IV

Now let us consider the music of the Rhinegold.

Already the discrepancy of styles has been referred to.  The Rhinegold, coming between Lohengrin and Tristan, suffers from an odd sort of pettiness of phrase—­a pettiness which in all probability we should not feel if we did not judge it by Tristan.  The wide sweep of the tide of music that we find in the Valkyrie is absent; there is a tendency to shorten the measures, a hesitation between boldly going on, as in his later manner, and the symmetrical four-bar measures of Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin.  The opening of the second scene is in structure that of a Handel opera air:  we have the ritornello, and presently the same music is repeated as the accompaniment of Wotan’s salute to his castle.  This smallness of design, it must be remembered, is only comparative:  compared with anything of the sort done before, the design is big and broad.  The Wagner of the Valkyrie, of Tristan and of the Mastersingers, has not acquired full mastery of his new art; there are still plenty of full closes, and, though words are not repeated, the effect at times would hardly be more conventional if they were.

But in all the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner’s walks amongst the Swiss mountains.  When he sent the book of the Ring to Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is.  The Rhinegold ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in each Act of the Valkyrie there is a storm; the Third Act of Siegfried opens with a storm; there is one storm in the Dusk of the Gods.  Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the driving of thunder-clouds—­these are the pictorial inspiration of the Ring as surely as old Nuremberg is the pictorial inspiration of the Mastersingers.  These Scandinavian gods are the divinities of river and wood and mountain, and Wagner made full use of them.  The Ring is far too lengthy, and the main drama is apt to get forgotten; the repetitions, due to Wagner’s desire not to let it be forgotten, are wearisome.  But one thing can never be forgotten—­the sense of the open air, the freshness of nature, the loveliness and health of the green earth:  that sense keeps the gigantic, overgrown thing sweet and an endless delight.

The opening is as sublime in its simplicity as the first bars of the Lohengrin prelude.  As the curtain rises on the depths of the Rhine, “greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below,” the lowest E flat booms softly out (it has to be done by an organ pedal-pipe), the deep voice of the river as it rolls massively on its course towards the sea; and the effect is overwhelming.  A theme then makes its appearance in its first vague form, a theme which in one shape