reasonable.  It cannot be said that the music exists for the sake of the drama any more than the drama exists for the music:  the drama lies in the music, the music is latent in the drama.  But to the music the wild atmosphere of the beginning of the first act is certainly due; and though I have said that possibly “Tristan” might bear playing without the music, it must be admitted that it is hard to think of the fifth scene without that tremendous entrance passage—­that passage so tremendous that even Jean de Reszke dare hardly face it.  To the music also the passion and fervent heat of the second act are due, and the thunderous atmosphere, the sense of impending fate, in the last, and the miraculous sweetness and intensity of Tristan’s death-music, and the sublime pathos of Isolda’s lament.  Since Mozart wrote those creeping chromatic chords in the scene following the death of the Commendatore in “Don Giovanni,” nothing so solemn and still, so full of the pathetic majesty of death, as the passage following the words “with Tristan true to perish” has been written.  This is perhaps Wagner’s greatest piece of music; and certainly his loveliest is Tristan’s description of the ship sailing over the ocean with Isolda, where the gently swaying figure of the horns, taken from one of the love-themes, and the delicious melody given to the voice, go to make an effect of richness and tenderness which can never be forgotten.  The opening of the huge duet is as a blaze of fire which cannot be subdued; and when at last it does subside and a quieter mood prevails we get a long series of voluptuous tunes the like of which were never heard before, and will not be heard again, one thinks, for a thousand years to come.  And in the strangest contrast to these is the earlier part of the third act, where the very depths of the human spirit are revealed, where we are taken into the darkness and stand with Tristan before the gates of death.  But indeed all the music of “Tristan” is miraculous in its sweetness, splendour, and strength; and yet one scarcely thinks of these qualities at the moment, so entirely do they seem to be hidden by its poignant expressiveness.  As I have said, it seems to enter the mind as emotion rather than as music, so penetrating is it, so instantaneous in its appeal.  There never was music poured out at so white a white heat; it is music written in the most modern, most pungent, and raciest vernacular, with utter impatience of style, of writing merely in an approved manner.  It is beyond criticism.  It is possible to love it as I do; it is possible to hate it as Nietzsche did; but while this century lasts, it will be impossible to appreciate it sufficiently to wish to criticise it and yet preserve one’s critical judgment with steadiness enough to do it.

“SIEGFRIED”