"Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an, Blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast? Auf hohem Bord der bleiche Mann, Des Schilfes Herr, wacht ohne Rast." This consists of eight bars--a four-bar section repeated. Then we get the storm music, four bars of which I quote (_n_), and this is freely employed throughout the opera. The storm subsides, and at bar thirty-nine Senta sings to her own theme-- "Doch kann dem bleichen Manne Erlösung einstens noch werden, Fänd' er ein Weib, das bis in den Tod getreu ihm auf Erden." leading into the second part (_k_) to the words-- "Ach! Wann wirst du, bleicher Seemann, sie finden? Betet zum Himmel dass bald Ein Weib Treue ihm halt'!" The three themes are of very unequal power. The first is one of the landmarks in musical history; neither Wagner himself nor any of the other great masters ever hit upon a more gigantic theme, terrible in its direct force at its announcement, still more terrible as it is used in the overture and later in the drama. The second, Senta, is a piece of sloppy German sentimentality: this is not a heroine who will (rightly or wrongly) sacrifice herself for an idea, but a hausfrau who will always have her husband's supper ready and his slippers laid to warm on the stove shelf. It is significant that Senta herself in her moment of highest exaltation does not refer to it: Wagner often calculated wrong, but he never felt wrong. The third, the grief and anguish of the condemned sailor, and pity for him, is one of the most wonderful things in music; for blent with its pathos is the feeling of a remoter time, the feeling that it all happened in ages that are past, the feeling for "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago." This sense of the past, the historic sense--call it what you will--was thus strong in Wagner at this early period, and it grew even stronger later on, finding its most passionate expression in _Tristan_ and its loveliest expression in the _Mastersingers_. The faculty to shape pregnant musical themes is the stamp of the great master. The early men are supposed to have "taken church melodies" and worked them up into masses: what they did was to take meaningless strings of notes, bare suggestions, and give them form and meaning by means of rhythm (for only boobies talk of the old church music not possessing rhythm). The later composers sometimes followed the same procedure--which is equivalent to a sculptor "taking" a block of marble and hewing out a statue; but more and more they trusted to their own imaginations. In either case the "mighty line" results; and there is not a great composition in the world which has not great themes; and, _vice versa_, when the themes are trivial the work evolved from them is invariably trivial. I see modern works full of cleverness and colour: I do not waste much time on them; there cannot be anything in them, and they will not survive. Along with some weak