righteousness of Wagner’s claim to the title of poet than his acceptance of the Greek theory that a people’s legends and myths are the fittest subjects for dramatic treatment, unless it be the manner in which he has reshaped his material in order to infuse it with that deep ethical principle to which reference has several times been made.  In “The Flying Dutchman,” “The Nibelung’s Ring,” and “Tannhauser” the idea is practically his creation.  In the last of these dramas it is evolved out of the simple episode in the parent-legend of the death of Lisaura, whose heart broke when her knight went to kiss the Queen of Love and Beauty.  The dissolute knight of the old story Wagner in turn metamorphoses into a type of manhood “in its passionate desires and ideal aspirations”—­the Faust of Goethe.  All the magnificent energy of our ideal man is brought forward in the poet’s conception, but it is an energy which is shattered in its fluctuation between sensual delights and ideal aspirations, respectively typified in the Venus and Elizabeth of the play.  Here is the contradiction against which he was shattered as the heroes of Greek tragedy were shattered on the rock of implacable Fate.  But the transcendent beauty of the modern drama is lent by the ethical idea of salvation through the love of pure woman—­a salvation touching which no one can be in doubt when Tannhauser sinks lifeless beside the bier of the atoning saint, and Venus’s cries of woe are swallowed up by the pious canticle of the returning pilgrims. {1}

It will be necessary in the expositions of the lyric dramas of Wagner, which I shall attempt in these chapters, to choose only such material as will serve directly to help to an understanding of them as they move by the senses in the theatre, leaving the reader to consult the commentaries, which are plentiful, for deeper study of the composer’s methods and philosophical purposes.  Such study is not to be despised; but, unless it be wisely conducted, it is likely to be a hindrance rather than a help to enjoyment.  It is a too common error of musical amateurs to devote their attention to the forms and names of the phrases out of which Wagner constructs his musical fabric, especially that of his later dramas.  This tendency has been humored, even in the case of the earlier operas, by pedants, who have given names to the themes which the composer used, though he had not yet begun to apply the system of symbolization which marks his works beginning with “Tristan und Isolde.”  It has been done with “Tannhauser,” though it is, to all intents and purposes, an opera of the conventional type, and not what is called a “music-drama.”  The reminiscent use of themes is much older than Wagner.  It is well to familiarize one’s self with the characteristic elements of a score, but, as I have urged in the book quoted above, if we confine our study of Wagner to the forms of the musical motives and the names which have arbitrarily been given to them, we shall at the last have enriched our minds