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Updated: June 14, 2025
Beckmesser, after bowing to the queen of the day and to the assembly, gives forth, haltingly, Walther's song as he remembers it, as it has become with passing through the medium of his mind. What he utters, with many an anxious peep at the crumpled manuscript, is nonsense of the most ludicrous.
He has not had time to memorise the poem of the song, and with extravagant fun Wagner makes him change the poetical and serious words into words of most ludicrous significance. Walther's melody he has not got hold of at all, and in a state of intense nervousness tries to fit the words to the burlesque tune of his previous night's serenade.
We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love.
The young people, in despair at Walther's failure, are about to elope when they are prevented by the arrival on the scene of Beckmesser. It is night, and he wishes to serenade Eva; Sachs sits cobbling at his bench, while Eva's nurse, Magdalena, disguised, sits at a window to hear the serenade in her mistress's stead.
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.
All at once the stranger let fall the reins, and as they trailed on the ground, he snatched the whip from Walther's hand, gave a sudden leap into the air, and vaulted on the back of the near horse, where he sat at ease, and drove postillion, without their being able to help themselves. "Alas, we have no arms!" groaned the Burgomaster; "we may as well be resigned to our fate.
No thought could he hold fast; the pictures in his mind grew more and more terrible, and he did not sleep a wink. The idea often occurred to him that he was crazy and that all these notions were merely the product of his own imagination. Then again he remembered Walther's features, and it was all more puzzling to him than ever.
Susan had a hazy vision of some sensible linen gardening dresses of herself out in the spring sunshine, digging, watering, getting happier and dirtier and hotter every minute Somebody was playing Walther's song from "Die Meistersinger" far downstairs, and the plaintive passionate notes drew Susan as if they had been the cry of her name.
With the re-entry of Walther and his proposal as a member of the guild by Pogner, we get another of these great phrases, half-theme, half-accompanying figure, and then Walther's spring song.
When, in 1852, the book, Luther on the Sacraments, published by the Tennessee Synod, came to Walther's attention, he wrote: "We praise God that He has caused this glorious work to succeed.
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