Simply because in a mortal combat somebody is invariably wounded and
sometimes killed. Wagner sang of human life as it is, not as it might,
could, would, or should be. From the "_Blut_auf_dem_Mond_Motiv_"
(Blood-on-the-Moon Motive) we glide at once into a dirge, the "_Leichen_,"
or Corpse, Motive, one of those superb funeral marches with which we are
familiar in the other music-dramas of Wagner; for the master, though not an
Irishman, is never so happy as on these funeral occasions.

[Leichen Motiv]

If any brainless and bigoted box-holder should ask why the "_Blaubart_
_Motiv_" is repeated in this funeral march, I ask him in return how he
expects otherwise to know who is killed? Will he take the trouble to
reflect that these are the motives of the _Vorspiel_, and that the curtain
has not yet risen on the music-drama?

But why, he asks, do we hear an undercurrent of mirth pulsating joyously
through the prevailing sadness of this "Leichen_Motiv_," or funeral march?
Simply because we cannot be expected to feel the same unmixed grief at the
death of a wife-murderer as at the death of a wife-preserver! Ah, where
shall we find again so subtle a reading of the throbbing heart of humanity!

The "_Schwert_Motiv_" mingles again with the haunting strains of the
half-sad, half-glad "_Leichen_Motiv_," until the _Vorspiel_ ends abruptly
with a single note of ineffable meaning, thus:

[Tod und Ho'lle Motiv] (off the keyboard to the left)

This is very interesting to the student, and means much, if it means
any-thing. The sword of the elder brother, Mustapha, has gone through