Letters from Bayreuth: Descriptive and Critical of Wagner's "Der Wing Des Nibelungen"

Let us begin with the English Archphilistine, Bennett, in whose Letters from Bayreuth we are told among other funny things that:
"we have in Rheingold the continuous flow of formless music" which 'streams along the mind, so to speak, without passing into it, ' and 'offers but little of an intelligible character to lay hold of.' This music 'has no meaning by itself.' The dialogues in "Die Walküre" are 'most terribly wearisome and painful sounds, ' which excite the mind 'to a state of intense...