usical idea
that is interpenetrated by the poetic idea, the two being one and
indivisible. As this book proceeds the reader will see how, before
Wagner could shape fine music at all, he needed the
pictorial-dramatic-musical idea (if so cumbrous a phrase may be
allowed). From the very first he never succeeded in the attempt to
compose pure music of notable quality. As years went on he tried again
and again, but only such things as the _Kaisermarsch_, the
_Huldigungsmarsch_ and the _Siegfried Idyll_ are of any value, and
these, we may note, were meant to be played in a quasi-theatrical
environment. Immense crowds, flags, waving banners, uniforms,
flashing swords, snorting chargers and so on set Wagner to work on the
first as surely as the picture of the Hall of Song suggested the march
in _Tannhaeuser_; the same is the case with the second; the _Siegfried
Idyll_, of course, was written for performance at the bedroom door or
window of Madame Cosima on that lady's birthday. A distinct picture
was in the composer's mind's-eye; and besides, the themes came out of
an opera already composed.

_Die Feen_--_The Fairies_--is based on a version of the child's tale
of _Beauty and the Beast_, Gozzi's _La Donna Serpente_. In Gozzi's
form a lady is changed to a serpent: the handsome and valiant prince
comes along and all ends well. Wagner had not then dreamed of the
_Nibelung's Ring_ with its menagerie of nymphs who could sing under
water, giants, dwarfs, bears, frogs, crocodiles, "wurms," dragons and
birds with the gift of articulate speech; and he would have nothing to
do with the serpent. The lady must be changed into a stone. Further,
Wagner had now got hold of the notion that haunted him for the rest of
his life--a notion he exploited for all it was worth, and a good deal
more--the notion that woman's function on the globe is to "redeem"
man. So the prince changes the lady back from a stone to a woman, and
then, like Goldsmith's dog, to gain some private ends, goes mad. The
lady is equal to the occasion: she promptly redeems him--that is,
cures him--and all ends well.

Here, at worst, we have the picture, or series of pictures, demanded
by Wagner's genius; here also is a dramatic idea of sorts. His
imagination immediately flamed. The music is not like that of the
symphony, dry and barren wood: on the contrary, it contains many
passages of rare beauty and feeling. There is little of the fairy-like
in it. To Wagner's criticism of