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He is taking up his noisy lay again about Eve and shoes when Beckmesser's rage explodes. Quaking, the town-clerk pours forth reproach and insult. This conduct of the shoe-maker's has its source in envy, nothing else; envy of the dignity of Marker which has never been bestowed upon him, and which now never will be, not so long as Beckmesser lives and has influence with the masters.
A black suspicion enters Beckmesser's breast at sight of him: he is the card which Pogner has all along had up his sleeve. The town-clerk declares promptly that it is too late now to enter the new-comer. The masters exchange glances: "Anoble?... Is it a case for rejoicing?
But now give me your word. Whenever and under whatever circumstances you hear that song, you will never by any chance say that it is of your composing." "I give you my word and oath," Sachs assents, with a spice of wicked glee, "that I will never boast of that song being mine." Beckmesser's spirits rise to heights of mad exhilaration. "What more do I want? I am saved!
Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva mistaking Magdalena at the window in Eva's dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser's new shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for every mistake.
Music to him was not a conventionality but a passion not a rule, but a life and, when he sang, his melodies reached heights of beauty that Beckmesser's rules did not provide for.
Sachs, in his handsome best-coat, meets him pleasantly. "You surely are not having any more trouble with the shoes?" Beckmesser's wrath holds in but a moment before voiding itself upon Sachs in accusation and threat.
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
The air retains as if echoes, or fragrances, of the personalities which have but just withdrawn; it is sweetened with effluvia of Walther's youth, of Sachs's greatness of heart. Suddenly, like a bar of bilious green across a shimmering mother-o'-pearl fabric, harmonies of a very different sort catch the attention, and Beckmesser's face is seen peering in at the window.
To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture, David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right merrily until interrupted by the horn of a night watchman. The dignity and vigor of Wagner's poetical fancy are attested by the marvellous chose of the act.
The marker consents, and sings his song, "Den Tag seh' ich erscheinen," accompanied with excruciating roulades of the old-fashioned conventional sort; but Sachs knocks so often that his shoe is finished long before Beckmesser's song. This is his first humiliation.
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