It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace with some certainty the growth of the Nibelung’s Ring, both drama and music, from its birth to its final execution.  The history of the building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily complicated and entangled matter.  Some of it had to be related earlier in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here.  Let us begin with a few dates—­

1848.  Had studied the Nibelungen saga and sketched the plan of the whole gigantic
      work much as it now stands.

1850-51.  Discusses Siegfried’s Death in letters
      to Uhlig and Liszt.  Begins the poem in
      another form, which he abandons.

1852.  Writes the poem for the work practically in
      its final form; privately printed the
      following year.

1853.  Begins Rhinegold.

1854.  Completes Rhinegold. 
      Begins the Valkyrie, and sketches Siegfried
      at the same time.

1856.  Completes Valkyrie. 
      Begins composition of Siegfried. 
      Completes first and begins second act of
      Siegfried, and interrupts it to start work
      on Tristan.

1859. Tristan completed.

1867. Mastersingers completed. 
      Composition of Siegfried resumed.
      Siegfried completed.
      Dusk of the Gods begun.
      Dusk of the Gods completed.

1876.  The Ring given at Bayreuth.

Wagner was thus occupied with the Ring for fully twenty-five years.  The Rhinegold followed Lohengrin, but there was a gap of five years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change.  In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the Rhine_gold_ and the Valkyrie; in the first there is little of the passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others.  While composing the Rhinegold his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had the Rhinegold been a better subject for the purpose they might have reached maturity while writing it.  But there is no human element in it, and without that Wagner could not get on.  We have already seen that he abandoned the idea of the Mastersingers for years—­until, in fact, he had created a soul for Sachs:  then he went ahead and gave us a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg.  In the same way, though he wrote some fine music in the Rhinegold, in richness, splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the Valkyrie, where he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human.