Richard Wagner

ed. A reservoir full of music must have accumulated in his brain; and he seems now to have opened the sluices. Never did a more fiery impetuous stream flow from any comp

ted as meaning, "I am no musician," whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a musician: which, in a sense, he was. He was not a greater genius than Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but he was something different from both species of men-a dramatist who could not get the drama out

of the sea are kept ever present. The body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in the sailor-song (g); this goes through a hundred transformations, and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never losing i

e small use is made of (c), but once the poisoning episode is done with the subject ceases to have any significance. That marked (h) is of great importance. Its effect is terrible when Isolda is enticing, or compelling, Tristan to drink the cup. The sailors break in with their "Yo, heave ho!" and Tristan, bewildered, asks, "Where are we?" Isolda, with sinister purp