[Ensemble Motiv Blaubart-Schwert-Glu'ckseligkeit-Leichen]
And why do the measures grow more and more sad as they melt into the touching "_Blut_auf_dem_Mond_Motiv_" (Blood-on-the-Moon Motive)?
[Blut auf dem Mond Motiv] (slowly and with infinite pathos)
Simply because in a mortal combat somebody is invariably wounded and sometimes killed. Wagner sang of human life as it is, not as it might, could, would, or should be. From the "_Blut_auf_dem_Mond_Motiv_" (Blood-on-the-Moon Motive) we glide at once into a dirge, the "Leichen," or Corpse, Motive, one of those superb funeral marches with which we are familiar in the other music-dramas of Wagner; for the master, though not an Irishman, is never so happy as on these funeral occasions.
[Leichen Motiv]
If any brainless and bigoted box-holder should ask why the "Blaubart Motiv" is repeated in this funeral march, I ask him in return how he expects otherwise to know who is killed? Will he take the trouble to reflect that these are the motives of the Vorspiel, and that the curtain has not yet risen on the music-drama?
But why, he asks, do we hear an undercurrent of mirth pulsating joyously through the prevailing sadness of this "Leichen_Motiv_," or funeral march? Simply because we cannot be expected to feel the same unmixed grief at the death of a wife-murderer as at the death of a wife-preserver! Ah, where shall we find again so subtle a reading of the throbbing heart of humanity!
The "_Schwert_Motiv_" mingles again with the haunting strains of the half-sad, half-glad "_Leichen_Motiv_," until the Vorspiel ends abruptly with a single note of ineffable meaning, thus:
[Tod und Ho'lle Motiv] (off the keyboard to the left)
This is very interesting to the student, and means much, if it means any-thing. The sword of the elder brother, Mustapha, has gone through Bluebeard, if not the swords of the other Brothers. This, you say, might not have been necessarily fatal, since those hardy ruffians of a bygone age were proof against many a stab; but in this case the sword of the heroic Mustapha was accompanied by the killing "Schwert Motiv," consequently the villain is dead.