’Therefore hear now the theme you all shall sing. 
    Say, what is love? by what signs shall we know it? 
    This be your theme.  Whoso most nobly this can tell,
    Him shall the princess give the prize. 
    He may demand the fairest guerdon: 
    I vouch that whatsoe’er he ask is granted. 
    Up, then, arouse ye! sing, O gallant minstrels! 
    Attune your harps to love.  Great is the prize,’

At the summons of the heralds, Wolfram von Eschenbach first takes up the strain, and as for him love is an ardent desire to see the loved one happy, a longing to sacrifice himself if need be, and an attitude of worshipful devotion, he naturally sings an exalted strain.  It finds favour with all his hearers,—­with all except Tannhaeuser, who, having tasted of the passionate joys of unholy love, cannot understand the purity of Wolfram’s lay, which he stigmatises as cold and unsatisfactory.

In his turn, he now attunes his harp to love, and sings a voluptuous strain, which not only contrasts oddly with Wolfram’s performance, but shows love merely as a passion, a gratification of the senses.  The minstrels, jealous for their art, indignantly interrupt him, and one even challenges Tannhaeuser to mortal combat:—­

   ’To mortal combat I defy thee! 
    Shameless blasphemer, draw thy sword! 
    As brother henceforth we deny thee: 
    Thy words profane too long we’ve heard! 
    If I of love divine have spoken,
    Its glorious spell shall be unbroken
    Strength’ning in valour, sword and heart,
    Altho’ from life this hour I part. 
    For womanhood and noble honour
    Through death and danger I would go;
    But for the cheap delights that won thee
    I scorn them as worth not one blow!’

This minstrel’s sentiments are loudly echoed by all the knights present, who, having been trained in the school of chivalry, have an exalted conception of love, hold all women in high honour, and deeply resent the attempt just made to degrade them.  Tannhaeuser, whose once pure and noble nature has been perverted and degraded by the year spent with Venus, cannot longer understand the exalted pleasures of true love, even though he has just won the heart of a peerless and spotless maiden, and when Wolfram, hoping to allay the strife, again resumes his former strain, he impatiently interrupts him.

Recklessly now, and entirely wrapped up in the recollection of the unholy pleasures of the past, Tannhaeuser exalts the goddess of Love, with whom he has revelled in bliss, and boldly reveals the fact that he has been tarrying with her in her subterranean grove.

This confession fills the hearts of all present with nameless terror, for the priests have taught them that the heathen deities are demons disguised.  The minstrels one and all fall upon Tannhaeuser, who is saved from immediate death at their hands only by the prompt intervention of Elizabeth.