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It was doubtless largely due to the influence of Hans Sachs that the guild of mastersingers built the first German theatre in Nuremberg in 1550. Before then plays with religious subjects were performed in St. Catherine's church, as we have seen, the meeting place of the guild. Secular plays were represented in private houses.
The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the length, so that it sounds four times as fast. This contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers' music.
He wins his bride, but he will have nothing to say to the Mastersingers and their pedantry, until Hans Sachs has shown him that in them lies the future of German art. Although it contains comic and even farcical scenes, 'Die Meistersinger' is in fact not so much a comedy as a satire, with a vein of wise and tender sentiment running through it.
Wagner's technique had now reached that supreme height which made Tristan and the Mastersingers possible; and the spontaneous energy of his inspiration was unabated. The Act, we may remember, was actually completed after those two operas, but it was planned and partially executed before.
There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the Mastersingers, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and goodly sport is expected.
The most interesting of Sixtus Beckmesser's compositions is "A New Year's Song," preserved in the handwriting of Sachs in the Royal Library at Berlin. In fact, I am strongly tempted to believe that with the exception of Sachs himself, Beckmesser was the best of the mastersingers of the Nuremberg school: A NEW YEAR'S SONG By Sixtus Beckmesser
Formalism is not at all a desirable thing; but if we examine the great works, differing widely in character, Tristan, the Mastersingers and the Valkyrie, we find the utmost distinctness combined with perfect freedom and expressiveness. Even as early as the Second Act of Siegfried the freedom threatens to degenerate into sloppiness or, to put it rather more mildly, at least into vagueness.
The constant battles, the few victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the reader, to consider the Mastersingers of Nuremberg immediately after Tristan. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the second opera in its true chronological order.
He published the words of the Mastersingers and of the Ring, and the consequence was only that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity as the second to music. It is hard to say who did him the greatest amount of harm his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days.
It is odd to think that most of those who brought these charges against him themselves grasped at as much luxury as they could get: had King Ludwig spent his money on them there would have been no objections raised, and doubtless they would have given us Rings and Mastersingers. This must be the judgment of every sane person.
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