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Updated: June 22, 2025
Siegmund's declamation is a fine example of Wagner's finest vocal writing at this period the style which I have referred to as something between recitative and true song. That is, it remains metrical without the slightest tendency to fall into regular four-bar measure, or any other regular measure; yet it decidedly is not recitative.
Here we are entirely free of the Weberesque four-bar phrases; the rhythms are subtle and complex, though to the ear they sound clear and simple enough. When the curtain goes up we see a sort of tent arranged on the deck of a ship. From aloft a sailor chants a wild sea-song, unlike any sea-song ever chanted off the stage and yet redolent of the sea and salt winds.
The melodies on page upon page consist of regular four-bar lengths, commonly terminating in a full close. We can admit all this indeed, we must admit it all and then we are only bound the more to admire the vast amount of variety Wagner got in spite of all the obstacles self-placed in his way.
I doubt whether the players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time.
The first scene contains many of Wagner's most inspired melodies, notably the despairing song of Venus towards the end, a tune that might have come from Schubert. The old Weber influence is to be seen in the contours of many of the themes, as well as their orchestral colour; and the steadfast four-bar rhythm reminds one, in spite of the difference of subject, irresistibly of Euryanthe.
These tunes in regular four-bar lengths are melody of an amorphous sort; only when they were tightened up, made truer, more pregnant in a word, when they were so shaped as to stand really and truly for the thought and feeling in the composer did they become the beautiful things we find in Lohengrin, foretelling the sublime things we find in Tristan. Eric's tunes are as colourless as Donizetti's.
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