims to chastise manners

with a smile. There are two ways of looking at "Die Meistersinger." It

can be weighted with a symbolical character, or it can be taken as an

example of pure comedy, with no deeper significance than lies on the

easily-reached surface of its lines, action, and music. There is no

doubt that Wagner conceived it as a satire, and it is even possible

(although I can recall no direct statement of his to that effect) that

he intended to chastise with it the spirit of conservatism and pedantry

which was for so long a time a stumbling-block in the way of his

system. Telling of his first draft of the comedy in 1845, immediately

after the completion of "Tannhäuser," he said that he had planned it

as a satyr-play after the tragedy, and, conceiving Hans Sachs as the

last example of the artistically productive Folk-spirit, had placed

him in opposition to the master-singer burgherdom, to whose droll and

rule-of-thumb pedantry he gave individual expression in the character

of the adjudicator, or _Merker_. This statement, although it was made

nearly a generation before the comedy was written, justifies the

assumption that it was his purpose in it to celebrate the triumph of

the natural poetic impulse, stimulated by communion with nature, over

pedantic formulas. But a word of caution should be uttered against the

autobiographic stamp which some extremists have wanted to impress upon

it. The comedy is not rendered more interesting or its satire more

admirable by thinking of Walther as the prototype of Wagner himself,

of Beckmesser as Wagner's opponents, and of Hans Sachs as King Ludwig,

embodying in himself, furthermore, the symbol of enlightened public

opinion, which neither despises rules nor is willing to be ridden

by them. Such an exposition of its symbolism lies near enough in

its broad lines, but there is danger in carrying it through all the

details of the plot. When it is too far pushed, critics will ask in

the future, as they have asked in the past, how this can be accepted

as the satirical motive of the comedy when the hero who triumphs over

the supposed evil principle in the drama does so, not to advance the

virtue which stands in opposition to that evil principle, but simply

to win a bride--a purpose that is purely selfish, however amiable and

commendable it may be. Walther does, indeed, discover himself as the

champion of spontaneous, vital art, and the antagonist of the pedantry

represented by the master-singers; but this is not until after he

has learned that he can only win the young lady by himself becoming

a member of the guild, and defeating all comers at the tournament of

song. Knowing none of the rules, he boldly relies on the potency of

the inspiration begotten by his love, and does his best under the

circumstances; that he ultimately succeeds he owes to the help of

Sachs, and the fact that his rival defeats himself by resorting to foul

means. Besides, to justify fully this dramatic scheme, Beckmesser ought

not to have been made the blundering idiot and foolish knave that he

appears to be in the stage versions, but at the worst a short-sighted,

narrow-minded, and perhaps malicious pedant. As he stands in the stage

representations Beckmesser is an ill-natured and wicked buffoon, a

caricature of a peculiarly gross kind, and only an infinitesimally

tiny corrective idea lies in the fact that a manly young knight who

loves a pretty young woman should have saved her from falling into such

a rival's hands by marrying her himself. He would have had the vote of

the public on his side if he had sung like a crow and Beckmesser like

Anacreon.

II.

If we will look upon the contest symbolized in the comedy, not as

that between Wagner and his contemporaries, but as between the two

elements in art whose opposition stimulates life, and whose union,

perfect, peaceful, mutually supplemental, is found in every really

great art-work, I think we shall come pretty near the truth. At least,

we will have an interesting point of view from which to study its

musical and literary structure. Simply for convenience sake let us

call these two principles Romanticism and Classicism. The terms are a

little vague, entirely arbitrary, and if we were seeking scientific

exactness we should be obliged to condemn their use. Popularly, they

are conceived as antithetical in the critical history of literature as

well as music. It is in this sense (with a difference) that I wish to

use them.

If the history of music be looked at with a view to discovering

the spirit which animates its products rather than observing their

integument, it will be found that from the beginning two forces have

been in operation, and by their antagonism have done the work of

progressive creation. In the religious chant, with its restrictive

clog (the fruit of superstitious veneration and fear) we find that

manifestation of the spirit of antique music which was chiefly

instrumental in its establishment and regulation. To that spirit

tribute above its meed is paid in the hand-books which begin the

history of modern music with the chants of the Christian Church. The

other spirit, having been cultivated outside the church, has had

fewer historians to do it reverence. It is the free, untrammelled

impulse which rests on the law of nature and refuses the domination

of formal rule and restrictive principle. On the love-song, war-song,

and hunting-song of early man, on the cradle-song crooned by early

woman, there rested not the weight of superstitious fear and hope which

fettered the religious chant. They were individual manifestations of

feeling, and in them the fancy was free to discover and use all the

tonal and rhythmical combinations which might be helpful in giving

voice to emotion. The mission of this spirit (which I will call

Romanticism to distinguish it from the conservative, and regulative

spirit which I will call Classicism) was fulfilled, during the

artificiality and all-pervading scholasticism of the Middle Ages, by

the _Minnesinger_ and _trouvère_; and though the death of chivalry

ended that peculiar ministry, the spirit continued to live as it had

lived from the beginning, as it still lives and will live _in sæcula

sæculorum_, in the people's songs and dances. When the composers of

two hundred and fifty years ago began to develop instrumental music

they found the germ of the sonata form--the form that made Beethoven's

symphonies possible--in the homely dance tunes of the people which till

then had been looked upon as vulgar things, wholly outside the domain

of polite art. The genius of the masters of the last century moulded

this form of plebeian ancestry into a vessel of wonderful beauty; but

by the time this had been done the capacity of music as an emotional

language had been greatly increased, and the same Romantic spirit

which had originally created the dance forms that they might embody

the artistic impulses of that early time, suggested the filling of the

vessel with the new contents. When the vessel would not hold these new

contents it had to be widened. New bottles for new wine. That is the

whole mystery of what conservative critics decry as the destruction of

form in music. It is not destruction, but change. When you destroy form

you destroy music, for the musical essence can manifest itself only

through form.

As a perfectly natural result of the development of this beautiful and

efficient vessel called the Sonata form, a love of symmetry and order,

of correct logic and beautiful sequence, came to dominate composers,

and it is a relic of this love, a love which we must not despise in

such masters as Haydn and Mozart, which led them to fill so many of

their compositions with repetitions of parts and conventional passages

that appear meaningless and wearisome to us. They were written in

compliance with the demands of form.

III.

For the purposes of our exposition of the symbolism of Wagner's comedy,

of the meaning of its satire, we shall have to look upon classical

composers as those who developed music chiefly on its formal side and

conserved the laws which enabled them to reach one ideal of beauty.

The Romantic composers will then be those who sought their ideals in

other regions than the formal, and strove to give them expression

irrespective--or, if necessary, in defiance--of the conventions of law.

Romanticism will appear to us as the creative principle, and hence we

shall find it in Wagner's comedy associated with Youth, its passions

and enthusiasms; with Love, and heedless, reckless daring; with Spring

and blooming time; with the singing of birds and the perfume of

flowers; with assertion of the right of unfettered utterance and denial

of the wisdom or justice of reflection and moderation.

Do not visions corresponding with these attributes rise up out of the

incidents of the play? The lovers, with their impetuous love-making

and reckless resolve which sapient Sachs frustrates; Walther's songs

in the first act, telling of Spring releasing Nature from her icy

shackles and winning her smiles, while sunlight and birds and meadow

flowers, and the old poet who sang the praises of them and was named

after the mead he loved, united in teaching him the art of song; the

bold defiance of the master-singers and their code; the rejection of

the medal when it had been won. Classicism, in turn, will appear as

the regulative and conservative principle, and its association in the

play will be with maturity of age and moderation in thought and action;

with personages in whom the creative impulse is not an elemental force,

but a pleasure or a duty which waits upon the judgment; also, for

satirical purposes, with a guild of handicraftsmen and tradespeople

who enforce an apprenticeship in art as they do in trade; who think

that by adherence to rule artworks may be created as shoes are made

over a last; who are pompous in their pedantry and amiable only in

the holy simplicity of their earnestness, their vanity, and their

complacency. Such are the associations which arise when the pictures of

the comedy are passed in hasty review; and they have been grievously

incomplete. They have omitted the real hero of the play, the poet

who belongs to the guild and upholds its laws while battling for the

spirit represented by him who falls under the condemnation of those

very laws. Where is Hans Sachs? Search him out. You will find him

in the midst of the combatants fighting valiantly _on both sides_;

representing a principle at once creative and conservative, standing,

in the history of artistic development, for those true geniuses who

breathe the breath of life into the body, not for the purpose of

destruction, but that the spirit may become manifest in the flesh.

It is contest which brings life. All the great classical composers from

Brahms back to Bach have had their moments of Romantic feeling; it is

never absent from the truly creative artist; but its most eloquent

expression was reserved for our century. You recognize it in the whole

body of instrumental music, beginning with Beethoven; you yield to its

influence when you hear the operas of Gluck, Mozart, and Weber. The

musicians whose influence was strongest when Wagner began his reforms

were frank in their protestations of allegiance to this conception of

Romanticism: "The Spirit builds the forms, or finds them ready-built,

and refashions them according to its needs and desires," said Marx.

"If you wish to adopt art as a profession you cannot accustom yourself

early enough to consider the contents of an art-work as more important

and serious a matter than its structure," said Mendelssohn, the

greatest master of form that the century has known. "That would be a

trivial art which would have only sounds but no language or signs for

the conditions of the soul," said Schumann.

Wagner was too thorough an artist, too profound a musician, not to

recognize the value of constructive law. He would have been false

to his principles and false to his practice had he written a comedy

for the purpose of glorifying mere lawlessness. Had this been his

purpose he would not have told us as he has that it was Sachs whom he

intended to oppose to the spirit of pedantry and formalism personified

in Beckmesser. Sachs has no condemnation to pronounce on the laws of

the guild of which he was the brightest ornament. On the contrary, he

upholds them even against Walther, and persuades him to adopt them in

the composition of his prize song, just as after the victory is won he

admonishes him to give the reverence due to the masters. What he learns

from Walther, and impresses on his colleagues, is the need of adapting

form to spirit, and the mental conflict which brings him to this

conviction is a reflection of that creative activity which looks to the

short-sighted like destructive war, but is exemplified in the works of

the great masters as the highest peace. We can gain an insight into the

musical structure of the comedy, and find proofs for our contention at

the same time, if we observe Sachs under the influence of this seeming

contradiction.

It is evening, and the poet has returned to his cobbler's bench. The

scent of the elder-tree, the charm of the summer night, will not

permit him to work; they turn his thoughts to poetry; but memories of

Walther's song come over him, and under their influence he can neither

work nor compose. There was an inexplicable charm in the song. No rule

would fit it, yet it was faultless. It was new and strange, yet sounded

old and familiar, like the carolling of birds in May-time. To try to

imitate it would result in shame and contumely. That he knew. Where lay

the mystery? At last he discovers it. The song was the voice of Spring,

of the heyday of the singer's life and passion. The need of utterance

brought with it the capacity and the privilege. All this we may learn

from the words of Sachs, while the music tells us of what is passing

through his mind in the intervals of his soliloquizing. This music is

built up out of a very short phrase, but it is the phrase which may be

set down as the chief musical symbol of the spirit which I have called

Romanticism:

[Illustration: score]

To learn why this phrase should haunt the mind of Sachs its genesis

must be traced. It is found first to enter the score of the drama

(after the prelude) to accompany a tender but urgent glance of inquiry

which Walther bestows on Eva in the first scene between the lines of

the _chorale_ sung by the congregation:

[Illustration: score]

Next, when Eva shyly rebukes his ardor with a glance, but quickly

returns it with emotion:

[Illustration: score]

When the congregation breaks up, Walther, gazing intently on Eva, from

whom he had received a look which confessed her love (accompanied by

a phrase which afterwards plays an important role in his prize song),

hurries to address her; his eagerness is published by the orchestra in

this variation of the phrase:

[Illustration: score]

A threefold augmentation of the phrase is shown in these examples,

which suffice to identify it with one of the fundamental feelings

concerned in the play. It depicts or typifies the youthful impetuosity

of the lovers, the ardor of their passion before it had been confessed

in words. Is not its fitness for such a mission obvious? Observe the

eagerness which the triplet injects into its rhythm, the ebulliency

expressed by the tendency of its melody to ascend ever higher and

higher in the regions of tonality. Poetical association consorts

analogous attributes with Love and Youth and Spring-time; and it is in

the song which Walther sings in praise of Spring and Love--his trial

song in the first act--that the phrase receives its most eloquent

treatment. Note the irrepressible enthusiasm of its proclamation in

this song (_Fanget an!_); how, after a peaceful announcement, it

surges upward and ever upward in the accompaniment, until the voice

can no longer hold out against but is borne up on it, until left by a

scintillant explosion which seems to be the only means at hand to bring

the jubilant phrase back into control. This is the Romantic expression

which haunted the mind of Sachs when, after the stormy meeting in St.

Catherine's Church, he thought to work in the perfumed quiet of the

evening.

IV.

In broad lines the prelude to "Die Meistersinger" not only serves to

delineate the characteristic traits of the personages concerned in

the comedy, but also exhibits Wagner's method of musical exposition,

and teaches the lesson which is at the bottom of the satire--the

lesson, namely, that it is through the union of the two principles,

which until the close of the play appear in conflict, that a genuine

work of art is quickened. The prelude contains the whole symbolism

of the comedy in a nutshell. In form it is unique, but in so far as

it employs only melodies drawn from the play it may not incorrectly

be classed with the medley overtures which composers used to throw

together for ante-curtain music. It is the manner in which Wagner

has treated his melodies, and the delineative capacity with which he

has endowed them, that render the prelude a capital exemplification

of the theory advanced by Gluck, when, in his preface to "Alceste,"

he said, "I imagined that the overture ought to prepare the audience

for the action of the piece, and serve as a kind of argument to it."

Wagner follows this precept and the example set by Beethoven in the

"Leonore" overtures, and indicates the elements of the plot, their

progress in its development, and finally the outcome, in his symphonic

introduction. The melodies which are its constructive material are

of two classes, broadly distinguished in external physiognomy and

emotional essence. They are presented first consecutively, then as in

conflict (first one, then another, pushing forward for expression),

finally in harmonious and contented union. It should always be borne in

mind that no matter how numerous the hand-books--which a witty German

critic called "musical Baedeckers"--if one wishes to know Wagner's

purpose in the use of a typical phrase or melody, he need take no one's

word for it except Wagner's. He can turn to the score and trace it out

himself, learning its meaning from the words and situations with which

it is associated. If this plan be followed, it will be seen that the

master-singers are throughout the comedy characterized by two melodies,

[Illustration: score]

and

[Illustration: score]

Note that as the master-singers belonged to the solid burghers of

old Nuremberg--a little vain, as was to be expected in the upholders

of an institution of great antiquity and glorious traditions; staid,

dignified, and complacent, as became the free citizens of a free

imperial city, whose stout walls sheltered the best in art and

science that Germany could boast--so these two melodies are strong,

simple tunes; sequences of the intervals of the simple diatonic

scale; strongly and simply harmonized; square-cut in rhythm; firm

and dignified, if a trifle pompous, in their stride. The three

melodies belonging to the class presented in opposition to the spirit

represented by the master-singers are disclosed by a study of the

comedy to be associated with the passion of the young lovers, Walther

and Eva, and those influences in nature which are the inspiration

of romantic utterance--spring-time, the birds, and flowers. They

differ in every respect--melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, as well as in

treatment--from the melodies which stand for the old master-singers and

their notions. They are chromatic; their rhythms are less regular and

more eager (through the agency of syncopation); they are harmonized

with greater warmth, and set for the instruments with greater passion.

The first,

[Illustration: score]

most surely tells us of the incipiency of the lovers' passion, for it

is the subject of the interludes between the lines of the _chorale_

which accompany the flirtation in the church scene. The second,

[Illustration: score]

is again concerned with the passion, showing it in the phase of ardent

longing. Another is the melody to which Walther sings the last stanza

of his prize song. I have already quoted and described it as the

phrase to which Eva confesses her love by a gesture of the eyes in the

church scene. Lest the significance of that telltale glance should

not be recognized, observe that both lovers use the melody in their

protestations of devotion to each other at parting:

[Illustration: score]

The fourth is the impatiently aspiring phrase described in the analysis

of Sachs' monologue.

There is another theme which is of less importance, seemingly, in the

score, but which plays a happy part in the comedy as it is prefigured

in the prelude. It is the rhythmically strongly-marked phrase with

which the populace jeers at Beckmesser, and effects his discomfiture in

the final scene of the play.

[Illustration: score]

This little phrase it is which performs the duty of musical satirist

in the middle part of the prelude, where the grotesque elements in the

character of Beckmesser are pictured. It is a _scherzando_ movement,

the master-singers' march melody being presented in diminution by the

choir of wood-wind instruments, which persist stubbornly in their

fussy cackling, in spite of the fact that the strings take every

opportunity to send some of the passionate, pushing, pulsating love

music surging through the desiccated mass of tones. Here it is that

Wagner chastises the foolish manners of the master-singers, as he does

later in the actual representation. The jeering phrase, started by the

middle strings, eventually cuts through the mass of tones, and when

the caricature of the broad melody, typical of the master-singers,

has been laughed out of court, the music which exemplifies the

freshness and vigor of Youth and Spring and Love, and their right

to free and spontaneous proclamation, masters the orchestra and

conquers recognition, and even celebration, from the representatives

of conservatism and pedantry. In the musical contest it is only the

perverted idea of Classicism which is treated with contumely and

routed; the glorification of the triumph of Romanticism is found in the

stupendously pompous and brilliant setting given to the master-singers'

music at the end.

You see already in this prelude that Wagner is a true comedian. He

administers chastisement with a smile (_ridendo castigat mores_), and

chooses for its subject only things which are temporary aberrations

from the good. What is strong and true and pure and wholesome in the

art of the master-singers he permits to pass through his satirical

fires unscathed. Classicism in its original sense, as the conservator

of that which is highest and best in art, he leaves unharmed,

presenting her after her trial, as Tennyson presents his Princess, at

the close of his corrective poem, when

"All

Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,

And left her woman, lovelier in her mood

Than in her mould that other, when she came

From barren deeps to conquer all with love."

V.

The third act of the comedy is preceded by a prelude which, rightly

understood, reflects the cobbler-poet whom I have chosen to think the

real hero of the play, in the light in which he appears in the history

of German civilization and culture. Twice before, in the comedy, a

glimpse of him in that character had been given--in the summer evening,

after the meeting, when he could not work because he was haunted by the

memory of Walther's song, and again when, having found the solution

of the problem raised by that song, he drove away all the phantoms of

melancholy by his lusty cobbling song. Apparently that song is all

carelessness and contentment, but in reality it tells of the lofty

thinker and his melancholy, bred of his contemplation of the vanities

of the things with which he finds himself surrounded.

This is the last stanza:

"O Eve, my sore complaints attend,

My needs and dire distresses,

For underfoot mankind the cobbler's work of art oppresses.

If I'd no angel knew

What 'tis to make a shoe,

I'd leave this cobbling in a trice.

But when I go to his retreat,

I leave the world beneath my feet,

Myself I view, Hans Sachs a shoemaker and song-master too!"

In the accompaniment to this stanza a phrase appears in the orchestra

(it is not in the simplified pianoforte scores) in which, as Wagner

himself puts it, there is "the bitter cry of resignation of the man

who shows to the world a cheerful and energetic mien." It is the

solemn phrase which gives character and color to Sachs' monologue in

the third act, when he contemplates the follies and petty passions of

humanity (_Wahn! Wahn! überall Wahn!_). It symbolizes for us Sachs,

the philosopher. To appreciate the full significance of the Nuremberg

cobbler as poet and thinker, a glance must be thrown upon a highly

important phase in the history of German culture. A new melody had

been put into that voice by the Reformation. Luther lived to be hailed

by it as "the Nightingale of Wittenberg" in a poem whose opening lines

Wagner ingeniously uses as a tribute to Sachs in the third act of the

comedy. It is the chorale, _Wach auf! Es nahet gen dem Tag._

The Reformation had revived interest in the old art of master-song

which had sunk into decadence under the edict of the Romish Church

prohibiting the reading of the Bible by the common people. The greatest

of the Nuremberg school of master-singers was inspired by the new dawn,

and Luther and Melanchthon looked up from the pages of Homer, Virgil,

and Horace to listen to the strange new melody which felt and sang with

and for the people. This character of Sachs, in all the details that I

have pointed out, is delineated in the prelude to the third act, whose

melodic contents are thus summarized: First, the contemplative phrase,

_Wahn! Wahn!_ next the Lutheran chorale, _Wach auf!_ a portion of the

cobbling song ("as if the man had turned his gaze from his handiwork

heavenwards, and was lost in tender musing," says Wagner); then the

chorale again, with increased sonority, and eventually the opening

phrase attuned to cheerfulness and resignation.

VI.

Wagner's "Meistersinger von Nürnberg" is a comedy, and by that token is

more difficult of understanding and appreciation by persons unfamiliar

with the German tongue, history, and social customs than any of his

tragedies. In considering the latter, it is only the elements of

expression that need give us pause. In their essence, being true

tragedies, they are as much the property of one race as another.

This is not the case with comedies. They do not deal with the great

fundamental passions of humanity, but with the petty foibles and

follies and vices of a people. Being such, they vary with peoples and

with times, and their representation compels the use of historical

backgrounds, the application of local color. "Die Meistersinger" is

a capital illustration of this principle of dramatic poetry. As a

picture of the social life of a German city three hundred years ago

its vividness and truthfulness are beyond praise; it has no equal in

operatic literature, and few peers in the literature of the spoken

drama. It is absolutely photographic in its accuracy. To appreciate

this fact fully one must have visited Nuremberg, gone through its

museum, and turned over the records. With such assistance it is easy

to call up in fancy such a vision of its social life in the middle of

the sixteenth century as will form a most harmonious setting for the

series of pictures which Wagner created. It is still the quaintest

city in Germany, and full of relics of its old glory. Of these relics,

however, fewer belong to the time of the master-singers than an

investigator would be likely to imagine. In the Germanic Museum may

be found remains of many of the old guilds of the town, but none of

the Master-singers' Guild, except a tablet which once hung on the

walls of St. Catherine's Church and has been removed to the museum for

safe-keeping. The church, indeed, is still in existence, but its use

by the master-singers never brought it fame until after Wagner's comic

opera had been written, and now I doubt whether a hundred residents

of Nuremberg, aside from those who live in the immediate vicinity,

could even tell a visitor where to find it. For more than a century

it has been put to secular uses, and nothing of the interior remains

to indicate what it looked like in the time of Hans Sachs except the

walls. All the furniture and decorations were long ago removed, for

it has been a painters' academy, drawing-school, military hospital,

warehouse, public hall, and perhaps a dozen other things since it

ceased to be a place of public worship. Just now it is the paint-shop

of the Municipal Theatre. It is a small, unpretentious building,

absolutely innocent of architectural beauty, hidden away in the middle

of a block of lowly buildings used as dwellings, carpenter-shops,

and the like. I got the keys from a sort of police supervisor of

the district and inspected the interior in 1886. The janitor knew

nothing about its history beyond his own memory, and that compassed

only a portion of its career as a sort of municipal lumber-room. It

was built in the last half-decade of the thirteenth century, and on

its water-stained walls can be seen faint bits of the frescos which

once adorned it and were painted in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and

sixteenth centuries; but they are ruined beyond recognition or hope of

restoration. I went to the director of the Germanic Museum to learn

what had become of the old church furniture. He did not know.

"Have you seen the tablet of the master-singers which we have

up-stairs?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Well, that is all that we have in the way of master-singer relics. If

you have seen that and the church, you have seen all, and will have to

compose the rest of the picture--draw on your imagination, or hire an

artist to do it for you."

The tablet is really a more interesting relic than the church. It is a

small affair of wood, with two doors, and was painted by a Franz Hein

in 1581. On the doors are portraits of four distinguished members of

the guild. Two pictures occupy the middle panel, the upper, with a

charmingly naïve disregard of chronology, showing King David praying

before a crucifix; the lower, a meeting of master-singers with a

singer perched in a box-like pulpit. Over the heads of the assemblage

is a representation of the chain and medallion with which the victor

in a singing contest used to be decorated. Sachs gave one of these

ornaments to the guild, and it was used for a hundred years. By that

time, however, it had become so worn that Johann Christoph Wagenseil, a

professor of Oriental languages at the University of Altdorf (to whose

book, entitled _De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi

Commentatio_, printed in 1697, we owe the greater part of our knowledge

of the art and customs of the _Meistersinger_), replaced it with

another. The tablet might offer suggestions to the theatrical costumer

touching the dress of the master-singers, and also the picture of David

and his harp which ornamented their banner; but old Nuremberg costumes

are familiar enough, and can be studied to better purpose elsewhere.

Only one feature suggests itself as worthy of special notice. On the

tablet the master-singers all appear wearing the immense neck-ruff of

the Elizabethan period. As for the architectural settings of the stage

in the first act (which plays in the Church of St. Catherine), so far

as I know no attempt at correctness has been made by scene-painters;

nor would it be possible to reproduce a picture of the church and still

follow Wagner's stage directions. Evidently the poet-composer never

took the trouble to visit the Church of St. Catherine.

[Illustration: WOODEN TABLET OF THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG.]

I have said that, barring the church and tablet, there are no relics

of the old guild to be found in the Nuremberg of to-day. Until

lately it was supposed that the Municipal Library contained a number

of autographic manuscripts by Hans Sachs, but when I asked for them,

they were produced with the statement that they were no longer looked

upon as genuine. It did not require much investigation to convince

me that the claim long maintained that they were autographs of the

cobbler-poet rested wholly on presumption. Sachs autographs are

extremely scarce. The Royal Library at Berlin possesses a volume of

master-songs known to be in the handwriting of Sachs (among them is one

by Beckmesser), but when I was in the Prussian capital this treasure

was in Dresden, whither it had been sent to enable a literary student

to utilize it in the preparation of a book on Sachs. A Berlin scholar,

whom I found at work in the Nuremberg Library gathering material

for a new biography of Sachs, informed me that the greatest number

of Sachs autographs, and they not many, had been found in Zwickau,

whither they had been brought by some member of the Sachs family many

years ago. There are, then, no manuscript relics of him who was the

chief glory of the Nuremberg guild in the old town. You may drink a

glass of wine at the street-corner where tradition says the old poet

cobbled and composed, but the house is a modern one. Of his companions

in the guild I found no manuscripts in the library, and not one of

them left his mark in any way on the town. But I did find a number of

old manuscript volumes dating back two hundred years or more, which

served to vitalize in a peculiarly interesting manner the record which

the learned old Wagenseil left behind him, and some of the personages

of Wagner's comedy. Those who have taken the trouble to investigate

the source to which Wagner went for the people and customs introduced

in his "Meistersinger von Nürnberg" (Wagenseil's book) know that the

names of the master-singers who figure in the comedy once belonged to

veritable members of the Nuremberg guild. Wagenseil mentions them as

singers whose memories were cherished in his day, and some of them

were also mentioned by an older author, whose book, devoted chiefly

to the Strassburg guild, which at one time was even more famous than

that of Nuremberg, is referred to by Wagenseil. The book of the

Strassburg writer, singularly enough, was known to Wagenseil only as a

manuscript, and such it remained until two or three decades ago, when

it was printed by a literary society at Stuttgart. In Wagenseil's day

it was valued so highly that it was kept wrapped in silk, like the

sacred scrolls of the Jews, a circumstance that enabled the pedantic

Orientalist to air his learning on the subject for many pages in his

wofully discursive but extremely interesting book. But if Wagenseil

had not given his testimony, I could now bear witness to the fact that

Conrad Nachtigal, Hans Schwartz, Conrad Vogelgesang, Sixtus Beckmesser,

Hans Folz, Fritz Kothner, Balthasar Zorn, and Veit Pogner once lived

as well as Hans Sachs. I have read some of their poems and copied some

of the melodies invented by them and utilized by their successors in

the guild. The volumes containing these curiosities of literature have

been in the Municipal Library over one hundred years. In the catalogue

of the Bibliotheca Norica Williana, printed one hundred and sixteen

years ago, they are mentioned as having been purchased from an old

master-singer. Five of them are small oblong books of music paper,

upon which some old masters or apprentices in the art of master-song

have copied melodies which were much used at the meetings in St.

Catherine's Church. It was the custom of the members of the guild

to compose poems to fit these melodies. In the second scene of his

opera Wagner mentions a great many of the singular titles by which

these melodies or modes were designated. He got them from Wagenseil.

Besides these books, there are two immense manuscript volumes, in

which some industrious old lover of the poetical art transcribed songs

which he evidently thought admirable. They are each almost as large

as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, and must represent months, if not

years, of labor. One is devoted wholly to German paraphrases of Ovid's

"Metamorphoses," set to a great variety of melodies. The author is M.

Ambrosius Metzger, who was one of the few members of the guild who were

scholars. He wrote the poems in 1625. The other volume contains songs

by a great number of master-singers, though Hans Sachs is the principal

contributor. The plan of the volume indicates that it was a collection

of admired poems. It begins with paraphrases from the Pentateuch.

Some early pages are missing, the first poem preserved dealing with

the sixth chapter of Genesis. Chronological order is maintained up to

chapter twenty-eight of the same book. Then follow songs dealing with

the Gospels and Epistles. The Book of Job is not forgotten. Finally,

there are a number of secular poems, many recounting Æsop's fables and

anecdotes drawn from old writers. Songs of this character were composed

by the master-singers for diversion at their informal gatherings. At

the meetings in the Church of St. Catherine only sacred subjects were

allowed. It is for this reason that Wagner's Kothner asks Walther in

the opera whether he had chosen sacred matter (_ein heil'gen Stoff_)

for his trial song, which provokes the reply from the ardent young

knight that he would sing of love, a subject sacred to him. Whether

sacred or secular, however, the form and style of the songs are

alike. Nothing could more completely illustrate the absurdity of the

fundamental theory of the foolish old pedants that poetry might be

written by rule of thumb than the publication of a few of the songs in

this old book. The nature of the poetical frenzy which fills them can,

perhaps, be guessed if I record the fact that the majority of them, I

think, begin with a citation of chapter and verse, or some statement

equally matter of fact, as thus:

"The twenty-ninth chapter of Genesis records," or "Diogenes, the wise

master," or "Strabo writes of the customs," or "Moses, the eleventh,

reports," or "The Lesser Book of Truth doth tell," etc.

The last of these lines is the beginning of a master-song which has

a twofold interest. In the first place, it is a secular poem by Hans

Sachs which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been printed or

written about. In the second place, it is set to a melody by the

veritable Pogner who, in Wagner's comedy, offers his daughter and his

fortune to the winner in the singing contest which makes up Wagner's

last act. The poem is so amusing that I would like to give it entire

in English, but its irregularity of accent and peculiarities of

rhyme do not lend themselves willingly to translation. Of musical

accent the master-singers, who followed the rhyming rules of those

marvellously ingenious rhymesters the _Minnesinger_, had not the

slightest idea. Wagner knew that. Sachs' first critical tap on his

lapstone in Beckmesser's serenade is evoked by a blunder in accent

which the veritable Sachs would have passed unnoticed, though, being a

real poet, his sins in this respect were not as numerous as those of

his colleagues and predecessors. I content myself, therefore, with the

first _Stollen_, or stanza, and its _Abgesang_, or burden, which the

curious student will find to be composed in strict accordance with the

rules which, in the opera, Kothner reads from the blackboard. These

_Leges Tabulaturæ_, by-the-way, are almost a literal transcription from

the original laws preserved in Wagenseil's book. The matter of the song

is this: A boor falls ill. Finding that his appetite is wholly gone,

he calls in a physician, who informs him (in a drastic fashion) that

the trouble is caused by an accumulation of slime in the stomach. He

administers a purgative, but without result. The sickness increases,

and the boor upbraids the doctor, who retorts that his patient will

be a dead man within an hour unless he consent to having his stomach

taken out and scoured with chalk. The boor consents, the physician

performs the operation, cutting the man open with a pair of shears,

brushes out the offending organ with a wisp, and hangs it on the fence

to dry. What the farmer does meanwhile is not recorded; but before

the physician could replace his stomach a raven carried it off to the

woods and ate it. In this dilemma the physician disclosed himself as

a worthy progenitor of the modern race of surgeons. He was terribly

frightened, but didn't let any one see it. By stealth he procured a

sow's stomach, introduced it into the farmer's body, and quickly sewed

up the aperture. The farmer got well, and paid eight florins for the

job. But heavens, what an appetite was that which he developed! To

satisfy him now was utterly impossible, for which reason, concludes the

moralist, an insatiable eater is nowadays said to be a hog (literally

"to have a sow's stomach"), who devours more than he produces, as many

women lament:

"Darum spricht man noch von ein Man,

Den man gar nicht erfuellen kan,

Wie er hab einen Sawmagen;

Verthut mehr denn er gewinnen kan,

Hoert man vil Frawen klagen."

FIRST _STOLLEN_.

[Illustration: score]

The Less - er Book of Truth doth tell,

How ill - ness on a boor once fell,

Taste for all food de - stroy - ing;

A - gainst all drugs it did re - bel,

His pleas - ures all al - loy - ing.......

One day there came a doc - tor wise,

Who glanced him o'er with search - ing eyes,

Found out what caused his ail - ing.

His learn - ing proof a - gainst sur - prise,

Made work like that plain sail - ing.......

THE _ABGESANG_.

[Illustration: score]

"Far - mer, of all your pains... the cause,

Is slime with - in your stom - ach wide dis - tend - ing."

The far - mer heard with gap - - ing jaws,

For gnaw - ing pains in - side his paunch were rend - ing.

The tale is an old one, popular in one form or another in the Middle

Ages. A variant of it is to be found in the _Gesta Romanorum_, to which

extraordinary collection of moral tales it is possible that Sachs

had reference when he spoke of the _Buch der Kleinen Wahrheit_, or

Lesser Book of Truth, as I have rendered it. In the _Gesta_, however,

the physician substitutes a goat's eye, and subjects his patient to

an extraordinary strabismus. Hans Sachs's variation is eminently

characteristic of the man and the people for whom he wrote.

CHAPTER IV.

"DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN."

The common error of looking upon the outward covering of things for the

things themselves has led to the real plot of Wagner's tetralogical

drama "The Niblung's Ring" being overlooked by the majority of persons

who have written about it. Especially has the significance of the

prologue to the tragedy failed of appreciation. I shall try to tell

what I conceive to be the true story of the tragedy, and at least hint

at the meaning which that story had when it came into the mind of the

sagaman and myth-maker ages ago, which meaning, moreover, Richard

Wagner, unlike his modern predecessors among the poets who have treated

the subject, apprehended and conserved.

It is a pretty solemn fact that unless this tragedy in four parts be

approached with other aims than mere diversion, much will be found

in it that appears ridiculous to the judgment, no matter how it

affects the senses. To some it may seem a fatal confession to say

that sincere and sufficient enjoyment of "The Niblung's Ring" is only

to be had by persons willing to let critical judgment wait upon the

imagination; yet I am willing to make that confession, and even to

augment it by the statement that there are scenes in the tragedy when

even this unfettered faculty must needs be as ingenuous as the "raised

imagination" of Charles Lamb at his first play, which transformed

the glistering substance on the pillars of Old Drury into "glorified

sugar-candy." Yet I do not believe that thereby the potential beauty,

impressiveness, and significance of the tragedy are brought into

question. Is it not easy to conceive of a mental condition which would

accept such a childlike receptivity as the only mood in which an

art-work designed to appeal to emotions which the humdrum routine of

modern life leaves untouched ought to be approached? Wagner's "Ring des

Nibelungen" is not an idle fairy-tale, the offspring of a mind working

with fanciful material amid the environment of the nineteenth century.

It is a tragedy Hellenic in its scope and proportions, dealing with one

of the great problems of human existence, reflecting the operations of

the quickened mind and conscience of humanity in its impressionable

childhood.

"Das Rheingold" is the prologue to a tragedy which has not only the

dimensions, but also the aim, of a Greek trilogy. This conception of

its dignity greatly widens the significance of its few incidents. Of

necessity? Yes. Observe the manner in which Wagner approaches his

subject. The hero of the mediæval epic popularly called "The Lay of

the Niblung" is Siegfried; and this story of Siegfried is mixed with

considerable historical alloy. The character of Gunther, which figures

in the story, is Gundikar, founder of the Burgundian monarchy, who was

slain by Attila, A.D. 450. Attila himself is one of the personages of

the poem, the scene of which plays largely at Worms.

It was Wagner's aim to illustrate a profound truth of universal

bearing, and in harmony with his belief that such truths are

best taught by presenting pictures of humanity stripped of all

conventionality, he went back to the earliest forms of the tale which

the mediæval poet wove into the "Lay of the Niblung." By this means

he purified it of its historical dross; but also came in contact with

the creations of the myth-maker. The period into which he moved his

drama was the period reflected by our Northern ancestors when they

were striving by an exercise of a vivid imagination and unyielding

logic to answer the questions raised by a primitive religious instinct.

Whether we want to or not, we must look upon "The Niblung's Ring" as a

religious play which, by means of the symbols created by the Northern

myth-maker, teaches a lesson universal and eternal in its application.

I.

No legend dealing with the deep passions of human nature, and

reflecting the tragic struggle between the human and the divine, which

has been playing on the stage of the human heart since the race began,

is restricted by the circumstances of time, place, or people. If it

is really beautiful and moving it is a bit of universal property, and

in one form or another phases of it will be found in the mythology

or folk-lore of all civilized peoples. Not only the foundation

principles of such a legend, but even its theatre and apparatus may be

discovered. Parallels in religious mythologies will readily occur, but

perhaps not so readily parallels in those heroic tales which reflect

the national characteristics of peoples. Yet they are not the less

numerous. The grotto of Venus, in which Tannhäuser steeps himself

with sensuality, is but a German form of the Garden of Delight, in

which the heroes of classic antiquity met their fair enslavers. It is

Ogygia, the Delightful Island, where Ulysses met Calypso. It is that

Avalon in which King Arthur was healed of his wounds by his fairy

sister Morgain. The staff which bursts into green in the hands of

Pope Urban in token of Tannhäuser's forgiveness has prototypes in the

lances which, when planted in the ground by Charlemagne's warriors,

were transformed over night into a leafy forest; in the staff which

put on leaves in the hands of Joseph wherefore the Virgin Mary gave

herself to him in marriage; in the rod of Aaron, which, when laid

up among others in the tabernacle, "brought forth buds and bloomed

blossoms and yielded almonds." The _Tarnhelm_ which the cunning Mime

fashions at the command of Alberich, what else is it but the Mask of

Arthur, which had the power of rendering its wearer invisible, or the

Helmet of Pluto worn by Perseus in his battle with the Gorgon? The Holy

Grail, which Wagner has surrounded with such a refulgent halo, is not

merely a relic of Christ's suffering and death. Its power of supplying

food and sustaining life identifies it with an article common to the

mystical apparatus of many peoples. As Achilles was dipped into Styx

and rendered invulnerable, so Jason was smeared with Medea's ointment,

and Siegfried became covered with a horny armor when he bathed in the

dragon's blood; and as the magic wash was kept from Achilles's heel

by the hand of Thetis, so the falling of a leaf from a lime-tree on

the back of Siegfried caused the one unprotected spot through which a

weapon might reach his life. The sword of Wotan, thrust into the tree

so firmly and miraculously that none but a hero worthy to wield it and

inspired by the desperation of supremest need might draw it from its

mighty sheath, what else is it than the "fair sword" which stuck in the

marble stone in the church-yard against the high altar, which all the

barons assayed in vain to draw forth, but which young Arthur "lightly

and fiercely" pulled out of the stone, by which token he was recognized

as rightwise king of England? Or, going back further into story-land,

who does not see in it that bow of Ulysses which the wicked suitors

of Penelope vainly strove to bend, but which yielded to the hero

disguised as a beggar with such ease "as a harper in tuning of his harp

draws out a string?"

Horus, Apollo, and Baldur in Egypt, Greece, and the savage Northland

have represented the highest union of physical and moral excellencies

to millions of human beings; and when the Norse myth-maker, exercising

his imagination under the influence of that need and longing and hope

on which Plato based his argument in proof of the immortality of the

soul, drew his picture of Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods, the end

of the old regime of brute force, of gods and giants, and the return of

Baldur and his reign of peace, gentleness, and loveliness, he felt the

emotions with which the Christian of to-day looks forward to the second

coming of Christ the Redeemer.

So striking are the parallels between the heroic tales of the class to

which the story of Siegfried belongs, that it has been possible for

Dr. J. G. von Hahn, in his _Sagwissenschaftliche Studien_, to draw

up a formula according to which the families belonging to the Aryan

race have constructed their most admired tales. This formula, he says,

exists more or less perfect in the heroic literature of every known

Aryan people. Hellenic mythology produced no less than seven of these

stories, of which the most striking are those of Perseus, Theseus,

Œdipus, and Herakles; Roman mythological history, one--Romulus and

Remus; Teutonic sagas, two--Wittich-Siegfried and Wolfdietrich;

Iranian mythic history, two, and Hindu mythology, two, the most

striking parallelisms occurring in the story of Krishna. Of this story

Mr. Alfred Nutt has found eight variants in old Keltic literature,

among them the story of Perceval. According to this formula

I. The hero is born

(_a_) Out of wedlock.

(_b_) Posthumously.

(_c_) Supernaturally

(_d_) One of twins.

II. The mother is a princess residing in her own country.

III. The father is

(_a_) A god, or

} from afar.

(_b_) A hero

IV. There are tokens and warnings of the hero's future greatness;

V. In consequence of which he is driven from home.

VI. Is suckled by wild beasts.

VII. Is brought up by a childless couple, or shepherd, or widow.

VIII. Is of passionate and violent disposition.

IX. Seeks service in foreign lands.

(_a_) Attacks and slays monsters.

(_b_) Acquires supernatural knowledge through eating a fish or other

magic animal (the dragon's heart in the case of Sigurd, his

blood in the case of Siegfried).

X. Returns to his own country, retreats, and again returns.

XI. Overcomes his enemies, frees his mother, seats himself on a throne.

II.

We should accustom ourselves to look upon the plot of "The Niblung's

Ring" as more celestial than terrestrial; the essential things of

the tragedy are those which concern Wotan, who is its real hero. The

happenings among the personages whose conduct under varying trying

circumstances is brought to notice in the three dramas constituting

the trilogy are, in reality, but accidents. In this respect "The

Niblung's Ring" is in a different case with Homer's _Iliad_ which also

has a double plot, celestial and terrestrial. The cause of the contest

celebrated in the _Iliad_ originated on earth; the gods took part in

it simply to avenge slights which had been put upon them by one or

another of the contestants, or because they were the special protectors

of certain of those personages. In Wagner's tragedy the contest waged

by the demi-gods, giants, dwarfs, and men, is but the continuation

of one invited by the gods. It is the consequence of a sin committed

by the chief god and his efforts to repair it. That consequence, in

its last and chiefest estate, is the destruction of Wotan and all his

fellows; this is what it signifies to all those concerned in it, but

to us it means a destruction followed by a new creation. Wotan dies

like a tragic hero, and his heroic offspring--the bond connecting gods

and men--die one after another, all in consequence of his sin; but the

death of the last, being the expiatory self-sacrifice of loving woman,

removes the curse from the earth. "Old things are passed away; behold,

all things are become new." This is the kernel of the plot of the

tragedy, the beginning of which is exhibited in "The Rhinegold," and

the outcome prefigured. The progress is from the state of sinlessness,

through sin and its awful consequences, to expiation. For each of these

steps there are symbols in the pictures, poetry, and music of the

prologue.

The gods of our ancestors in the Northland were created in the image

of man. Originally the feeling of religion had been satisfied by the

conception of a dynasty of gods who, if they were made in the image

of man, were at least idealized; they had none of the passions of

men, none of their infirmities, none of their trials. When, in later

times, the impossibility of such a conception maintaining itself became

manifest, humanity among the rugged mountains and in the deep forests

of the North dreamed of a time that was past, before the reign of

primeval sinlessness and peacefulness had come to an end. That was the

Golden Age of the world. Wrong was unknown; the passions which wreck

men's lives and beget wrong were unknown; it was the state of Eden

before the advent of the tempter. The silence of peace rested upon

the waters. Gold was the symbol of radiant innocency; it was but the

plaything of the gods. As in Milton's Eden, flowers were of all hue,

"And without thorn the rose."

"----Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune

The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,

Led on the eternal Spring."

Put aside the prosaic frame of mind into which the Wolzogen labels are

calculated to throw one, and look at the instrumental introduction

to the prologue as a symbol of this state of physical and moral

loveliness. Could the peacefulness and passionlessness of primeval

purity be better typified in music? There are three aspects in which

the introduction should be viewed. It is most significant in this study

of the tragedy as a type of the Golden Age in Northern mythology. Not

until the principle of evil enters the play (in the person of Alberich)

is the serenity of the music disturbed.

Next, it is interesting as scenic music. By ingenious use of gauze

screens, painted canvas, and light-effects, the stage is made to seem

filled with water from floor to flies. Strange plants creep up the

side, and gnarled roots project into the water. Below is the rocky bed

of the Rhine. Above, a faint light plays on the rippling surface.

The music has begun with a single deep tone, but gradually it grows

more animated; there is no change in melody, but the introduction of

instruments with lighter and lighter tone-color, the introduction and

carefully graduated augmentation of a wavy accompaniment, suggest to

the ear at once growth in the movement of the water and in the light

which shines from above. The music is now doubly delineative. While

its spirit reflects the sinless quietude of the Golden Age of the

world, its matter depicts, first, the slow movement of the water in its

depths, then the gentle undulations of its half-depths, finally the

ripples and dartings and flashings and eddyings of its surface.

The third aspect in which we may look at it is as a peculiarly

striking exemplification of Wagner's theories of composition carried

out to their most logical conclusion. That theory in its extremity

would demand that nothing be said when there is nothing to say--a

self-evident proposition much oftener honored in the breach than in

the observance. Remember that Wagner, in giving an account of the

genesis of his typical phrases cites his conduct in "Der Fliegende

Holländer," when, having found themes to stand for the mental states

described in the ballad, he resolved to repeat its thematic expression

every time a mental mood recurred. A necessary corollary of such a

logical proceeding would seem to be that until the play had introduced

something--a picture, a personage, an idea--there could be no room for

music. It is not necessary to go to this extremity; but if we want to

we will find that Wagner is true to himself even here. Only the mood of

the scene is delineated for us in the music of the introduction, and

his willingness to begin as near nothing as possible is shown by the

use at the outset of the single deep bass tone. The whole introduction

is built on this note and its simplest harmony, the development being

accomplished by the gradual changes of orchestration, the employment of

higher octaves, and the augmentation of the wavy accompaniment.

III.

It was an inevitable consequence of the structure of the Northern

mythological system that the gods should lose their primeval

sinlessness. Before the mind of the Northern myth-maker, as before

the minds of the Athenians, who erected the altar on Mars-hill "to

the Unknown God," there hovered a dim apprehension of a First Cause

of all being, older and more puissant than the gods whom he conceived

as reigning. As Zeus and his fellows reigned by reason of having

overthrown Cronos and the dynasty of the Titans, so Wotan and his

fellows reigned by reason of conquest and treaty. In consequence,

there was a perpetual struggle between the sky-dwellers, the

mountain-dwellers, and the earth-dwellers--the gods, giants, and

dwarfs--for dominion. This lust for power it was that caused the

downfall of the gods. Dormant within the radiant gold, buried in the

Rhine and guarded by the daughters of the Rhine, lay the secret of

universal dominion. In the Golden Age no one courted it because there

was no need. But when the greed of power and gain asserted itself, the

gold was a prize to be sought after and bought at any price. The first

change in the stage picture still leaves us the spirit of purity and

innocency undisturbed. The Rhine daughters, whose duty it is to guard

the magical gold, are careless creatures, as well they may be, for,

though warned, they have never seen danger approach their treasure.

Floating up and down, they sing and gambol with each other as they swim

around the jagged rock, their song being as undulating as the element

in which they live. They partake in their nature of that element, and

the melodies with which they are associated are imitative of watery

movements.

The beginning of the end of the Golden Age was dated by the old poets

from the time when three giantesses were admitted among the gods. They

were the Nornir, the Fates, whose deep thoughts were given respectively

to the past, present, and future. The entrance of a stranger into the

domains of the Rhine daughters is also the signal for the introduction

of evil into the drama. The representative of this evil principle

is Alberich, the Niblung--one of the race of dwarfs; musically his

mischievous character, his restless energy, and his strangeness to

the element in which he finds himself is told by the orchestra in

the abrupt, jerky music to which he enters, and which accompanies

his slipping and sliding on the slimy rocks of the river's bottom.

Alberich's aims were simply lust. To the nixies he is merely amusing.

They engage him in tormenting dalliance till he utters an imprecation

against them and shakes his fist. He forgets his anger at his pretty

tantalizers, however, when a new spectacle falls upon his sight. The

sunlight, piercing the water, has fallen upon the gold, which lies in

the cleft of a rock and now begins to glow. The increasing refulgence

is seen and heard simultaneously, for as the new light floods the

scene, singers and orchestra break out into a ravishing apostrophe to

the gold.

Now we reach the point where the ethical contest, at the bottom of the

entire tragedy, is first foreshadowed. The nixies, rendered careless

by the long uselessness of their watch, prattle away the secret that

universal power would be the reward of him who would seize the gold and

fashion it into a ring:

"The realm of the world

By him shall be won,

Who from the Rhine gold

Hath wrought the ring,

Imparting measureless might."

But the power to fashion the ring can only be obtained by one willing

to renounce the delight and happiness of love:

"Who the delight of Love forswears,

He who derides its ravishing joys,

He alone has the magic might

To shape the gold to a ring."

The issue is joined. Here Love and contentment in the Niblung's lot;

there the prospect of power universal and lovelessness. The dwarf does

not hesitate long. In the next scene the giants hesitate longer, and

Wotan ponders longer than either whether the gold is worth the price

demanded for it. But the Age of Innocency is past--all yield in turn

to the lust for power, the greed of gain, which the gold promises to

satisfy. The first step in the tragedy is taken. Alberich puts love

aside forever and curses it. Then, in spite of the shrieks of the

nixies, he seizes the gold and dives into the depths.

The light dies out of the scene. The bright song of the nixies runs

out into minor plaints, and the orchestra discourses mournfully of the

renunciation of love and the rape of the ring, until the scene changes

from depths of the Rhine to the heights where Valhalla, newly built,

stands in massive strength, gleaming in the morning sun.

We have witnessed the beginning of the struggle for dominion begun

cunningly by a dwarf. Not the race of the Niblungs, but the race of

giants had caused Wotan concern. Against them he thought to raise an

impregnable fortress, and the cunning Loge, the representative of the

evil principle in the celestial plot, had contrived to have the work

done by two giants, to whom Wotan, at Loge's instigation, promised the

goddess Freia as a reward, though Loge had privately assured him that

he would never be called on to meet the obligation. The whole tale is

borrowed by Wagner from Norse mythology.

Once upon a time, so runs the old story, an artisan came to the gods

and offered to build for them a fortress which would forever shield

them from the frost giants, if they would give him, in payment, Freya,

the goddess of youth, beauty, and love, besides the sun and the moon.

The gods agreed, provided he would do the work alone, and in the space

of a single winter. When summer was but three days distant the castle

was so nearly finished that the gods saw that the compact would be

kept by the strange artisan. The imminent loss of Freya frightened the

gods, and they threatened Loge with death if he did not prevent the

completion of the work within the period fixed. The artisan had the

help of a horse named Svadilfari, who drew the most enormous stones to

the castle at night. Loge the next night decoyed the horse Svadilfari

into the forest, so that the usual quota of work was not done. Then

the mysterious workman appeared before the gods in his real form as a

giant, and Thor killed him with a blow of his hammer. The Norse Freya

is the Teutonic Freia. In Wagner's poem Freia is the reward which

the giants Fafner and Fasolt expect for having built Valhalla in a

single night. Loge had instigated the compact, and promised to relieve

Wotan of the obligation of payment. But the giants carry Freia off

and restore her only after Wotan and Loge have given the Niblung's

hoard in exchange. To Freia, Wagner has given an attribute which, in

Scandinavian mythology, belongs to Iduna. She is the guardian of the

golden apples, the eating of which keeps the gods young. Iduna's apples

the student of comparative mythology will at once identify with the

golden apples which Hera received as a wedding-gift, and which were

guarded by the Hesperides and stolen by Hercules. In the Norse story

they are carried away by a winged giant named Thiassi, and brought

back by Loge, who had tempted Iduna out of her beautiful grove "Always

Young," in order that the giant might swoop down upon her and carry

the apples away. Wagner gives these apples to Freia for the sake of a

dramatic effect. The gods turn wrinkled and gray so soon as the giants

carry off the goddess of youth and beauty.

Wotan has his Valhalla, but the giants demand their reward. Loge

is summoned to extricate the god from the predicament in which his

lust after power has plunged him. The god of fire and the restless

representative of the destructive principle appears, and thereafter he

is never absent long from the action. He pervades every scene, his red

cloak fluttering, eyes, hands, feet, body moving synchronously with

that fitful chromatic phrase which crackles and flashes and flickers

through the orchestra whenever he takes part in the action. He has

searched through the world for a ransom for Freia, and found but one

creature who estimated anything higher than the beauty and worth of

woman. It is Alberich who, having wrought a ring out of the magic gold,

has bent the race of Niblungs to his will, and is now preparing to

conquer universal dominion for himself. Thus a new danger threatens the

race of gods. In this extremity Wotan listens to the advice of Loge and

decides to possess himself of the Niblung hoard, that with it he may

purchase the release of Freia, and "make assurance double sure." The

two descend to the abode of the dwarfs. In Nibelheim the rocky caverns

glow with the reflection of forge fires, and the ear is saluted with

the clang of hammers falling upon anvils. Loge cunningly tempts the

dwarf to exhibit the magical properties of the _Tarnhelm_ (the cap

of darkness), and when he assumes the shape of a toad the gods seize

and bind him. Under the walls of Valhalla they compel him to ransom

himself with gold for the giants and rob him of the ring. Then Alberich

burdens it with a curse, introducing into the tragedy the poison which

accomplishes the destruction of all its heroes, and remains a bane

upon the earth till restitution is made and expiation achieved by the

self-immolation of Brünnhilde.

The first fruits of the curse follow hard upon the heels of its

utterance. The giants, ravished by the tale of the wealth of the

Niblung treasure, exact it all as ransom for Freia. Wotan had aimed to

keep the ring as another hostage for the future--with ring and fortress

he would feel secure--but the giants demand, the runes upon his spear

contain the pledge, and Erda warns. The ring is grudgingly surrendered,

and at once its baneful effect is seen. The giants quarrel for its

possession, and Fafner kills Fasolt with blows of his staff. Not till

then does Wotan realize the deep significance of the warning words of

Erda. A solemn duty, an awful task devolves upon him. Murder as well as

theft lies at his door; with the ring a fearful curse has entered the

world as a consequence of his wrong-doing; henceforth he must devote

himself to the work of reparation. Mayhap the wrong may be righted by

a restoration of the ring to the original owners of the gold. His own

hands are bound, but he conceives a plan, of which the visible symbol

is the magic sword. A new race shall arise, the sword shall aid it in

obtaining the ring, and of its own will it shall return the circlet to

the element from which lust for power wrested it. It is this creative

thought which makes him pause with his foot upon the rainbow bridge,

across which the celestial household have passed into Valhalla. The

sword phrase flashes through the pompous music which is the postlude of

the prologue.

IV.

"Höre, höre, höre!

Alles was ist, endet.

Ein düst'rer Tag

Dämmert den Göttern.

Dir rath ich, meide den Ring!"

Thus does Erda warn Wotan. Of all the words of the prologue they are

biggest with significance for the tragedy as a whole. They foretell the

consequences of Wotan's sin. Erda is the Vala, the goddess of primeval

wisdom, "the pantheistic symbol of the universe, the timeless and

spaceless mother of gods and men," as Dr. Hueffer calls her. She is the

mother of the Nornir. Their phrase is an elemental one, like that of

the Rhine. Its ascending intervals suggest growth. The antithesis of

this concept is decay, destruction. The melody of the "Twilight of the

Gods" (_b_), in the prediction of Erda, appears as an inversion of the

elemental melody (_a_).

[Illustration: score (_a_)]

[Illustration: score (_b_)]

It is an awful consummation that is predicted by Erda and symbolized

in this descending phrase--the destruction of a world as the outcome

of that contest which since time began has been the basis of religions

and mythologies. No civilized people has escaped being confronted by

that problem, but all peoples have not solved it alike. In our own

religion the spectacle of its tragical consequences has held the world

in awe for nearly nineteen hundred years. Generally in the legends

which the human imagination, fired by religious instinct, has created

to symbolize the eternal conflict, the hero who goes to destruction is

an ideal man. Sometimes he is a god; but only the daring imagination

of the Northern myth-maker was equal to the task of making that hero

the chiefest of the gods, and connecting his downfall with the end of

the race to which he belongs. In this awful flight of the Northern

imagination, this sublime achievement of the Northern conscience, lies

the essential difference between the religious systems of the classic

Greeks and our savage ancestors. The Greeks, profoundly philosophical

as they were, would yet have shrunk back appalled from such a solution

of the great problem as the Teuton provided in his _Götterdämmerung_.

Logic might force them to recognize the necessity of it or something

like it, but they would not permit logic to compel them to contemplate

it. Once the stern mind of Æschylus seemed on the point of disclosing a

divine tragedy approximate in its proportions. Prometheus, chained to

the rock on Mount Caucasus, comforts himself in his bitter agony with

thoughts of the time when grim necessity shall force Zeus to right his

wrongs. But observe that the end of his sufferings is not to follow as

an act of retributive justice, but is to be purchased by a compromise.

The time will come when Zeus will need his help, for of all the gods

Prometheus alone knows how the plot will be laid and how Zeus can

escape it:

"I know that Zeus is hard,

And keeps the right supremely to himself;

But then, I know, he'll be

Full pliant in his will

When he is thus crushed down.

Then calming down his mood

Of hard and bitter wrath,

_He'll hasten unto me,

As I to him shall haste_,

For friendship and for peace."

This is the nearest approach that the Greeks came to a parallel

with the most tremendous conception of Northern mythology. Does it

strike you as strange? It need not. Remember, the loveliness of their

country and climate kept before the Greeks perpetually the benignant

aspect of their gods. It is true they found themselves as little able

as our ancestors later to maintain these embodiments of a primeval

conception of idealized humanity in a state of sinlessness; but

when brought face to face with the contradictions which followed,

they extricated themselves as best they might by the makeshift of a

compromising reconciliation, or flew to the extreme of unbelief. The

moral obliquity of the gods was recognized, but was not permitted to

throw a shadow over the radiant ones in the Olympian court. You may

observe an illustration of this mental trait in the unwillingness of

the Greeks to call unpleasant things by their right names. The Euxine,

or Hospitable Sea, was once righteously called by them the Axine, or

Inhospitable Sea. The dreadful Furies, with their heads covered with

writhing snakes, after they had scourged Orestes through the world,

were given a temple and worship at Athens as the Eumenides--the

kind or good-tempered ones. These Furies belonged to the class of

gloomy deities, which was the offspring of conscience and the sense

of moral responsibility. They were bound to present themselves to a

thinking people, but a people who basked always in Nature's smile were

equally bound to subordinate them to the gods of nature that were the

embodiment of cheerfulness and light. To contemplate the latter was

a delightful occupation; the former were viewed through a veil which

concealed their hideousness.