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The scene of the second act is laid at a delightfully picturesque street-corner. Sachs is musing before his shop-door when Eva comes to find out how Walther had fared before the Mastersingers. Hans tells her of his discomfiture, and, by purposely belittling Walther's claims to musicianship, discovers what he had before suspected, that she loves the young knight.
Even in the 'sixties, when nothing later than Lohengrin was known, the charge was brought against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung the Mastersingers was his answer. The overture leads into the first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the musical texture as the opera proceeds.
The tune of the first stanza in the Valkyrie is only referred to once again throughout the work; and by far the most expressive part is made out of a love-theme previously heard. In the Mastersingers song there is subject-matter enough to make a whole opera. From this point it is impossible to quote themes they are far too long.
Then we must consider that Wagner was not yet one-tenth fully grown, and it is the hobbledehoy who is so heavy on his feet, not the athlete with all his muscles completely trained: Wagner needed years of training before he gained the sure, light touch of Lohengrin and the Mastersingers.
The Mastersingers, a work full of health, fun and happiness, contains not a single bar of love music that can be described as passionate: the hero of it is a widower who cobbles shoes, writes verses, and contents himself with looking on at the sweetheartings of his customers. Parsifal makes an end of it altogether.
Graves was an ardent Wagnerian, and especially devoted to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. "Shall we have," he whispered to Mr. Hillard, "a Beckmesser fiasco to-night, or will it be a Walter success?" But Mr. Hillard, besides being an author and a critic, cared little for the too literary cleverness of Mr. Graves. He therefore heavily crushed that gentleman's allusion to Wagner's opera.
The plan of "The Mastersingers" was conceived about the same time as that of "Lohengrin," during the composer's stay at Marienbad, and occupied his attention at intervals for twenty years, as it was not finished until 1867. As is clearly apparent both from its music and text, it was intended as a satire upon the composer's critics, who had charged that he was incapable of writing melody.
While the early Mastersingers were pouring forth their strains with undiminished confidence in their own powers, a new species of poetic literature was growing up beside them in the form of simple and humorous fables, or daring satires, often directed against the clergy and nobility, which were among the most popular productions of the Middle Ages. Such were "Friar Amis" and the "Ship of Fools."
In reading about the Mastersingers of Nuremberg we are told that on the day when the trial of singers was to take place, dozens of "guilds" assembled in the meadow guilds of bakers, of shoemakers of which Hans Sachs was the head guilds of goldsmiths, etc. Van Dyck was a member of the painters' guild when he was no more than nineteen.
Though the institution of the Mastersingers was established at the close of the thirteenth century, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth that it really flourished, particularly through the genius of Hans Sachs. The institution, survived, however, though languishing, through the seventeenth century, and the calamities of the Thirty Years' War.
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