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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: small talk about Wagner and Bayreuth as may be forced upon them
at the dinner table or between the acts.
THE OLD AND THE NEW MUSIC
In the old-fashioned opera every separate number involved the
composition of a fresh melody; but it is quite a mistake to
suppose that this creative-effort extended continuously
throughout the number from the first to the last bar. When a
musician composes according to a set metrical pattern, the
selection of the pattern and the composition of the first stave
(a stave in music corresponds to a line in verse) generally
completes the creative effort. All the rest follows more or less
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