regarded as one of the trade setters of opera-texts, Wagner declared to Buelow that “one thing is certain, I am not a musician.”  This has been interpreted as meaning, “I am no musician,” whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a musician:  which, in a sense, he was.  He was not a greater genius than Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but he was something different from both species of men—­a dramatist who could not get the drama out of himself without the aid of music, and a musician who could not beat out his music without the aid of drama.  Music and drama had simultaneous birth in the case of Tristan, and it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately.  There is no other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less importance.

Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common criticism of Wagner’s music was that it possessed no melody.  Happily at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when we hear the first act of Tristan the first thing to strike us must surely be its richness in melody.  It teems with tunes—­it is an unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of the act.  At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might easily grow wearying to the nerves, and then comes a long song, such as Brangaena’s remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst.  That is the first thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present.  The body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in the sailor-song (g); this goes through a hundred transformations, and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards Cornwall.  It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress’s presence; in the meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda’s first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never losing its original colour.  Wagner’s mastery of the art of pictorial suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and enforcing the actors’ emotion, is here at its supremest height.  In the Ring he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own effect.  But the burning passion with which Tristan is filled necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone amongst musicians had the art and strength to employ.  Other composers, notably Weber and Mendelssohn, had given the world grand scenic music; but where they left off Wagner began.  Their picture is an end in itself:  Wagner’s are settings for the dramatic action.