it was brought about by the Wagnerites.  Not Wagner’s “discords,” his “lack of melody,” his “formlessness” and so on hindered an almost instantaneous appreciation of his music, but the “explanations” of the music.  Things easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were “explained” as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the “revolution” Wagner had brought about in music.  No wonder many good folks were distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it, believing the Wagnerites’ claim that their master had rejected all the rules observed by previous composers.  Wagner’s own account of this overture is enough to turn a man’s hair grey and to break a woman’s heart.  Had he only written a good deal less prose—­or none at all!

The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest song in existence.  Nearly all the characters are supposed to be singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of themselves and a bad song provokes a street riot; the opera winds up with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song.  If there must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero.  We hear snatches of it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory with a choral accompaniment.  There are interludes, of course—­Wagner knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained; but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the clear-cut songs interspersed are parts.  Even in the ’sixties, when nothing later than Lohengrin was known, the charge was brought against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung —­the Mastersingers was his answer.  The overture leads into the first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the musical texture as the opera proceeds.  We see part of the inside of a church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending to her devotions.  Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of hymn-tunes—­a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and makes them serve as a voice for Walther’s feelings on seeing Eva for a second time:  on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in love with each other.  The next real song-music begins to flow with the entry of the singers’ guild; but meantime there has been some music of the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of Tristan.  Recitative—­often broken sentences and mere ejaculations—­merges imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment.  The apparatus, in a word, is precisely the same as in Tristan.  In this first scene Walther pleads his suit with Eva