What follows needs little discussion.  Wagner knew quite well how to represent a row on the stage without passing beyond the limits of what is music.  Here we have ample energy, but nothing demanding closer notice until Elisabeth’s interposition.  Then at once we get stuff on a high level.  The culmination is reached in a series of melodies hardly to be matched for pathetic beauty; the orchestra seems to throb with emotion—­a device which Wagner often employed extensively in the Ring—­the chorus join in, and a wondrous effect is obtained.  The ensemble is the last piece of this description Wagner was destined to write.  It is pure emotion, and not dramatic—­that is, not theatrical—­and its warrant is that the drama at the moment is nothing but a drama of emotions in conflict.  The only musical-and-dramatic effect now occurs where the voices of the young pilgrims are heard:  it is electrical.

Wagner gave a title to the prelude of Act III, “Tannhaeuser’s Pilgrimage,” and it differs only in that from his other preludes and overtures.  To those who know what is to follow it tells a story more or less distinctly, while those who hear it for the first time must feel the atmosphere and emotion, and thus be prepared for the drama.  It is built up of the pilgrims’ marching song and one of Elisabeth’s melodies and a most expressive theme which depicts Tannhaeuser painfully getting over the weary miles, with a sad heart, to seek the pope’s pardon; then comes in the Dresden Amen—­the significance of which will appear presently—­then a crash followed by a mournful phrase (taken entire from Beethoven), and some recitative-like passages leading direct to the rising of the curtain.  As music it is a splendid thing, and, as I have said, it tells its tale plainly, when one knows the tale.  Almost immediately we hear the pilgrims’ hymn of rejoicing, with which the overture begins—­the hymn of those whose sins have been taken away.  The pilgrims pass; Tannhaeuser is not amongst them, and Wagner there gives Elisabeth a phrase which makes one think that he had Schroeder-Devrient in his mind when he wrote the part.  That gifted lady used—­Berlioz said abused—­the device of occasionally speaking, not singing, a few words; and here, where Elisabeth, in despair, says, “Er kehret nicht zurueck,” Wagner gives her notes that can be either spoken or sung, and certainly are most effective when spoken.  The part, by the way, was not “created” by the Schroeder-Devrient, but by Johanna Wagner, the daughter of that brother Albert who had given him his first post in a theatre.  I have nothing further to say about the Prayer, nor about the “Star of Eve” song.  As night gathers over the autumn scene and Tannhaeuser enters, the music at once leaps to life.  Not that we have not heard some very lovely things, notably a quotation in the orchestra from one of Wolfram’s competition songs; the star shines out, and Wolfram, his harp now silent, sits gazing dreamily up in the direction Elisabeth