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For the last time, the old conceptions of tonality obtain in his music dramas. One feels throughout "Tristan und Isolde" the key of D-flat, throughout "Die Meistersinger" the key of C-major, throughout "Parsifal" the key of A-flat and its relative minor. Rhythms that had been used all through the classical period are worked by him into new patterns, and do service a last time.
In Italy we know Wagner very well Lohengrin, Tannhauser, Tristan and Meistersinger, but of course they are always sung in Italian. "The Metropolitan is one of the greatest opera houses in the world but it is only one. You have a wonderful country, yet most of its cities must do without opera.
The faint, delicate music just came into existence, breathed a little, and was gone. Here for once was an orchestra which could literally be overheard. The overture to the "Meistersinger" followed, and here, for the first time, I got, quite flawless and uncontradictory, the two impressions which that piece presents to one simultaneously.
Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model. John Philip Sousa.
He was so courteous about insisting that I should play more, I ran through a bit of "Meistersinger," he seemed so truly a young Walther, and then discovered another little song that he has not published, "Too Late for Love and Loving," full of a kind of pathos that it seems impossible youth could understand. But I suppose that is where genius comes in.
The other night, when we were heading off a steamer and firing six-pounders across her bows, the band was playing the "star" song from the Meistersinger. Wagner and War struck me as the most fin de siecle idea of war that I had ever heard of. The nights have been perfectly beautiful, full of moonlight, when we sit on deck and smoke. It is like looking down from the roof of a high building.
"Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," a comic opera in three acts, words by the composer, was first produced at Munich, June 21, 1868, under the direction of Hans von Bülow, with the following cast: HANS SACHS Herr BETZ. WALTER Herr NACHBAUER. BECKMESSER Herr HÖLZEL. DAVID Herr SCHLOSSER. EVA Mlle. MALLINGER. MAGDALENA Mme.
Leaving aside "Tristan" and "Die Meistersinger," which he never surpassed, many regard the first act of "Die Walküre" the most finished of Wagner's creations; and certainly it has a marvellously impressive climax Siegmund's drawing of the sword from the ash-tree, and the love duo which follows; and another in Wotan's farewell in Act III. But grand as these are, many consider the last act of "Die Götterdämmerung" the supreme achievement of Wagner.
At first the only course open to me was to stay in my inexpensive lodging in the Hotel Voltaire until I had finished the libretto of the Meistersinger, and meanwhile set to work to find the refuge so earnestly sought for the completion of my new work.
As a great writer leads one on, with a concealed but beautiful art, from the first words to which all the other words are ministering servants; as the great musician Wagner in his "Meistersinger," for instance leads one from the first notes of his score to those final notes which magnificently reveal to the listeners the real meaning of those first notes, and of all the notes which follow them: so the Egyptian builders lead the spirit gently, mysteriously forward from the gateway between the towers to the distant house divine.
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