the parody of the academics of Wagner’s day who made no mistakes from the academic point of view, and yet could write nothing that sounded right, is excruciatingly funny; then David, under the impression that the chief of the academics is serenading Magdalena, comes out, goes in to fetch a stick, comes out again armed, and sets to work with it upon Beckmesser; the good burghers have been annoyed by Beckmesser’s caterwauling and Sachs’ hammering; out they come to keep their streets in order; and the tumult begins in serious earnest.  Every one hits at every one else, as Irishmen hit, it is said, at Donnybrook Fair; Beckmesser is sadly injured; Sachs kicks David indoors, Eva and Magdalena are got in to Pogner’s; Sachs gets Walther in with him also; the row dies down.  No one save Sachs and David knows how it started; no one knows why it ends.  It is—­allowing for the lapse of four centuries—­rather like a cab accident in London or any other great city:  ladies in night attire look out of windows, and, seeing their husbands engaged in deadly warfare, in the very spirit of Miss Miggs begin to empty pails of cold water over the combatants indiscriminately.  Apparently this cools the ardour of everybody.  One by one the crowd makes for shelter; the watchman’s horn is heard a few streets away; and when he arrives with his lantern and stick a few minutes later the alley and platz are deserted.  The moon shines out on the lovely scene; the old man chants his call—­it is eleven of the night; all the world should be in bed; all the lights and fires should be out; he goes off, leaving us the wondrous picture of old Nuremberg sleeping in the heart of old Germany; and the curtain slowly falls.  A very ineffective “curtain” it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in the ’sixties, and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of the dramatic works of the world.

It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now.  I have referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this mastery.  Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with nobility.  Sachs’ song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its joviality we feel the greatness of the man—­a man so great in character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving banners are needed to make him impressive:  he remains, even while he works at his last and sings a sort of club-dinner song, the simple cobbler-poet, great by reason of his sincerity and his artist-soul.  The street scrimmage is the most realistic thing of the sort ever attempted, not to say achieved.  It is customary to describe the music as a fugue, and, if that is so, no more unfugue-like fugue was ever penned.  It begins with a parody of a fugue, the answer being