ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music.  Or, if we must needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its infamy.  At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is going on in every European capital as to whether Parsifal can or cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon as possible.  Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather mock-religious, character of the Bayreuth performances, the hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will wish to say Bayreuth nay.

These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a time.  The Dutchman was conceived before Rienzi was finished; Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin were slowly shaping themselves in his imagination while he scored the Dutchman; the Mastersingers libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after Tannhaeuser was finished, and before Lohengrin was begun; the composition of the Ring, Tristan and the Mastersingers went on simultaneously.  He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold.  First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way for moments into another, so that the description I have given above of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he did not complete till years afterwards.  I have just digressed a little about Parsifal, because it, and not the Mastersingers, is the true contrary and complement to Tannhaeuser. Parsifal is pitilessly logical, Tannhaeuser wildly illogical; Parsifal preaches the gospel of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one’s physical, mental and moral growth:  Tannhaeuser preaches nothing at all, but is an affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations between the two sexes, with a totally uncalled-for and incredible falling away or repentance at the end, on the part of one who has in no way sinned—­to wit, Tannhaeuser; the music of Parsifal is sickly, tired, with mystical chants that make one’s gorge rise in disgust; the music of Tannhaeuser is strong, healthy, full of manly passion—­even at its saddest it is free of the nauseating whining of Parsifal.

II