phrase to a personage or an idea and blaring it out whenever that
personage or idea comes to the front? Wagner early realized the
uselessness of the proceeding, and, as I pointed out, in _Tannhäuser_
there are no _leit-motifs_, though passages and parts of passages are
repeated. In _Lohengrin_ it is used rather for a dramatic than a musical
purpose. By the time he wrote _Tristan_ he had learnt the splendid
artistic uses to which a rather commonplace device could be put. The
differences between the _leit-motif_ in _Lohengrin_ and the _leit-motif_
in _Tristan_ are two: in _Tristan_ they are more significant--indeed,
they are pregnant to bursting--and more fully charged with energy and
colour; also they are not stated and restated in their elementary form
as in _Lohengrin_, but continually subjected to a process of
metamorphosis. This last mode of developing a theme he probably learnt
from Liszt, and without it both _Tristan_ and the _Ring_ would be very
different. But while these are the most striking characteristics of
Wagner's later leading themes and mode of using them, it must be
remembered that he was now absolute master of every device of operatic
art previously known, and of many he invented as he went along. The same
theme in _Tristan_ has a dozen functions to fulfil; it may be changed
almost out of recognition to suit a particular occasion, and a few
minutes later, for a dramatic purpose, it may be stated in all its
original plainness. I advise all who wish to understand _Tristan_ not to
fret themselves with those rascally and stupid guide books which merely
addle the brain with their interminable lists of motives. Throughout the
opera new matter is continually introduced, with old themes, changed or
unchanged, woven into the tissue; and to go hunting for these old
themes, to try to recognise them whenever they crop up, is not only to
lose one's enjoyment of the music, but to run a fair risk of
misapprehending it altogether, and the drama as well. This jack-fool
twaddle about there being not a single phrase in an opera which has not