'Wagner creates a kind of hermeneutic
double counterpoint of questions and answers, in which the musical and dramatic strata continually shift positions .
The discussion of the two double fugues ignores their use of
double counterpoint, particularly as this is demonstrated in several climactic entries of the subject in parallel thirds and sixths; instead these passages are referred to misleadingly as canones sine pausis (canons at a zero time interval), and they are understood as representations of the "positive" qualities "lightness and joy" (p.
which belong to the very best that we possess ...' (In what followed, he praised her devotion to her 'domestic concerns, for a woman who neglects them, be it for oil colours, or for rhyme, or for
double counterpoint always calls to mind instinctively .