with a thematic catalogue, and nothing else.  It is better to know nothing about these names, and content ourselves with simple, sensuous enjoyment, than to spend our time at the theatre answering the baldest of all the riddles of Wagner’s orchestra:  “What am I playing now?” In the studies of Wagner’s works I shall point to some of the most significant phrases in the music in connection with significant occurrences in the play, but I shall seldom, if ever, analyze the motival construction in the style of the Wolzogen handbooks.

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There are texts in the prefatory excerpt for a discussion of “Tannhauser” from all the points of view which might make such a discussion interesting and profitable.  There is no doubt in my mind that it is the poet-composer’s noblest tragedy and, from a literary point of view, his most artistic.  It is laid out on such a broad, simple, and symmetrical plan that its dramatic contents can be set forth in a few paragraphs, and we can easily forego a detailed description of its scenes.  A knightly minstrel, who has taken part in one of the tournaments of song which tradition says used to be held at the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia in the early part of the thirteenth century, has, by his song and bearing, won the heart of Elizabeth, niece of the Landgrave.  Unmindful of his great good fortune, he has found his way to the court held by the Goddess of Love within the hollow of the Horselberg, which lies across the valley and over against the Wartburg.  Dame Venus herself becomes enamoured of the knight, who calls himself Tannhauser, and for a year and a day he remains at her side and in her arms.  At length, mind and senses surfeited, a longing seizes him for the world which he has abandoned, for the refreshing sights and sounds of earth, and even for its pains.  Dame Venus seeks to detain him, but he is resolute to leave her and her realm.  Like a true knight, however, he promises to sing her praises wherever he may go; but when she offers to welcome him again if he should weary and sicken of the world and seek redemption from its hypocrisies, he replies that for him redemption rests only in the Virgin Mary.  The invocation breaks the bonds of enchantment which have held him.  The scenes of allurement which have so long surrounded him melt away, and he finds himself in an attitude of prayer in a blooming valley below the Wartburg.  It is spring, and a shepherd lad, seated on a rock, trolls a lay to spring’s goddess.  A troop of pilgrims passing by on their way to Rome suggest by their canticle the need of absolution from the burden of sin which rests upon him, but before he can join them, the Landgrave and a hunting party come upon him.  He is recognized by his erstwhile companions in song, and consents to return to the castle on being told by one of the minstrels, Wolfram von Esehenbach, that his song had vanquished not only them, but the heart of the saintly Elizabeth as well.