Siegfried tells
the Rhine maidens as much of it as they will listen to, and then keeps
telling it to his hunting companions until they kill him. Wotan's
autobiography on the second evening becomes his biography in the mouths
of the Norns on the fourth. The little that the Norns add to it is
repeated an hour later by Valtrauta. How far all this repetition is
tolerable is a matter of individual taste. A good story will bear
repetition; and if it has woven into it such pretty tunes as the Rhine
maidens' yodel, Mimmy's tinkling anvil beat, the note of the forest
bird, the call of Siegfried's horn, and so on, it will bear a good deal
of rehearing. Those who have but newly learnt their way through The Ring
will not readily admit that there is a bar too much repetition.

But how if you find some anti-Wagnerite raising the question whether the
thematic system does not enable the composer to produce a music drama
with much less musical fertility than was required from his predecessors
for the composition of operas under the old system!

Such discussions are not within the scope of this little book. But as
the book is now finished (for really nothing more need be said about
The Ring), I am quite willing to add a few pages of ordinary musical
criticism, partly to please the amateurs who enjoy that sort of reading,
and partly for the guidance of those who wish to obtain some hints to
help them through such critical small talk about Wagner and Bayreuth as
may be forced upon them at the dinner table or between the acts.

THE OLD AND THE NEW MUSIC

In the old-fashioned opera every separate number involved the
composition of a fresh melody; but it is quite a mistake to suppose that
this creative-effort extended continuously throughout the number from
the first to the last bar. When a musician composes according to a set
metrical pattern, the selection of the pattern and the composition
of the first stave (a stave in music corresponds to a line in verse)
generally completes the creative effort. All the rest follows more
or less mechanically to fill up the pattern, an air being very like a
wall-paper design in this respect. Thus the second stave is usually a
perfectly obvious consequence of the first; and the third and fourth an
exact or very slightly varied repetition of the first and second. For
example, given the first line of Pop Goes the Weasel or Yankee Doodle,
any musical cobbler could supply the remaining three. There i