n effect of
harmony; but in this glorification of song Wagner seemed determined to
trust entirely to song and use his harmonic resources and
devices--which were inexhaustible--another day. Only once does he
resort to them: in the third act when Walther tells Sachs he has had a
lovely dream, by a single unexpected chord he gets the dream
atmosphere he wanted. At the same time the harmonies throughout are
freer, more daring, than they are even in _Tristan_. They are managed
with consummate mastery, the sharp collisions of the many winding
voices of the orchestra occurring infallibly in precisely the right
place. As I have said, not Bach himself managed a score of many parts
with finer mastery, nor gives one a more satisfying sense of complete
security; not Bach, nor Handel, nor Mozart was a greater
contrapuntist; instructively, instinctively, he knew the way his
stream of music was going, and so mighty a craftsman had he grown that
to achieve new harmonies and harmonic progressions by the interweaving
of many melodies, each individual and expressive, seems almost like
child's-play to him. But the old saying, easy reading means hard
writing, is true in the case of the _Mastersingers_. We have only to
glance at Wagner's letters to see the labour all his later works cost
him, and his incessant complaints about the state of his nerves are
significant. The writing of the _Mastersingers_ was spread over six
years. It does not matter whether it was written easily or with
difficulty--the marvel is that it was written at all.

IV

The first act is the song of spring, the second one of a beauteous
summer night. The night slowly falls, and lights are seen at the
windows of the gabled houses. The apprentices put up the shutters of
the shops and bar the doors. We have old Nuremberg before our eyes; by
Sachs' door is the inevitable elder-tree, by Pogner's the just as
inevitable lime; and as surely as Schumann caught the scent of flowers
from a piece of Chopin's, do we catch the fragrance of those trees in
Wagner's music. The 'prentices, hard at work, merrily chant
"Midsummer's Eve" ("Johannestag"--not a precise translation), and
banter David concerning that very serious matter, his courtship of
Magdalena, the accompaniment being spun largely from the midsummer
theme of the first act. The atmosphere, sweet, clear, redolent of the
old world, and seeming to sparkle with excitement about the coming
joys of the morrow, is first created