eous birth in the case of _Tristan_, and
it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately. There is no
other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural
foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less
importance.

Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common
criticism of Wagner's music was that it possessed no melody. Happily
at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when
we hear the first act of _Tristan_ the first thing to strike us must
surely be its richness in melody. It teems with tunes--it is an
unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of
the act. At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might
easily grow wearying to the nerves, and then comes a long song, such
as Brangaena's remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the
ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst. That is the first
thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound
and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present. The
body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in
the sailor-song (_g_); this goes through a hundred transformations,
and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing
and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and
the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards
Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they
will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when
Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the
meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's
first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and
again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never
losing its original colour. Wagner's mastery of the art of pictorial
suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and
enforcing the actors' emotion, is here at its supremest height. In the
_Ring_ he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with
simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well
could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own
effect. But the burning passion with which _Tristan_ is filled
necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone
amongst musicians had the art and strength to employ. Other
composers, notably Weber