lian company in such an out-of-the-way spot as Rio de Janeiro and
in the hope of pleasing semi-barbarian ears; and it is rather a pity
it never found its way there. One thing is certain: the press
criticisms could not have been more foolish than those that greeted
the opera when it was produced in Munich.

Exactly where Wagner got the idea from I cannot say. Of course, in
one shape or another the legend exists in every European literature;
and probably he had been familiar with it for years. Praeger's story
of Wagner getting hold of Gottfried von Strassburg's interminable
version in the summer of 1855 and conceiving the thing in a flash
might very well be true; only, unluckily for Praeger, the letter to
Liszt in the previous year shows it to be in another sense a story. By
September 1857 the poem was done, and Wagner at once set to work on
the music. He had sketched the first act by the end of the same year,
and in the early part of '59 the whole opera was complete. We have
just seen one reason for pressing forward "this poor work ... in such
a business-like manner"; but even without the pecuniary inducement I
fancy he would have composed quickly. _Tristan_ is one of those works,
like Carlyle's _French Revolution_, which one feels had either to be
written rapidly or not at all. The music seems to have welled forth in
a red-hot torrent, and his pen could not choose but fly over the
paper. None the less we are compelled to marvel at the industry, the
concentrated and continuous and patient energy of the man; for the
_Tristan_ score is as complicated as any ever written, and the mere
number of notes to be set down might well have appalled him. Handel
could write a _Messiah_ in three weeks and Mozart a _Don Giovanni_
overture in a few hours; but their scores are mere skeletons compared
with _Tristan_, a score which neither Handel nor Mozart could copy in
a much longer time than three weeks. We may hope that Wagner received
his remaining hundred louis d'or, for the Brazilian scheme came to
nothing, and he had to wait seven long years before _Tristan_ got its
first performance. But for the "kingly friend," mad Ludwig II, it
would not have been performed at all; and afterwards other theatres
found it too difficult, or the directors, with true inborn official
insolence, seemed to glory in not so much as looking at the score. We
will now look at it.

Out of one or another of the various versions of the legend Wagner
extracted