every half-grown nation must feel—­the necessity of acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race, an entity.  Which, precisely, of the German races he would have accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say.  But the point is that Wagner longed to create, and in Tannhaeuser thought he had created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself.  He had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner, and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression.  Paradoxically, Tannhaeuser, while one of his least original compositions—­owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to another—­is one of his most original.  He spoke the matter that was in his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the Weber idiom.

Before examining the means by which the varying atmospheres of the different scenes are got, I ask the reader to notice the way in which the rather pointless, inexpressive melody of the Dutchman appears now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable.  Compare the musical illustration (o) on page 119 with (a) at the end of this chapter.  The type of tune is the same, but the first is commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it occurs; the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant Tannhaeuser.  Compare Daland’s song in the Dutchman with Wolfram’s description of how Elisabeth has pined, or Senta’s last passages in the final scene with Elisabeth’s salute to the hall of song.  We feel at once how, by dropping Italian, French and mediocre German models, and writing in the way that came natural to him, Wagner at once became a composer of the first rank, from whom great expressive melodies sprang spontaneously.  The noble passages in the Dutchman were drawn out of him, despite his conscious or unconscious imitation of what were considered the best models of the day, by sheer force of feeling; and I pointed out how, when the situation gave him a chance, he took it.  In Tannhaeuser he has become a splendid artist whose brain refused to shape the commonplace.  Later on his style was to become more individual, more purely his own; but so far he had now got—­and it was a very long way.  The pilgrims’ chorus melody, which first appears in the overture, is, to my mind, very Weberesque.  It is not particularly strong—­for Wagner—­and hardly bears the weight of the brass with which it is afterwards thundered out; but think of it and of Rienzi’s prayer!  The second part, of course, is Wagner at a sublime height, but of that presently.  What I wish is to give