The music of ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ may be looked at from two points of view.  As a link in the chain of Wagner’s artistic development, it is of the highest interest.  In it we see the germs of those theories which were afterwards to effect so formidable a revolution in the world of opera.  In ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ Wagner first puts to the proof the Leit-Motiv, or guiding theme, the use of which forms, as it were, the base upon which the entire structure of his later works rests.  In those early days he employed it with timidity, it is true, and with but a half-hearted appreciation of the poetical effect which it commands; but from that day forth each of his works shows a more complete command of its resources, and a subtler instinct as to its employment.  The intrinsic musical interest of ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ is unequal.  Wagner had made great strides since the days of ‘Rienzi,’ but he had still a vast amount to unlearn.  Side by side with passages of vital force and persuasive beauty there are dreary wastes of commonplace and the most arid conventionality.  The strange mixture of styles which prevails in ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ makes it in some ways even less satisfactory as a work of art than ‘Rienzi,’ which at any rate has the merit of homogeneity.  Wagner is most happily inspired by the sea.  The overture, as fresh and picturesque a piece of tone-painting as anything he ever wrote, is familiar to all concert-goers, and the opening of the first act is no less original.  But perhaps the most striking part of the opera, certainly the most characteristic, is the opening of the third act, with its chain of choruses between the girls and the sailors.  A great deal of ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ might have been written by any operatic composer of the time, but this scene bears upon it the hall-mark of genius.

If ‘Der Fliegende Hollaender’ proved that the descriptive side of Wagner’s genius had developed more rapidly than the psychological, the balance was promptly re-established in ‘Tannhaeuser,’ his next work.  Much of the music is picturesque and effective, even in the lowest sense, but its strength lies in the extraordinary power which the composer displays of individualising his characters—­a power of which in ’Der Fliegende Hollaender’ there was scarcely a suggestion.

So far as mere form is concerned, ‘Tannhaeuser’ (1845) is far freer from the conventionalities of the Italian school than ’Der Fliegende Hollaender,’ but this would not have availed much if Wagner’s constructive powers had not matured in so remarkable a way.  It would have been useless to sweep away the old conventions if he had had nothing to set in their place.  Apart from the strictly musical side of the question, Wagner had in ‘Tannhaeuser’ a story of far deeper human interest than the weird legend of the Dutchman, the tale which never grows old of the struggle of good and evil for a human soul, the tale of a remorseful sinner won from the powers of hell by the might of a pure woman’s love.