The enchanting flood of music wells up from the orchestra, and the vocal writing for Pogner is in Wagner's most lordly manner: there is not a hint of the mechanical "faking" which characterises similar passages in the _Ring_. If it was necessary to think that one part was written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived simultaneously. The interweaving becomes ever more marvellous as the speech proceeds, the burgher theme in a varied form being added, until at last, with the acclamations of the masters, it culminates in a passage at once dramatically true, supremely beautiful and as elaborate in its texture as any Bach fugue. We used to hear much of the necessity for ambitious young composers to devote years to the study of text-book counterpoint--indeed, the failure of many youthful gentlemen to achieve anything on the grand scale has often been attributed to their lack of diligence, their want of patience with professorial instruction: yet here we have music which, from the scientific point of view, is as perfect as any in the world, composed by a daring soul who had no more than six months' teaching. It may be remarked in passing that Spohr, in his naïve way a good enough fugue-writer, never received any instruction at all: in point of effectiveness his fugues beat anything coming from the Jadassohn and Hauptmann pupils.