Nobly and contritely Walther bows his head, and Sachs hangs about his neck the collar of the guild. Eva, fired, takes from her lover's fair curls the laurel-wreath, and presses it upon the grisled head of the master. He stands radiant between the two whose happiness is his work. The populace wave their hats and kerchiefs, cheering, "Hail, Sachs! Hans Sachs! Hail Nuremberg's beloved Hans Sachs!"
One cannot help imagining, in "Meistersinger," a fragment of autobiography, a recollection of days when Wagner must have heard on all sides concerning his work what we still occasionally hear, such words as he puts into the mouth of Beckmesser: "Kein Absatz wo, kein' Coloratur! Von Melodei auch nicht eine Spur!" No pause anywhere for breath! No appropriate colouring! Of melody not the remotest trace!
No pause anywhere for breath! The headlong rush it has of genius. No appropriate colouring! The colouring happens merely to be new. Of melody not the remotest trace,—when in this opera particularly the composer casts melodies up in the air like golden balls and juggles with them; when, like a conjurer, he goes on taking fresh roses in absurd abundance out of a horn that should naturally have been ten times empty!
If we may translate the personages of this delicious play into types, Walther must stand for the poet and singer by God's grace, fresh young Genius, winged bringer of a new message. Beckmesser for Old School, where it has become fossil, where forms moulded on life have become void and dry, and rules are held sufficient without breath of inspiration. Nay, inspiration, which jostles and disturbs rule, is regarded with suspicion. Inspiration to Beckmesser is as much an intruder as would be Saint Francis coming to visit some Prior of his own order long after the spirit animating the saint had been hardened into forms. Hans Sachs, then, is a sort of Ideal Critic, with affection and allegiance toward the past, but with a fair and open mind toward the new. Walther himself could have no more admirable attitude, more perfect temper, toward Art, than Sachs. It is only to be hoped that in his maturity he was as tolerant and broad-minded.
The wise, the gentle Sachs! It is a pity that in listening to an opera one hears so little of the words, for there fall from his genial lips precepts which it would be really worth while to impress upon the memory, among which could there be a more golden than his word to critics: "When you find that you are trying to measure by your own rules that which does not lie within the compass of your rules, the thing to do is to forget your rules and try to discover the rules of that which you wish to measure!".
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
I
The Ouverture to Tristan and Isolde is singularly calculated to create the mood in which the Opera needs to be heard. It discourses of nothing but love. It is long, it knocks and presses upon chords lying abysmally below thought, until these vibrate in response,—and the curtain goes up before an almost helplessly sympathetic listener.
Chief among the emotions expressed in this harmonious setting-forth of the argument,—rich in sighs, glances, caresses,—is certain tragic yearning, which seems of the very essence of love, the love in question; tragic, because it is a thirst which from the nature of things admits of no satisfaction upon the earth we know, since its demand is no less than fusion of one soul and flesh into another, so that each is completely possessed and neither knows any more which of the two he is; the condition we hear the lovers sigh for later on their bank of flowers in the warm summer night: "I," says the man, "shall be Isolde, you will be Tristan."—"I shall be Tristan," the woman says, "and you Isolde." Nay, there shall be no more Tristan, no more Isolde, but nameless, indivisible, possessed of a single consciousness, they shall float in an eternal night of love to ever-new recognitions, ever-new ardours....