or another Wagner uses throughout the four operas for the elemental beings—­here, the water nymphs, afterwards Erda.  The mass of tone swells out; the music becomes more active; and at last the voices of the Rhinemaidens are heard.  The whole of this is one of Wagner’s most delightful things.  It is another illustration of his rule that a composer should never leave a key as long as he can say what he wants while staying in it; for some hundreds of bars there is no change, and then only a slight one.  With the entry of Alberich modulations begin.  Here we have the wonderful inventive Wagner:  that figure, in the inner part of the musical tissue, would alone stamp him as a great composer:  the composer who could invent such a theme could not possibly be a small composer.  The mock-coaxing of the nymphs might be a parody of the Venusberg scene in Tannhaeuser; and later on there occurs a passage that might be a parody on parts of Tristan.  When Alberich steals the gold we get that degenerate form of the Valhalla theme repeated again and again, and the full effect of the device is only felt when, with the change of scene, we hear the passage in all its nobility and splendour.  Wotan’s greeting to his new castle is rather grandiose than really fine:  one feels the theatrical baritone; one feels also that the quality of homeliness which makes Sachs a great character is sadly lacking.  In the Valkyrie this unpretentiousness, so to speak, is always present, and the music gains proportionately in impressiveness.  Wotan’s opening phrase, grand and sweeping though it is, somehow evokes a vision of an Italian opera baritone expanding his chest, with arms extended in the direction of the more expensive seats:  this is neither the mighty Wotan of the Valkyrie, nor even of the underground scene in this opera.

Nor is the vocal writing, in another respect, that of the greatest Wagner.  I have already spoken of the perfect fusion of vocal and orchestral parts which we find in Tristan and the Mastersingers.  To that perfection Wagner had not attained when he began the Ring; and much of this first speech of Wotan consists of notes written simply to fit in with the Valhalla theme.  That theme shows traces of its descent from the Alberich motive—­the greed for power—­in that it does not bear real development, but only variation; it is, in fact, not a musical subject in the sense in which, say, the Tristan subjects are musical subjects, but is, properly speaking, a figure.  But shaped to a stately rhythm and richly harmonised, and moreover gorgeously orchestrated, it glitters with sufficient magnificence.  Fricka’s remonstrances are at first querulous, but with the passage beginning “Um des Gatten Treue besorgt” we get one of Wagner’s matchless bits of lovely melody.  The entry of Freia, flying from the Giants, is theatrically effective, and here we find for the first time the phrase, already alluded to in the chapter on Tristan,