he same as in _Tristan_. In this first scene
Walther pleads his suit with Eva and her maidservant Magdalena; then
we have the apprentices, amongst them Magdalena's sweetheart David, to
some rollicking choruses and to their own music--the burghers' music
played four times as fast; and next David instructs Walther in the
rules to be observed if he wishes to compose a master-song and to be
admitted to the guild. Here Wagner indulges in positively uproarious
satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint
and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less
ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music
Wagner wrote in his _Rienzi_ days, with sneers at the Jewish composers
of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he
wants to learn how to sing, not to cobble boots.

The entry of the masters is a scene that only Wagner could have
executed. A stream of Mozartian melody ripples on as the men shake
hands and go through the conventional business of the gathering of
people on the stage: what in the operas of the day--a dozen instances
might be mentioned--is wearisome stodge is here turned into a thing of
surpassing beauty. These shifting shadows of the old world become for
the moment alive; yet we see them as though across the centuries
through the magical web of music. The steady swaying motion of the
accompaniment--and, of course, the whole charm lies in the
accompaniment--has a curious resemblance to the duet of the Don and
Zerlina in the first act of _Don Giovanni_, though Mozart's score is
simplicity itself compared with this. This use of a kind of rocking
figure led many younger musicians astray; and I make a comparison
between their use of it and Wagner's with no intention of being odious
to any one, but to show exactly where Wagner's superiority lay. Take a
composer of very fine genius, Anton Dvorak, and look at a beautiful
number (beautiful in a primitive, almost savage way) in his _Stabat
Mater_, the _Eia, mater_. The theme of this (_a_, page 318) is a
descendant, with several of Wagner's subjects, and three or four at
least of Sir Edward Elgar's, of the opening of Handel's "Ev'ry
valley." Dvorak's form of it is quite original, but he never gets any
further: he cannot develop his subject. He adds an echoing, antiphonal
phrase; but even with this help he gets no further. At a first hearing
of this really very sincere and for moments entran