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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
+by George Ainslie Hight
+
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+Title: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
+
+Author: George Ainslie Hight
+
+Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7834]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WAGNER'S TRISTAN UND ISOLDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Cam Venezuela, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+WAGNER'S "TRISTAN UND ISOLDE"
+
+AN ESSAY ON
+THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA
+
+BY GEORGE AINSLIE HIGHT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Passing the visions, passing the night,
+  Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrade's hands,
+  Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of
+      my soul,
+  Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering
+      song,
+  As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,
+      flooding the night,
+  Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet
+      again bursting with joy,
+  Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
+  As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses.
+
+  _Walt Whitman._
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The following pages contain little if anything that is new, or that
+would be likely to interest those who are already at home in Wagner's
+work. They are intended for those who are beginning the study of
+Wagner. In spite of many books, I know of no Wagner literature in
+English to which a beginner can turn who wishes to know what Wagner
+was aiming at, in what respect his works differ from those of the
+operatic composers who preceded him. Some sort of Introduction appears
+to me a necessary preliminary to the study of Wagner, not because his
+works are artificial or unnatural, but because our minds have become
+perverted by the highly artificial products of the Italian and French
+opera, so that a work of Wagner at first appears to us very much as
+_Paradise Lost_ or a tragedy of Sophokles would appear to a person who
+had never read anything but light French novels. He must entirely change
+the attitude of his mind, and the change, although it be a return to
+nature and truth, is not easy to make.
+
+Those who wish fully to understand Wagner's aims must read his own
+published works. I have not attempted to give his views in a condensed
+form, being convinced that any such attempt could only end in failure.
+Whenever it has been made, the result has been a caricature; you
+cannot separate a man's work from his personality. All that I could do
+was to endeavour to lay some of the problems involved, as I conceive
+them, before the reader in my own words.
+
+SAMER, PAS DE CALAIS, _May_, 1912.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.    ON WAGNER CRITICISM
+
+II.   WAGNER AS MAN
+
+III.  WAGNER'S THEORETICAL WRITINGS
+
+IV.   THE ROOTS OF GERMAN MUSIC
+
+V.    THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA AND ITS ANTECEDENTS
+
+VI.   THE EARLIER VERSIONS OF THE TRISTAN
+    MYTH
+
+VII.  WAGNER'S CONCEPTION OF THE TRISTAN
+    MYTHOS
+
+VIII. ON CERTAIN OBJECTIONS TO THE WAGNERIAN
+    DRAMA
+
+IX.   MUSIC AS AN ART OF EXPRESSION
+
+X.    SOME REMARKS ON THE MUSICAL DICTION
+    OF "TRISTAN UND ISOLDE"
+
+XI.   OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC
+
+XII.  OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC
+    CONTINUED
+
+XIII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC
+    CONTINUED
+
+XIV.  CONCLUSION
+
+      APPENDIX
+
+
+
+[Greek: Theohus d' ephame eleountas aemas sugchoreutas te kahi
+choraegohus aemin dedo¯ke'nai to'n te Ap'ollo¯a kahi Mousas
+kahi dhae kahi tri'ton ephamen, ei' memnaemetha, Dionuson.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ON WAGNER CRITICISM
+
+
+A new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be urged
+that, since the _Meister_ has been dead for some decades and the
+violence of party feeling may be assumed to have somewhat abated, we
+are now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to review
+his aims, and judge of his measure of success.
+
+Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I conceive
+that the endeavour to _estimate_ an artist's work involves a
+misconception of the nature of art. We can estimate products of
+utility, things expressible in figures, the weight of evidence, a Bill
+for Parliament, a tradesman's profits. But a work of art is written
+for our pleasure, and all that we can attempt is to understand it.
+True, we must judge in a certain sense, we must weigh and estimate
+before we can arrive at understanding; but it is one thing to meditate
+in the privacy of one's own mind, quite another to publish these
+constructive processes as an end in themselves, to set up critical
+"laws" and expect that poets are going to conform to them.
+
+Art, says Ruskin, is a language, a vehicle of thought, in itself
+nothing. Plato's teaching in the third book of his _Republic_ is
+the same, and the idea of the secondary nature of art, of its value
+only as the expression of something else, of a human or moral purpose
+only fully expressible in the drama, is the nucleus of all Wagner's
+theoretical writing. In private conversation and in his letters he
+often spoke very emphatically. "I would joyfully sacrifice and destroy
+everything that I have produced if I could hope thereby to further
+freedom and justice."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The episode which gave rise to this remark is too long to
+relate in the text, but is highly characteristic and instructive for
+Wagner's attitude towards art. It will be found in the sixth volume of
+Glasenapp's biography, p. 309.]
+
+Let us clearly keep in mind the distinction here involved between the
+two elements of every work of art: matter and form, substance and
+technique, [Greek: onta] and [Greek: gignomena], Brahm and Mâyâ, Wille
+und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man, or,
+untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those feelings
+to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic has
+nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is whether
+it has found adequate expression--that is, to try to understand the
+language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do so
+according to his ability. I do not say that the matter is one to which
+we are indifferent. On the contrary, it is far the more important of
+the two, since the thing expressed is prior to its expression. Only it
+is no concern of the critic, because we may fairly assume that if the
+technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist has
+already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect language
+of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it into
+the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken and
+distort the thought.
+
+It does not seem to me that passions have abated very much, or
+judgments have become much more sober, since Wagner has left us. In
+England at least the ignorance and indifference which prevail among
+the ordinary public are still profound. In truth the seed which he
+sowed has fallen upon evil soil; his fate has been a cruel one. He,
+the most sincere and transparent of men, whose only wish was to be
+seen as he actually was, has perhaps more than any other great man
+been the victim of misrepresentation, alike from his senseless
+persecutors and from his equally senseless adulators. While he lived,
+every imaginable calumny, plausible and unplausible, was invented to
+besmirch his character and his art. Now it is, in Germany at least, no
+longer safe to revile him on the ground of his technical artistic
+style. The days are long past when the terms "charlatan," "amateur,"
+"artistic anarchist" could be applied to him with impunity, and it is
+fully recognized by all who have any title to speak that Wagner, so
+far from being a revolutionary destroyer, was, like all true
+reformers--Luther, for example, or Jeremiah or Sokrates--an extreme
+conservative. Those who like Walt Whitman preach libertinism in the
+name of democracy do not want reform; they are satisfied with things
+as they are. Wagner battled, both in music and in literature, for
+_der reine Satz_--purity of diction as against the untidy licence
+which was then and still is fashionable among weak-kneed artists and a
+thoughtless public.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is perhaps still necessary to produce some warrant for
+these statements. The deep-rooted conservatism of Wagner's character
+is a prominent feature of all his literary work, and especially
+noticeable in his educational schemes, as, for example; the report on
+a proposed Munich school of music, with its text: "The business of a
+Conservatory is to conserve." On his musical diction the testimony of
+Prof. S. Jadassohn will probably be considered sufficient by most
+people. He writes: "Wagner's harmonies are clear and pure; they are
+never arbitrary, nor coarse nor brutal, but throughout conscientious
+and clean according to the strict rules of pure diction (_des reinen
+Satzes_). Consequently the sequences and combinations of the chords
+and the course of the modulation are easily followed by those who know
+harmony. Similarly, his polyphonic style is easily intelligible to the
+trained contrapuntist"--and more to the same effect, Jadassohn is here
+only expressing what every competent musician knows. Before the first
+performance at Bayreuth in 1876 Wagner's last word to the artists was:
+_Deutlichkeit_--"clearness"--a word which sums up all his
+technical teaching throughout his life.]
+
+Mr. Hadow has truly observed that we have not yet learned to treat
+genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with
+irrational excess of enthusiasm. If the malicious misrepresentations
+and persecutions which Wagner endured during his lifetime were the
+outcome of ignorance, assuredly the hysterical raving of our day is no
+less ignorant and contemptible. I hear it said that in England
+"Wagnerism" is an attitude, and can only reply that it is so in
+Germany too. Among the cosmopolitan audiences who crowd the theatres
+of Dresden and Munich on a Wagner night and greet his works with
+thundering applause, there is probably not one person in a hundred who
+really knows what he sees and hears. Not that these people are not
+perfectly sincere; _something_ they have undoubtedly taken in;
+the marvellous euphony and balance of Wagner's orchestra under the
+conductors we now have, the exquisite grace of the melodic and
+harmonic structure, and the lyric beauty of so many scenes are
+apparent to all, and will always awaken the boundless enthusiasm of
+those who go only to be diverted. But these are only the ornaments of
+the drama; to understand the drama itself requires a serious effort on
+the part of the hearer which few are prepared to make, a moral
+sympathy with the composer and receptive understanding of his aims of
+which few are capable.
+
+We in England seem content to remain in darkness. I am not, of course,
+referring to the many competent men who have given serious attention
+to the works of Wagner; I am speaking of the general public. The
+English people has plenty of poetry in its heart, but our attitude
+towards German literature and art is not creditable to us as a nation.
+We who possess the finest literature ever produced by any people,
+whose Chaucers and Shakespeares and Popes and Byrons are the models on
+which the poets of other nations endeavour to form their style,
+scarcely think their literature worthy of serious consideration. A
+German boy when he leaves school has generally a pretty close
+acquaintance with Shakespeare, and knows at least something of other
+English authors and poets. An English boy at the same stage of his
+education has perhaps heard of Goethe and Schiller, but has rarely
+read any of their works. At the Universities it is no better. I really
+believe that in England Gounod's _Faust_ is better known than
+Goethe's! It would be impossible that such travesties of _Faust_
+as appear from time to time upon the English stage would be endured if
+our scholars and intellectuals were better informed. Towards ancient
+languages, except the two which are fashionable, we are just as
+indifferent. It was no less a person than Sir Richard Maine who
+asserted that, except the blind forces of nature, nothing exists in
+the world which is not Greek in its origin! Truly more things are
+dreamed of in our philosophy than are in heaven and earth! When great
+scholars make such statements as this it is scarcely surprising that
+ordinary people should care little for the origins of their own
+language. The parents of modern English are not Greek but Anglo-Saxon
+and Scandinavian or Icelandic. Both these languages have a literature
+of the very highest rank, but are little studied in this country. The
+eighth-century English lyrics are amongst the finest in the language.
+As for Scandinavian, not every one in England is aware that the
+Icelanders are, and have been for a thousand years, the most literary
+people in the world;[3] that in one important branch of literature,
+that of story-telling, they are absolutely without a rival, except in
+the Old Testament. From these Scandinavian sources we have received
+the heritage which has grown into our magnificent language and
+literature, but we trouble our heads little about them and leave them
+to foreigners to study. Ignorance may perhaps be excusable; what is
+wholly inexcusable is the habit of some Englishmen of criticising and
+censuring the work of foreigners which they dislike because they
+cannot understand it. There is a certain section of the English people
+who seem to think that it shows patriotism and a becoming national
+pride to belittle the work of other nations and speak of it in an
+insolent tone of contempt. They habitually misrepresent the
+achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear ridiculous.
+Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-class magazines
+informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!" and
+the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in one
+form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of our
+leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many of
+the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion that
+with the completion of Strauss' important work [_Elektra_],
+Wagnerism will diminish in popularity.... For years and years vain
+attempts have been made to get away from Richard Wagner. Creative
+musicians have long felt that Wagner's great and never-to-be-forgotten
+art no longer suited modern times"! One feels inclined to ask whether
+the writer looks upon musical composers as racehorses to be pitted
+against each other, or as religious creeds which must destroy their
+rivals in order to live.
+
+[Footnote 3: Feeling some doubt as to whether this statement were not
+an exaggeration, I have submitted it before publication to my friend
+Mr. Eirikr Magnússon of Cambridge, whose profound knowledge of
+European literature, ancient and modern, needs no attestation from me.
+He replies that, except for the two centuries succeeding the Black
+Death in 1402-4, the statement in the text is quite correct. With that
+reservation therefore I allow it to stand.]
+
+There is another and a graver charge to be brought against some
+writers whose works are popularly read in England, to which it will be
+my duty to return. I have said enough here to show the state of Wagner
+criticism in this country. Abroad it is little better. Wagner is
+indeed fashionable. His works are regularly performed in every capital
+in Europe, and he has probably saved the existence of the costly
+_Hoftheater_ in Germany. But success, in the sense in which he
+understood it, he has not yet achieved. It is very questionable
+whether his influence has on the whole been for good, either upon
+musicians and dramatists, or upon the public. It is not his fault.
+Nothing would show more convincingly the utter inability of the modern
+public to appreciate the highest and best in art than the literature
+which has gathered round the great name of Wagner. In all the vast
+mass how much is there which was worth the writing, or can be read
+with any profit by reasonable people? I think that, putting aside
+purely technical works on music, stage-management, etc., the number of
+really good books could be counted on the fingers. The rest is feeble
+rhapsody on the one hand, malicious misrepresentation on the other. Of
+works of first-rate importance, works that really add anything solid
+to our knowledge, I only know one: Nietzsche's _Geburt der
+Tragödie_. Of others the best are mostly in French. Lichtenberger's
+_R. Wagner_ is admirable so far as it goes, but treats the
+subject exclusively from the literary standpoint. The small treatise
+of our marvellous countryman, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, _Le drame
+wagnérien_[4] (Paris, 1894), is thoughtful and suggestive, and
+quite worthy of close attention, as are also the works of Kufferath,
+Golther, etc. There may be a few more, mostly of small compass, but
+not many. Glasenapp's great biography, a work of astounding industry,
+and invaluable to the student, can scarcely be included among the good
+books because of its terrible literary style and its fulsome
+sentimentality. The magnificent work begun by the Hon. Mrs. Burrell,
+of which there is a copy in the British Museum, would have been a
+monumental biography had she lived to complete it, but it stops when
+Wagner is about twenty. Of the rest, the less said the better. Of
+works against Wagner I know of none that are even worth reading,
+except Hanslick, to whom I shall have occasion to return. It is much
+to be regretted that none of Wagner's opponents have ever stated their
+case fairly and soberly. There is much to be said, but assuredly it
+has not been said by men of the stamp of Nordau, who cites disgusting
+accounts from French medical journals in order to show his abhorrence
+of what he considers Wagner's immorality! Tolstoi is a writer of wide
+authority among his followers, and might be expected to feel some
+responsibility for his utterances; yet he thought it right to publish
+his verdict to the world after having witnessed _one_ very
+inferior performance of a _portion_ of Siegfried! He is often
+appealed to as if he were an authority by the opponents of Wagner, but
+his utterances have no more weight than the thoughtless expressions of
+a Ruskin or a William Morris, which their biographers have thought fit
+to drag from the privacy of private letters or conversation and
+publish as their deliberate judgments. From Nietzsche at least
+something better might have been expected, but I can find little in
+his anti-Wagnerian writings except coarse vituperation and low
+scandal. There is no anti-Wagnerian literature worthy of the name.
+There are plenty of highly musical and artistic natures who honestly
+dislike his art, and I am so far able to sympathize with them as to
+believe that an inestimable benefit would be conferred upon all of us
+if they would publish their objections in sober and reasoned form. But
+they do not; or if they do speak, they descend to the slums.
+
+[Footnote 4: Not his _Richard Wagner_, which is a more popular
+work.]
+
+Such has been the response of the public through its literature to the
+man who expressly did not wish to be worshipped, but only to be
+understood. Assuredly there is yet plenty of room for good work to be
+done! The purpose of the following pages is criticism, not as judging,
+but as selecting. In choosing certain characteristics to show them in
+a different perspective from an altered point of view the critic may
+hope to help others to a better understanding of the art. I have
+endeavoured to do this for English readers in respect of Wagner's
+dramatic works through one of the most characteristic and
+representative of them. The problem resolves itself into two. First
+there is the general technical one, so fully treated by Wagner himself
+in his theoretical writings, whether music is capable of being used as
+a means of dramatic expression; and secondly, how far the endeavour
+has been successful in the particular work selected for illustration.
+To treat these problems satisfactorily it will be necessary for me to
+go far beyond the limits of music and dramatic art, and to enter
+rather fully into questions of psychology and metaphysics, which I
+fear may discourage some readers, but which cannot be shirked by those
+who wish to form a judgment based upon a more solid foundation than
+their own personal taste. The mistake made by nearly all writers on
+Wagner hitherto has been to suppose that the mere assertion of an
+individual opinion has any value at all, however illustrious the
+person who holds it, however able his exposition. Of what use can be
+the assertion that a certain progression of chords is acceptable and
+pleasing to the healthy ear (even with the usual addition that all who
+do not think so are blockheads), when some other person equally
+competent asserts the contrary? Or how am I to persuade my readers
+that _Tristan und Isolde_ is what I hold it to be, the loftiest
+paean of pure and holy love ever conceived by a poet, when others see
+in it only a "story of vulgar adultery," steeped in sensuality? The
+moral law is the same to all men, and differences of judgment upon
+moral acts are due to imperfect understanding. But I cannot hope to
+make my own position clear without descending to the foundations of
+all art, of all life, without asking: what is drama? what are its
+aims, and how does it express them? what is human life which it
+reflects? Wagner felt this very strongly, and soon realized that an
+ontological basis was required for his own theories; that to reform
+art he must reform human life. "Oh ye men," he exclaims passionately
+in a letter: "feel rightly, act as you feel! be free!--then we will
+have art."
+
+We may learn the true principles of criticism from Wagner himself.
+Truthfulness in literature is what correctness is in _Vortrag_.
+They are objectivity, the art of seeing things as they really are,
+clearness of vision, right understanding. The truthful representation
+of an artist as he really is does not preclude, but rather stimulates,
+enthusiasm, for we may believe that the true artist and the true work
+of art as he intended it are superior to the flattering creations of
+our own fancy.
+
+Lessing observes that of ten objections raised by the critic, nine
+will probably have occurred to the author; that he himself will read a
+passage twenty times rather than believe that the writer contradicted
+himself. Some of our critics seem to proceed upon an opposite
+principle and to reject a thought at once if it does not seem to agree
+with what they themselves have thought, and they observe little
+restraint in expressing their authoritative judgment. One critic
+speaks of Wagner meditating on problems "which any clear-headed
+schoolboy could quickly have settled for him"; we are not surprised to
+find the same critic sneering at Kant and Plato! Such writers there
+will always be, but a nation which tolerates them cannot expect to
+maintain an honourable place in the intellectual commonwealth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WAGNER AS MAN
+
+
+The distinction so often made with a genius between the "man" and the
+"artist" has been justly ridiculed by Wagner himself. For the truest
+individuality of an artist is in his art, not when he leaves his own
+proper sphere and enters one that is foreign to him. Beethoven is the
+writer of symphonies and sonatas, not the suspicious friend and
+unmannerly plebeian. The _man_ is the same in both relations,
+_i.e._ his character remains the same, only it manifests itself
+differently under changed conditions, and the difference lies not in
+him, but in the point of view from which we regard him. Let us bear
+this in mind in considering Wagner as he appeared away from his art.
+
+A genius has been aptly likened to an astronomical telescope, which is
+able to scan the heavens, but is useless for things close at hand. To
+some extent this is true of Wagner, but less so than with most, and
+not in the sense in which it has been often asserted. The attacks
+which have been made upon Wagner's private character show little
+discrimination, for it is a simple truth that the particular vices of
+which he has been accused are just those from which he was singularly
+free. No charge has been more audaciously or persistently brought by
+ignorant writers or believed by an ill-informed public in England and
+America than that of morbid sensuality. Just as Wagner's dramas have
+been called licentious, so his character has been described as
+sensual, in defiance of easily ascertainable facts. Not long ago the
+discovery was made that his health had been undermined by loose living
+when he was young. It is easy to invent such charges, for which there
+is not a particle of evidence, and unfortunately the reader is not
+always in a position to verify the authorities, and naturally thinks
+that the writer must have some ground for what he says. As a rule
+these statements have originated with Ferdinand Praeger's book
+_Wagner as I knew him_, a book which I am astonished to see still
+quoted in England, as if it were an authority. I have not seen it, and
+do not know what it contains. Its character was exposed by two
+Englishmen, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain and Mr. Ashton Ellis, soon after its
+publication in 1892, and it was consequently withdrawn from
+circulation in Germany by its publishers, Messrs. Breitkopf und
+Härtel. In England and America it still seems to be widely read, and
+is, more than any other single work, responsible for the false notions
+that are abroad about Wagner. Sensuality, that is in the morbidly
+sexual sense of the term, was no part of Wagner's character, nor could
+it be of the man who justly claimed that no poet had ever glorified
+women as he had done. His Sentas, Elsas, Brünnhildes, and I must add
+his Isoldes, rightly understood, afford the best answer to such
+accusations.
+
+"But," it is said, "his music is unmistakably sensual." I must defer
+it to a future chapter to consider how far pure music, that is, music
+apart from words, is capable of expressing a specific human quality,
+but may here anticipate by saying that the nature of music is to
+assimilate the elements with which it is joined; the hearer may,
+within certain broad restrictions, put into it whatever he likes, and
+will therefore hear in it the reflection of himself. This is why
+different people hear such different things in the same music. If a
+man hears sensuality in the _music_ of, let us say, the second
+act of _Tristan und Isolde_, it is his own interpretation.
+Another hears something very different, an anticipation of eternity,
+of that world beyond which the lovers are about to enter to be united
+with each other and with all nature in a higher love of which all
+earthly love, with its degrading garment of sensuality, is but the
+debased image. The music by itself will bear either interpretation;
+each hearer will find in it just that which he looks for and can
+understand. But when the words are added the meaning is clear. People
+are not "sensual" when death is right before them, as it is here. I do
+not wish to be understood as meaning that Wagner excluded sensuality
+from his works, or that he did not treat the most universal and most
+ungovernable of human impulses in accordance with its character. The
+drama must include everything human, and when passionate sexuality is
+a necessary part of the dramatic development, Wagner no more shirks it
+than did Shakespeare or any other great dramatist. But Wagner always
+treats it with such consummate grace and refinement that it ceases to
+be repulsive and appears in its own uncorrupted beauty, as in the
+_Venus_ music and in the flower-maiden scene in _Parsifal_. Only to
+the impure are the senses impure.
+
+An unbiassed consideration of all that is known about Wagner's life
+will acquit him of all the graver vices, unless a propensity for
+living beyond his income be reckoned as such. Whatever his faults
+there was nothing dishonourable or mean about them, and he is entitled
+to the treatment that is always accorded by one gentleman to another,
+whether friend or enemy, so long as he does not disgrace himself.
+Surely it ought not to be necessary to insist upon this before an
+English public, but it has not always been observed.
+
+Similar is the charge of "ego-mania," that is, of overrating his own
+importance, so often heard. There cannot be any notion of his
+_over_rating his importance, for all are now agreed that his
+influence, whether for good or for bad, can scarcely be overrated.
+Only society requires, very rightly, that a man shall speak of himself
+and his achievements with a certain reticence, leaving it to others to
+judge of them. Nowhere that I know of has Wagner offended against this
+very proper rule. It has so long been the practice to represent Wagner
+as a man of overweening vanity, a man who tried to exalt himself at
+the expense of other artists, that some in England will not believe me
+when I say that there is no foundation whatever for such assertions. I
+only ask of those who think there is to read Wagner's own published
+writings, and to judge from them, not from what is said about him. I
+do not mean to say that he did not believe with the most intense
+conviction in his own idea of a new German dramatic art, uniting the
+separate arts in itself, and did not proclaim it as a thing of the
+first national importance; every serious reformer believes in himself
+in that sense. But that is not the same thing as asserting his own
+powers to realize it. With regard to these he speaks very modestly of
+himself as a beginner, a pioneer only. In fact the question of his own
+particular genius is, he says, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with
+the other one, adding rather cynically that genius is often given to
+the wrong people.
+
+It is in this sense that I understand the famous words of his speech
+after the first performance of the _Ring_ at Bayreuth, in 1876,
+which have been so often quoted in illustration of his arrogance: "You
+have seen what we can do; it is now for you to will. We now have an
+art if you will." Namely, thus: "Germany now has for the first time an
+indigenous drama, not imported from foreigners; if you accept it, try
+to develop and perfect it." Or shortly: "I and my friends have done
+what we can; the rest is for you to do." This seems to me the natural
+meaning of the words, and agrees with all his utterances at other
+times, namely, that the public must not leave it all to the artist,
+but must exert itself to cooperate with him. It has latterly become
+almost a fashion among some German authors to transgress all bounds of
+modesty in advertising themselves. Nietzsche, for example, leaves us
+in no doubt whatever as to what he requires us to think about him. But
+nothing of the kind will be found in Wagner.
+
+The charge of "grapho-mania" is scarcely worth discussion, except to
+show what slender arguments have to be relied upon by those who try to
+prove Wagner insane. Ten, not _bulky_ volumes, as Nordau calls
+them, but volumes of very moderate dimensions, some 30 per cent. of
+which are accounted for by his dramatic works, are not a very large
+allowance for a man who lived seventy years, and was often under the
+necessity of writing to eke out his income. They are scarcely
+sufficient to be regarded as an indication of insanity. The fact is,
+that Wagner, either as dramatist or as author, was not a voluminous
+producer. It is the quality, the intensity, of his work that is
+important, not its bulk. This is only another instance of the amazing
+indifference to the most easily ascertainable facts shown by Wagner's
+assailants, and of the truth that if you only assert a thing, however
+nonsensical, persistently enough, there will always be some who will
+believe it. I cannot be expected to go through in detail the whole
+string of aberrations which Nordau finds accumulated in Wagner. They
+are all of the same kind, and all equally fanciful.
+
+The endeavours to prove Wagner a "degenerate" are professedly made in
+the name of science, so often a cloak for the most unscientific
+vagaries, by men who are disciples of the late Professor Lombroso of
+Florence. Lombroso was a serious man of science, and many of his
+investigations into the nature and indications of insanity have
+permanent value, but it is certain that he went much too far, and his
+views are only very partially accepted by those who are qualified to
+judge of them.[5] When a theory of insanity is made to include such
+men as Newton, Goethe, Darwin, and others who are generally supposed
+to be the very types of sober sanity, a Richard Wagner may well be
+content to remain in such company. We are reminded of Lombroso's own
+story of the lunatic's reply to one who asked when he was coming out
+of the asylum: "When the people outside are sane." In fact the
+theories when pushed to their extreme consequences become absurd.
+There is nothing discreditable to a serious student of science who in
+the enthusiasm of discovery presses his inferences beyond their valid
+limits, since all theory must at first be more or less tentative. Very
+different is the case when these dubious theories are applied by men
+with very modest scientific acquirements, or with none at all, to
+injure the reputation of a man whom they dislike. We may then fairly
+ask, with Lichtenberger, on which side the degeneration is more likely
+to be. These are the men who bring science into discredit.
+
+[Footnote 5: For a very fair estimate of his work, see an article in
+the _Times_, October 20, 1909.]
+
+It would not have been worth my while to dwell at such length upon the
+calumnies of irresponsible writers did I not know that they represent
+the popular opinion among the less well-informed in England of to-day,
+as in Germany thirty or forty years ago. They begin with people who
+ought to know better, and in time find their way into the magazines
+and popular literature of the day, to be greedily read by a public
+which, next to a prurient divorce case, likes nothing so well as
+slander of a great man. We have heard much of late years about the
+decadence of the English Press, but editors know very well the public
+for whom they cater.
+
+That Wagner's was one of those serene and universally lovable
+characters who live at peace with God and man it is far from me to
+wish to convey. Such men there are, and women, who seem lifted above
+the meaner elements of human existence, without envy, without
+reproach, untouched by its iniquities, unsullied by its vileness. Pure
+themselves and self-contained they see no guile in others, or if they
+see it they notice it not. Who has not met with such? who has not felt
+their power? When such innate purity of soul is united with high
+intellectual gifts we have the noblest creation of nature, and to have
+been called "friend" by one such is the highest honour that life has
+to offer.
+
+But Wagner was not one of these. His was a stormy spirit--"The
+never-resting soul that ever seeks the new." He likens himself to a
+wild animal tearing at its cage and exhausting itself with fruitless
+struggles. He could not make terms with falsehood and sophistry, or
+leave them to perish naturally, but lived in ceaseless defiance of
+them. He was a man who inspired intense, devoted love, or intense
+hatred, according to the people with whom he was dealing. With his
+moral character in itself we have indeed no concern, but it seems
+necessary to explain why so many high-minded men who knew him
+intimately, and loved him passionately, at last fell away from him.
+The common theory of Wagnerites, that they were actuated by petty
+motives of jealousy, and the like, cannot be entertained for a moment.
+With Nietzsche it may well be that ill-health and drugs had begun
+their fatal work in 1876; they may account for the violence of his
+anti-Wagnerian writings, but surely the cause of his aversion lay
+deeper. Similarly with Joachim. Even the noble Liszt, who had stood by
+him and battled so bravely for him through the years of his deepest
+distress, though he never failed in his admiration of Wagner's art,
+seems to have cooled towards him personally when he was in prosperity.
+His staunch band of Zurich friends one and all became to some extent
+estranged after his exile was annulled. His acknowledged hasty temper
+will not account for it; hastiness wounds, but in a generous and
+ardently loving nature it does not estrange.
+
+The cause is, in my belief, not far to seek. It lay in the domineering
+spirit which is so noticeable in every act of his life, every page of
+his writings. His life was his art. He was above all things a man of
+action, and all who belonged to him in any relation whatever had to
+serve him in his art or cease to be his. His power must be absolute;
+talents, energies, life itself if necessary, must be surrendered to
+the service of that one supreme purpose. Many were the men and women
+who did not flinch from the sacrifice. I need only mention musicians
+like Richter, Cornelius, Porges, literati like Glasenapp and Wolzogen.
+Many, especially women, were ready to fling to the winds all thought
+of personal wellbeing, and life itself. Cosima, to save him and his
+art, sacrificed every worldly consideration. Ludwig of Bavaria did the
+same, and brought his country to the verge of revolution. Singers,
+like Hedwig Reicher Kindermann, literally gave their lives for him.
+And no less than this did he exact from all who aspired to be his
+disciples and supporters.
+
+But Nietzsche's was a different character. He was Wagner's peer, and,
+though thirty years his junior, had his own purposes to follow.
+Nietzsche was, as he afterwards realized, under a delusion from the
+first. His highly organized musical nature had been taken captive,
+intoxicated by Wagner's music. But Nietzsche was a thinker, and it is
+contrary to the natural order that the man of thought should serve the
+man of action. Nietzsche was incapable of serving Wagner's art and had
+to leave him.
+
+Was this a fault in Wagner? Who shall say? If it was, it was a fault
+which he shared with every earnest reformer who is not content with
+preaching, but enforces his precepts with action. Reform is no
+plaything; it cannot be achieved by listening to the well-meant advice
+of friends who know no higher goal than personal success, who have no
+glimmering of the motives that impel a great soul, who would fain tell
+the thunderbolt where it shall strike. Every great man lives alone; he
+has no friends and no disciples. His equals follow their own ends; his
+inferiors cannot breathe in the regions where he dwells. He must rely
+upon himself. Without this full dominion Wagner would not have been
+himself; he would never have founded Bayreuth, never have had his
+greater works performed, never even have composed them. And this
+brings us to the most conspicuous feature of his character, the centre
+of everything, namely, his uncompromising sincerity and truthfulness,
+qualities so magnificent in him that I doubt whether they have ever
+been equalled in any other, qualities which show Wagner no less great
+"as man" than he is "as artist."
+
+It is certain--and no one knew it better than himself--that Wagner
+might easily have been successful from the first if he had liked. He
+might have been wealthy, popular, petted by the great, have lived in
+the luxury that he loved, at peace with all the world, if he had only
+consented to traffic with his art and to produce what the public
+wanted. For assuredly his talent for writing operas on the old lines
+was not inferior to that of Meyerbeer or Rossini. His _Rienzi_
+was the greatest immediate success of his whole life when grand
+operas, of which it is the type, were fashionable, and a few more
+works of the kind would have raised him above all anxiety for his
+livelihood. This can scarcely be questioned now; it has been asserted
+again and again by those who most hated him, and who were in the habit
+of denouncing him as "past help" because he refused to listen to them.
+To do so he would have had to sacrifice all that he held sacred. He
+had "hitched his waggon to a star," and deliberately chose poverty,
+exile, public calumny and ridicule, domestic unrest, rather than allow
+the purity of his art to be sullied by departing for an instant from
+the ideals after which he strove. Witness the events of the fateful
+seventies, when his financial straits were perhaps at their worst,
+when all the powers of Germany, statesmen, theatrical Intendants,
+press, singers, seemed in league together to thwart the project of
+Bayreuth upon which his all depended; when even King Louis of Bavaria
+cooled for a time; when Bülow and Liszt had withdrawn their help, and
+Nietzsche had seceded in horror and despair; when the first effort of
+Bayreuth had left a ruinous debt, and the failure of the
+_Patronat-Vereine_ shut off the last faint ray of hope. Well
+might the _Meister_, now advancing in age, have thought of
+accepting one of the dazzling offers which repeatedly reached him from
+Russia, from America, from Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, and other places.
+But he only saw in them lures to tempt him into degrading his art by
+commercial speculation with all its paraphernalia of advertisement and
+other sordid abominations. Never once did his courage falter; no
+thought of any concession, however small, however seemingly
+reasonable, which he held to be dishonourable to his art ever found a
+place in his mind. The surrender of _Die Walküre_ alone would
+probably have turned the tide in his favour, and he was pressed for it
+by most of the great theatres, but in vain. To mutilate the
+_Ring_ was in his opinion to dishonour it and prepare the way for
+its being misunderstood. So far from adopting any one of the many
+courses which could not fail to lead to success and popularity we find
+him occupied during this time in coaching singers personally, in
+building his theatre, and devising schemes for a school of technique
+where musicians, and especially singers, could learn the true methods
+of their art, naturally--though perhaps imprudently--believing that
+before his works could be understood as he meant them they must be
+rightly represented. Without funds! without patronage! with nothing
+but his own determined will! Can we wonder that the world's head was
+turned by such a gigantic personality?
+
+Let those who call Wagner self-willed and perverse because he could
+not conform to _their_ notions of what is right for an artist,
+who attempt to measure an infinite mind by the paltry canons of
+self-interest, reflect upon the harvest that we are now reaping from
+his unswerving loyalty to his art. To him alone, and to the conductors
+whom he trained, do we owe the almost perfect performances of our
+modern orchestras. It has been truly observed that Wagner's own
+immensely difficult works are better performed at the present day than
+were the far easier works of his predecessors before he came. The
+Richters and Mottls and Schuchs of our day are a very different race
+from the Reissigers and Lachners and Costas of a past generation. It
+was Richter who taught us in London how a symphony of Beethoven ought
+to sound; before he came, performances were approved which the present
+day would not tolerate. He, as well as his great compeers, was brought
+up in the school of Wagner, the essence of which lies in
+_correctness_, in rendering the work as the composer intended it,
+with conscientious attention to every detail, not only of notes, but
+of rhythm, tempo, phrasing, dynamics, instead of the slovenly muddling
+which then passed for breadth of style, and the substitution of the
+conductor's own subjectivity for that of the composer. It has been
+well expressed in a few incisive words by one of the greatest of the
+school: "The privilege of an interesting subjectivity is given to few,
+its expression will always give evidence of that instinctive logic
+which is a necessary condition of intelligibility."[6] Call Wagner
+perverse, dislike his art, say that his dramas are chaos and his music
+discord--all this you have a right to do; but you cannot refuse your
+homage to his rectitude of purpose, his courageous and resolute
+struggle for the ideals which were before him.
+
+[Footnote 6: I have translated rather freely so as to give the general
+sense, as von Bülow's German is not always very easy to follow. It
+will be found in his comments upon Beethoven's _Fantasie_, Op. 77.]
+
+This is the secret of what is known as the modern German spirit--close
+attention to every detail, faithfulness to the work in hand, with the
+conviction that no part of the organism is so trifling as not to be
+vital. This it was, and not bookish education, that inspired the
+German army in its victories of 1870-71; this spirit it was that
+enabled the Meiningers in 1882 to fill our Drury Lane Theatre to
+overflowing with performances of our own Shakespeare in a foreign
+language. At the present day it still continues to actuate German
+trade and German handicrafts, while we English in our blindness think
+to dispose of it by cant phrases and sneers.
+
+To the nearer friends of his home-circle Wagner's personality must
+have been singularly attractive, from the intelligent sympathy which
+he showed with everything human, and from the irrepressible gaiety
+which never forsook him for long. In times of stress it helped those
+around him to tide through the most crushing disasters.
+
+Genius is not a thing apart by itself, severed from the rest of the
+world. Its one distinguishing mark is its intense humanity. If I may
+speak in paradox, the true poet is more truly ourselves than we are.
+The astronomical telescope is constructed upon the same principles as
+the terrestrial one, only it is more powerful and more perfectly made.
+Not only the lenses, but all the details of the mechanism are more
+highly finished; more thought and more labour are bestowed upon them;
+the parts are more skilfully co-ordinated together; it is a better
+instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with mental
+aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly human, than we are; more
+human in its virtues, in its faults, in its follies, above all, in its
+consummate beauty; only with its greater perfection the organism
+becomes more delicate, and is more easily injured. For genius is
+exposed to heavier strains than we are, because it is in uncongenial
+surroundings. If one part happen to be imperfect, if, as we say, "a
+screw be loose," the injury is more serious than in ordinary natures,
+and the exquisite adjustments may suffer in the rude handling of a
+stupid and clumsy environment, wrecking the whole system. This, and
+not natural proclivity, is the reason why genius so often shows a
+tendency to eccentric and abnormal conduct. The fault is with society,
+which feels instinctively that those who rise too high in excellence
+must be crushed. And this is the theme of every real tragedy. Othello,
+Lear, Njál, Grettir, Clarissa Harlowe, the Maid of Orleans, Antigone,
+Prometheus, and, as I hope to show, Tristan and Isolde, these are but
+a few among those who must perish from no fault in themselves, but
+because they are too noble for their surroundings.
+
+"The greater the man, the greater his love." We should not set the
+genius on a pedestal to be first gaped at and then ridiculed. He needs
+before all else our love and our sympathy; for his nature is
+essentially that of a child, and, childlike, he craves for human love
+as the first necessity of his life. To those who set up an idol of
+their own fancy and worship that as his image, he will be cold and
+repellent, but to those who know him as he really is he will return
+their love with all the warmth and purity of his childlike nature. Two
+things are intolerable to a healthy-minded child--rough brutality and
+mawkish caressing; Wagner was fated to endure a full share of both. It
+is touching to read of Wagner's simple affection for those who were
+around him in humble capacities. Every one who has read his life knows
+of his kindliness to his domestic servants. Now it is the village
+barber who is "gar zu theuer," now his gondola-man in Venice. His love
+for animals has been perhaps too much dwelt upon by his biographers,
+but it is very characteristic.
+
+Mankind is not divided into Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites; nor is it
+divided into Romanists and Protestants, nor into theologians and
+rationalists, nor into Tories and Radicals, nor into any other of our
+familiar party divisions. The true division is into great men and
+small, lovers of truth and sophists, honest men and thieves. Thieves
+and sophists wrangle, but the great and true "join hands through the
+centuries," and between them is eternal peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Wagner's Theoretical Writings
+
+
+Nothing probably has more tended to discredit Wagner's art with
+thoughtful people than the statement sometimes made by his following
+that he has created a new art. Wagner himself never made any such
+claim. When he speaks of a new indigenous art of pure German growth,
+he is merely contrasting it with the foreign art--Italian operas and
+French plays--upon which Germans had lived hitherto. When an art, like
+music or the drama, begins to flourish on a new soil, it is certain to
+exhibit new features, to show new developments, so that with respect
+to its external physiognomy it may in a sense be called new; but far
+truer is the very opposite statement, that Wagner's art is as old as
+art itself; its greatness lies not in any novelty of invention, but in
+his having developed the old forms into something dreamed of by his
+predecessors but never achieved before.
+
+We often hear about Wagner's "theories," as if he had composed his
+art-works in accordance with some theoretical scheme. After a fairly
+close study of Wagner's writings extending over a great many years I
+must confess my inability to say what his peculiar theories were. The
+employment of music as an element of the dramatic expression was no
+invention of Wagner. What he found out was how to maintain the
+different elements, words, acting, music, in a natural relation to one
+another in the drama. This is art, not theory; we learn it from his
+works, not from his writings. It is true that Wagner's writings
+contain many very interesting and valuable speculations on artistic
+problems. If these are his theories, he must have abjured them the
+moment that he set to work composing. In _Oper und Drama_, for
+example, he has a very interesting discussion on the value of
+consonants in the German language and on the characteristic difference
+between the expression of the consonant and that of the vowel,
+arriving at the conclusion that alliteration is better suited for the
+German musical drama than the imported rime. Further, he shows--rather
+convincingly, I think--that the true subject for the drama is
+mythical. But not long after this he wrote _Tristan und Isolde_,
+in which alliteration is generally discarded for rime or blank verse,
+and a little later _Meistersinger_, which is a comedy of domestic
+life, and has nothing to do with mythology. Then there are the
+_Leitmotivs_ which are used so methodically in the _Ring_
+that it would seem there must have been some preconceived system. But
+Wagner never once mentions _Leitmotivs_ in his writings, nor did
+he invent them. They have been dragged into the light by von Wolzogen,
+and whatever theories we have about them are due to him, not to
+Wagner.
+
+There is indeed one doctrine which runs through all his writings, and
+may be taken as their general text, namely, that art is not an
+amusement but a serious undertaking, consequently that purity and
+truthfulness are just as necessary in art as in actual life. It is no
+excuse for the artist who deceives to say that his work is "only
+poetry," and has no serious significance. He carried this exalted
+notion of the mission of art almost to excess, if such a thing is
+possible with so noble an idea, when he insisted upon art being a
+matter of national concern. All the serious mistakes which he made in
+his life, those acts which the sober judgment of his most ardent
+admirers must condemn as ill-advised, sprang from his desire to
+identify art with national life, for example, his part in the Saxon
+revolution of 1849, his proceedings in Munich, in 1865,[7] his
+attempts to influence Bismarck, etc.
+
+[Footnote 7: See Note I. at the end of this chapter.]
+
+Wagner's literary works are not easy reading; his German style, though
+grammatical and idiomatic, is generally very involved and obscure,
+often turgid. There is a want of self-discipline about the thought,
+and he is too hasty in committing ill-digested thoughts ill-arranged
+to print, while his style is full of tedious mannerisms, such as his
+constant use of futile superlatives for positives, the constant
+occurrence of certain words not always in their natural meaning, such
+as _Bewusstsein_, _Erlösung_, etc. It is in marked contrast
+to the lucid and finished workmanship of his dramatic and musical
+composition. His dislike for theoretical exposition, and the
+constraint under which he wrote are too manifest in his language.
+Nevertheless, the reader who perseveres will be rewarded. The
+fascination which Wagner's writings have for thinking minds is due to
+the importance of the problems involved. As Dannreuther has observed,
+wherever Wagner was brought to a stand a social problem lies buried;
+the problems which engage his attention are those which lie at the
+root of all art and all life. We may not always approve of the
+solutions which he offers, but we cannot fail to be interested. And as
+we travel on we gradually become aware of brilliant spots of verdure,
+passages here and there--sometimes sudden flashes, sometimes whole
+pages where the language and the thought are equally remarkable. What,
+for example, could be more admirable than this description of Mozart?
+
+  His artistic nature was as the unruffled surface of
+  a clear watery mirror to which the lovely blossom of
+  Italian music inclined to see, to know, to love itself
+  therein. It was but the surface of a deep and infinite
+  sea of longing and desire rising from fathomless depths
+  to gain form and beauty from the gentle greeting of the
+  lovely flower bending, as if thirsting to discover
+  in him the secret of its own nature.[8]
+
+Could any words give more concisely the peculiar character of the much
+misunderstood Mozart, "the most delicate genius of light and love,"
+"the most richly gifted of all musicians"? Does it not tell us more
+than all the outpourings of Oulibichef?
+
+[Footnote 8: _Ges. Schr._ (1872), iii. p. 304.]
+
+Or this, in speaking of the formation of the opera and the demand for
+better libretti after the period of Spontini?
+
+  The poet was ashamed to offer his master wooden
+  hobbies when he was able to mount a real steed and
+  knew quite well how to handle the bridle, to guide
+  the steed hither and thither in the well-trodden
+  riding-school of the opera. Without this musical
+  bridle neither musician nor poet would have dared to
+  mount him lest he should leap high over all the fences
+  away into his own wild and beautiful home in nature
+  itself.[9]
+
+I must apologize for these extracts to those of my readers who are
+able to follow the original, and I hope that others may yet feel
+something of the warmth of Wagner's language even in the feeble shadow
+of a very free paraphrase. Many more might be gathered from his works
+to show how vivid and forcible was Wagner's prose when he once threw
+off the restraint of cold logical reasoning. Other passages well
+worthy of perusal as specimens of his better style are the description
+of the theatrical sunset in _le Prophète_, and especially the
+admirably worked-out metaphor of the _Volkslied_ as a wild flower
+in vol. iii. of his collected works, pp. 309 and 372 seq.
+
+[Footnote 9: _Ges. Schr_., iii, p. 298.]
+
+Very different views have been expressed about Wagner in his capacity
+of philosopher. To some he appears as a verbose dilettante totally
+unable to put two ideas logically together, while others look up to
+him as a teacher of the profoundest truths. I cannot say that either
+view is wrong. On the one hand he possessed the deep insight which is
+the first qualification for a philosopher, but is found in so few; on
+the other he lacked the patience to express himself logically, feeling
+that in his art he wielded a far more powerful means of persuasion
+than logic. Those who persevere in studying his writings until they
+master what he really was aiming at cannot fail at last to admit that
+as philosopher he is at least suggestive, as art-critic he is amongst
+the very first of all times, worthy of a place beside Plato,[10]
+Lessing, Ruskin.
+
+[Footnote 10: See Note II. at end of this chapter.]
+
+A critical discussion of only the more important of the problems
+raised by Wagner would require not one volume but several. For the
+purpose of this book, which is only to help readers in understanding
+his works, I must confine myself to the one which directly bears upon
+his artistic production, namely, that of the organic union of all the
+arts into one supreme art, which as their crown and completion may be
+designated "art," as a universal, in distinction from the separate
+individual "arts." Such art, [Greek: kat' e'xochaen], can only be the
+drama, which already holds a position of its own above all the other
+arts from the fact that these only _depict_ or _describe_
+while the drama _represents_; its characters actually enact the
+events to be expressed, whence the expression is marked by a
+directness and vividness not possible to the other arts. The natural
+tendency which different arts show to unite and support each other is
+evident in many familiar phenomena, as, for example, illustrated
+books. Lessing, in his luminous essay, has traced the limits of the
+arts of depicting (painting and sculpture) and of describing (poetry).
+Painting with him is the art of rest, poetry that of movement.
+Wagner's theory asserts that each art, when it reaches its natural
+limits, tends to call in the help of another art to express what lies
+beyond its own domain. If the two are able to coalesce so as to become
+organically one, it will be found that the expressive power of each
+has been enormously enhanced by the union, just as the union of a man
+with a woman in marriage enhances the value of each for the community.
+
+With Lessing painting and sculpture are determined by the law of
+beauty (_Schönheit_); poetry is the wider art, including all the
+elements of painting, but not bound by the same restrictions. Who can
+forget his fine contrast of the howling Philoktetes in _Sophokles_ with
+the gently sighing Laokoon, both in mortal agony, but the latter unable
+to express his pain because, being in marble, he dared not distort his
+countenance? With Wagner the notion of beauty (_Schönheit_)[11]
+belongs by its very definition exclusively to the arts that address the
+sense of sight, painting and sculpture, and from them it has been
+transferred to music, but as a metaphor only. To speak literally of
+"beautiful music" would be a contradiction in terms.
+
+[Footnote 11: It should be noted that the German and English words,
+having a totally different origin, differ somewhat in meaning.
+"_Schönheit_" comes from "_schauen_," and has therefore
+reference to the sense of sight, while "beauty" is from the root of
+_bene_, _bonus_, and was originally a moral conception, not
+a sensual one at all. In modern language the meaning of the two words
+is practically identical, but the distinction is very important for
+the understanding of Wagner. _Schönheit_ with him means
+_sensual_ beauty.]
+
+The one aim of dramatic technique must always be to obtain the utmost
+clearness, truthfulness, and completeness of _expression_. I must
+confess that many years ago, when I first began the study of Wagner,
+filled with the enthusiastic Hellenism of Schiller, I was not a little
+startled at Wagner's apparent insistence upon truthful expression at
+the expense of beauty, and could not but feel that it was contradicted
+by every movement of his music. No doubt many others have felt the
+same hesitation; but there really is no cause for alarm. Wagner's is
+the true doctrine. Let us turn for a moment to another art, that of
+architecture, where the line of demarcation between decoration and
+construction is easy to recognize. Wagner's position, if applied to
+architecture, would be that the builder has only to consider how to
+construct in the best possible way to attain the purpose for which the
+building is intended, and elegance of external appearance must be
+subservient to that. If he do this skilfully, so that every part is
+seen to unite harmoniously with all the others to form an organic
+whole, there will emerge quite of itself a gracefulness, an artistic
+beauty, founded in truth, which are high above all intentionally
+constructed decoration. It is the beauty and truth of nature, that of
+adaptation to an end. There is no question of sacrificing euphony,
+melody, or anything at all; on the contrary, the doctrine declares
+that by right adaptation the expressive power and beauty of every part
+will be enhanced. The notion that Wagner's music is unmelodious had
+its origin in the bad musical ears of his early critics.
+
+The arts of design, i.e. painting, sculpture, and the kindred arts,
+are in space alone, and movement is excluded from them. The arts of
+expression, gesture, poetry, and music are all arts of movement in
+time. The first named, therefore, must necessarily take external
+beauty (_Schönheit_) as their sole guide and must confine their
+attention exclusively to the superficial appearance of the objects
+they imitate. They can only arrive at the inner character indirectly,
+through its external manifestation, and in the hands of an inferior
+artist the step is an easy one to pretence and falsehood. Defective
+construction can easily be hidden beneath an outer covering of
+graceful forms which distract the eye from noticing the weakness and
+falsehood beneath. We need only look around us at the decoration of
+any modern drawing-room to find gross examples of such perversion of
+art. This explains Wagner's mistrust--noticeable especially in his
+earlier writings--of the arts of design with their principle of
+beauty. An artist who possesses true poetic inspiration will be in no
+danger of falling into errors of this kind; with him external beauty
+is expression of inner goodness, as it is in nature, who never covers
+up defects by external ornament.
+
+We have therefore to recognize two distinct kinds of beauty in art,
+two kinds of pleasure that we experience: external, with which
+painting and sculpture are alone directly concerned--beauty in the
+narrow sense; and inner or organic. Wagner has expressed it in a
+sentence which defies even a free translation. Speaking of the lovely
+melodies of the Italian opera he says: "_Nicht das schlagende Herz
+der Nachtigall begriff man, sondern nur ihren Kehlschlag_." Men
+cared only for the pleasing sound of the nightingale's voice, nothing
+for the beating heart from which it sprang.
+
+We are now able to understand his famous doctrine that the drama is
+the end, music the means, and therefore secondary. In the Italian
+opera the relation was reversed; music was made the end, the drama
+being only a vehicle for the music. This is dramatically wrong, and
+has led to a false and unnatural form of art; in the drama music can
+only be a means of dramatic expression.
+
+It is necessary here to enter a caution against a very serious
+misunderstanding into which many of Wagner's critics have fallen, a
+misunderstanding very natural to those who look upon the drama as a
+literary production. It has been supposed that Wagner intended to
+subordinate the music to the poetry, as if the function of music were
+to illustrate and vivify the more definite thought contained in the
+words. This view has been held by many critics, from Aristotle
+onwards. It was the view of Gluck, and will be found formulated in the
+_épître dédicatoire_ prefixed to his _Alceste_. Wagner's theory is
+essentially different and is peculiarly his own. With him the _drama_
+denotes, not the text-book, but the actual performance on the stage,
+in which there are three co-ordinate elements, acting, words, and
+music, not one of which is subordinate to the others, but all of equal
+value, expressing different sides of the dramatic subject-matter. Of
+the inability of words in themselves to inspire music, he is very
+emphatic: "No verses of a poet, not even of a Goethe or a Schiller,
+can determine the music. The drama alone can do this, i.e. not the
+dramatic poem, but the actual drama as it moves before our eyes as
+the visible counterpart of the music."
+
+In order to be effective the union of the three elements must be
+_organic_, and I must now explain what is meant. When we speak of
+a work of art as an _organism_ we mean that the different parts
+of which it is composed co-operate together towards the purpose of the
+whole in such a way that not one of them is superfluous or could be
+dispensed with. It resembles in this respect the products of nature,
+and life, which is only a complex form of organized activity. In the
+higher natural products, especially those we speak of as
+_living_, the single parts are not dead weights, but are
+themselves organisms, containing within them individual and complete
+systems of living forces, acting independently, and at the same time,
+as subordinate units contributing to the purpose of the whole, so that
+shortly we may say that, as each part is conditioned by the whole, so
+the whole is conditioned by the single parts. When a person loses a
+limb, and has it replaced by an artificial one, his first impression
+is of the enormous weight of the new limb, although it may only weigh
+about a quarter of the old one. This is explained by the fact that the
+new limb is a dead weight, whereas the former one was a living
+organism. That is to say, when he lifted it, the nervous impulses
+transmitted from the brain were sustained and enforced by forces
+within the limb itself; being alive it _helped_ in the effort,
+whereas the mechanical limb, however perfect its adaptation, will
+always remain a piece of dead mechanism, a separate thing from the
+body to which it is attached and simply opposing its own inertia to
+the nervous effort.
+
+In the _mechanical_ joining together of parts, each remains
+isolated; if one be abstracted the others remain as they were, while
+in an _organic_ union they combine to a whole, and if one be
+withdrawn the whole is destroyed, or at least vitally impaired. This
+furnishes us with a criterion for the technical construction of every
+work of art, whatever it be; each single part must contribute its
+share towards the whole; there must be nothing superfluous. The work
+has an idea to express; if we find (in a drama, for example) that no
+scene, no single speech even, or sentence, can be omitted without
+impairing the work as a whole, and weakening its expression, then the
+work is technically as perfect as it can possibly be made; its value
+will then depend only on that of the idea to be expressed.
+
+Now let us turn to Wagner's criticism of the sunrise scene in _le
+Prophète_, which I mentioned a few pages back, in the first part of
+_Oper und Drama_.[12] Here was a unique opportunity for a great
+dramatic artist. After the representation, not unskilfully contrived,
+of the victorious career of a young and aspiring hero, in the supreme
+moment of his destiny, the sun rises, adding its glory to his triumph,
+as if the very heavens were shedding their blessing upon the deeds of
+a noble man;--so it might have been. But Meyerbeer and Scribe care
+nothing for that; such is not the effect either felt by the audience
+or intended by the poet. The latter had nothing higher in his mind
+than a grand spectacular effect, which may be omitted without the rest
+of the drama being any the worse, and the result is in the worst sense
+theatrical, but not poetic--"effect without a cause."
+
+[Footnote 12: _Ges. Schr., iii, p. 372.]
+
+Compare with this the scene in the third act of _Parsifal_. The
+verdant landscape is here no mere theatrical decoration; if it were,
+we should scarcely go into a theatre to see what can be seen in far
+greater perfection in any green place on a spring morning. It is the
+dramatic representation of an idea perhaps suggested to Wagner by
+Goethe's _Faust_, but as old as Christianity itself. The task is
+achieved; the spear has been regained, and all nature smiling in its
+flowery robes rejoices in the redemption of that Easter morning; even
+the withered flower-maidens add their strains to the universal chorus.
+How is such a miracle possible? Only by music in organic union with
+the dramatic situation. Persuasive as a living person it is able to
+carry us into realms far beyond those of language and reason, to the
+realm of wonder. The decorations of the Grand Opéra are as artificial
+and mechanical as modern dress; they are imposed by the fashion of the
+day, the caprice of the luxurious, and stand in no relation to the
+body to which they are fitted.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: Those who are interested in the subject will find some
+admirable observations in Lessing's _Hamburger Dramaturgie_,
+11tes. and 12tes. Stück, where the critic compares the ghost of Ninus
+in Voltaire's _Semiramis_ with the ghost in _Hamlet_. He
+condemns the former because it is nothing more than a poetical
+machine, while Shakespeare's is one of the persons of the drama. His
+position is essentially the same as Wagner's.]
+
+The loose construction of the Italian opera has at least one
+advantage; it can be trimmed to suit the local exigencies of
+performance. With the new drama this was impossible. Wagner's
+insistent refusal to permit any mutilation of his work always appeared
+to Intendants and Impresarii who were anxious to meet him halfway like
+monstrous egotism. What Rossini and Meyerbeer had always consented to
+without the smallest hesitation might, they thought, content a Richard
+Wagner. The reports of the Intendants to their respective Governments,
+of Lüttichau in the forties, of Royer in Paris in 1861, show how far
+the authorities were from understanding the nature either of the work
+which they were undertaking or of the man with whom they had to deal.
+Rossini and Meyerbeer had never had any other aim than their own
+personal success; with Wagner the integrity of his art was far above
+all personal considerations. On this point no concession on the
+composer's side was possible. You may take five shillings out of a
+sovereign and there still remain fifteen shillings, but if you take a
+wheel from a watch the whole mechanism is destroyed; it was just this
+that distinguished his productions from operas, and in conceding the
+principle that they might be trimmed he would have surrendered
+everything.
+
+It might seem superfluous to have dwelt so long upon a point which,
+when clearly laid out, can scarcely be controverted, were it not that
+it has been continually misunderstood, not only by nearly everybody at
+the present day, but even by critics of the rank of Gluck, Goethe, and
+Grillparzer. To speak either of music as enforcing the words or of the
+words as forming a basis for musical expression is to place one of
+them--in the former case music, in the latter the words--in an
+inferior position towards the other, whereas they are organic parts of
+the whole, and co-equals. Wherever either principle is adopted it will
+result in that very looseness of construction which is the vital
+infirmity of the Italian opera. And the poetry will be of the kind
+fashionable with some literary people under the name "lines for
+music," the principle of which seems to be Voltaire's: _Ce qui est
+trop sot pour etre dit, on le chante_. Once the principle of
+organic unity is conceded as the first and most vital condition of a
+work of art, the rest of Wagner's doctrine follows directly. The
+governing whole is the drama, the thing to be enacted in its actual
+representation on the stage, and the different elements, gesture,
+music, words, are the instruments of its expression, to be so
+co-ordinated together that each shall express just that which it alone
+is able to express and no more. The first outcome of the union when
+rightly and skilfully effected is to impart the one quality which is
+the final and only aim of all artistic technique--clearness of
+expression. The new drama can represent not only higher ideas, but can
+express them more intelligibly than that which uses words alone.
+
+It will now perhaps be asked why these three particular arts and no
+others have been selected for dramatic purposes. Because they are the
+three ways in which all living beings utter their thoughts. They have
+belonged together from the beginning, and still do so; they have
+parted company for a time, but have never been divorced.
+
+Before considering this it will be well for me to explain some terms
+which I shall have to use in the following. Poetry has commonly been
+divided into "lyric", "epic," and "dramatic"; these terms answer to
+three different phases of expression. Lyric poetry is the purely
+subjective emotion of the poet uttering itself in words. Epic poetry
+on the other hand deals with things and people external to the poet.
+The drama is, as we have seen, not poetry at all; the actors perform
+the acts themselves, using words only to explain the reasons for their
+acts; dramatic poetry therefore involves both lyric and epic elements.
+
+The most primitive, most natural, and simplest means by which a living
+being can utter itself is gesture--action. It is not necessary to
+speculate on prehistoric conditions. We need only observe the world
+around us, the behaviour of our friends and acquaintances,
+particularly those of South-European blood, to recognize how direct
+and eloquent is the expression of gesture. On the stage a simple
+series of dramatic actions can be fully represented by gesture and
+scenery alone with a very high intensity of emotional expression.
+
+All movement in nature is rhythmic. I need not trouble my readers with
+the evidences of a fact which is well known in science, but will refer
+them to the lucid demonstration in Herbert Spencer's _First
+Principles_, Pt. II., ch. 10.
+
+Rhythmic gesture then, or dancing, is the most primitive art, and it
+is purely lyric, i.e. subjective. It is very important to bear this
+fact of dancing, of which acting is only a species, as the primitive
+form of art before our minds. It is common to men and animals. I have
+often wondered whether the extraordinary development of Wagner's
+histrionic faculty did not stand in some mysterious relation to the
+close sympathy which existed between him and that most consummate of
+all actors--the dog.
+
+The vital activity of the throat and vocal cords becomes sound; song
+may therefore be considered as a peculiarly specialized form of
+gesture, but with the radical difference that as a vehicle of
+expression it addresses the ear, not the eye. The fact that it enters
+the brain through a different channel gives the art of sound an
+entirely different character from that of gesture proper; moreover,
+from being in time only, not in space, it is apprehended more
+immediately by the inner sense, and the impression received is more
+intimate, more forcible. Still it retains the same lyric or subjective
+character.
+
+It was, I believe, Lord Monboddo who first observed that inarticulate
+sound, music in its most primitive form, is the earliest form of
+utterance, and is prior to language. Lord Monboddo's researches into
+the origin and progress of language (1773) were valued so highly by
+Herder that they were at his instance translated into German. The
+conclusion at which he arrived, that the most primitive form of
+utterance is not language but music, that language grew out of song
+just as the art of writing grew out of picture-painting, is especially
+valuable from the fact that it was afterwards adopted by Charles
+Darwin.[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: Descent of Man, Pt. III., ch. 19. The whole of that part
+of the chapter may be read in this connection. Unfortunately, the
+speculations are somewhat vitiated by the _idée fixe_ of modern
+science that everything must be referred to "courtship." i.e.
+sexuality.]
+
+The "music" which Darwin and Lord Monboddo conceive as the vocal
+expression of primitive man is of course not the highly-wrought
+product which we now understand under that term; we may suppose it to
+have been _rhythmic_ but not _metric_. It was nearer to the
+cries of wild animals, and to some it may seem at first absurd to
+describe such sounds as music at all. I do not think so; on the
+contrary I find in the cries of some animals and many birds all the
+essential qualities of music. They have tone, rhythm, cadence, in a
+very high degree, and also melody, though vague and rudimentary. The
+essential difference between melody and mere succession of sounds
+consists in its being intelligible, that is, in its conforming to a
+scale or musical scheme of some sort, but that scale is not
+necessarily the one recognized in modern music. Our ears are so
+accustomed to associate melody with a certain diatonic scale, and with
+accompanying harmony, actual or potential, that it is very difficult
+for us to comprehend as melody successions which do not conform to
+that scheme, as, for example, the melodies of Oriental nations, the
+scales of which are far more complex and difficult to understand than
+ours. It is a very remarkable fact that while the course of evolution
+is generally from simpler to more complex organisms, that of the
+musical scale is just the reverse. Primitive scales are highly
+complex, and involve intervals not appreciable by us as melody; with
+time they gradually become simpler; and in the diatonic scale,
+especially in its most modern developments, where the distinction
+between major and minor tends to become effaced,[15] we seem to have
+reached the limit, and the scale is reduced to the simplest possible
+numerical relations. However this may be, I know that to a person who
+has lived in close converse with nature and possesses a musical ear
+the cries of wild animals and birds are full of melody in the strict
+sense, though it is rudimentary and different from that of our
+concert-rooms. And it is reasonable to suppose that man, when he first
+emerged with far more highly organized faculties than any beast, would
+gradually raise his musical expression into something higher,
+something more melodious, than that of other creatures. Particularly
+as his reason developed he would devise a scale; the rhythms would
+become more definite and at the same time more varied and complex. The
+result of these improvements would be to make his utterances more
+intelligible.
+
+[Footnote 15: Such is the deduction which I draw from recent theories
+of harmony. See in this connection _Neue musikatische Theorien und
+Phantasien_ (Stuttgart, 1906), § 40. Also Louis and Thuille,
+_Harmonielehre_ (1908), especially Pt. I., ch. 6. The idea can be
+traced back to Hauptmann.]
+
+Helmholtz has observed that there is much more in a musical sound than
+its mere _timbre_, and Wagner has noticed how every musical
+instrument has not only its vowel sound, or _timbre_, but also
+its peculiar consonant. We need not go so far as to connect the flute
+with an "f," the trumpet with a "t," etc., since the instrumental
+consonants need not conform exactly with those of the alphabet; it is
+enough that each instrument has its own characteristic way of
+attacking the tone. So we gain the idea of articulation; the point of
+its entry into the musical expression marks the beginning of
+_language_.
+
+Hitherto the expression has been, as we have seen, purely lyric; the
+lower animals have no other. But as man rises out of his bestial
+condition and acquires reason his wants become more numerous and
+diverse. The mere expression of his inner feelings no longer suffices;
+he differentiates objects in the external world, and needs
+sounds--names--to express them. For this he utilizes the newly
+developed faculty of language. It is the most momentous crisis of his
+development, the point where he becomes a human being, severed by a
+wide gap from other animals, and incomparably above them. The mark of
+language has from the first rightly been made the _crux_ of the
+theory of the evolution of man; it is the natural inevitable outcome
+of his developing the faculty of reason. Thus the need for
+communicating the perceptions of external objects calls forth
+_epic_ expression.[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: "Auf das was vor mir steht zeige ich; was in mir vorgeht
+drücke ich durch Töne und Gebehrden aus; was aber abwesend oder einst
+geschah bedarf, wenn es vernehmlich werden soll einer zusammenhangend
+geordneten Rede. So ward das Epos."--Herder, _Kalligone_.]
+
+We may now lay down a scheme of the three fundamental vehicles of
+human expression based on their historical development. We have
+
+  _Emotional or subjective:_
+      Gesture--obvious and material.
+      Music--warmer, deeper, and more spiritual.
+  _Rational or objective:_
+      Language.
+
+But a warning must be added against pressing this classification
+unduly. All schemes of nature are only approximate; there are no such
+sharply divided compartments into which our notions may be
+pigeon-holed. Language may of course be intensely emotional, but we
+may notice that just in proportion as it becomes emotional it calls in
+the aid of music; the voice becomes melodious, it develops rhythm,
+accent, cadence, and ultimately becomes poetry, which is language
+united with a large element of music.
+
+Students of economic science have of recent years given attention to
+ethnology, and their researches into the origin and primitive
+characteristics of labour have brought to light some facts which are
+very interesting to us. The familiar distinction between _work_
+and _play_ has no root in nature. Animals do not look upon their
+labours as a painful task, only to be endured for a time and then to
+be rewarded by an interval of diversion; to the horse or the dog the
+day's work is the day's treat; and so with those men whom we
+contemptuously call "savages." It is the same with artists; no artist
+has mastered the technique of his work until it has become a pleasure
+and a plaything to him. There could not be a more significant comment
+on the unnaturalness of a civilization in which periods of leisure for
+the workman have to be wrung from the community by legislation. The
+true workman, like the true artist, is never happy unless he is at
+work; he needs no diversion.
+
+Of the greatest interest to us are the results of the inquiries of
+economists into the relations between work, rhythm, and song amongst
+primitive people. Especially valuable is a treatise by Dr. Karl
+Bucher, professor of national economy in Leipzig, entitled _Arbeit
+und Rhythmus_, which ought to find many readers in England if it
+were translated. I know few modern books that are more fascinating,
+and it would be hard to say whether its charm lies more in its solid
+scientific method or in its admirable literary presentation and apt
+illustrations from the delicate verse-song of the most primitive
+peoples.
+
+"_Im Anfang war der Rhythmus_." According to Dr. Bücher, all
+work, when efficient, tends to be rhythmic and each kind of work has
+its peculiar rhythm. This is especially the case when the labour is
+carried out in common by a number of people, and the rhythm is
+embodied in a song, or rhythmic word of command sung by the leader.
+Innumerable instances will at once occur to everybody--rowing,
+hauling, marching, sewing, mowing, etc. In primitive people the
+impulse to sing the rhythm is even more marked than it is among
+ourselves, with whom the pressure of civilization helps to suppress
+all natural expression of feeling, and the disturbance of so many
+cross rhythms tends to obliterate the primary pulsations. The rhythm
+is an essential part of the work, and not a mere ornamental adjunct;
+people sing, not to "keep their spirits up," but to help on the work;
+until the workman has acquired the rhythm he works imperfectly, and
+tires very quickly. Those forms of work which do not admit rhythm,
+such as adding figures, copying MSS., etc., are the most fatiguing.
+Still more so is labour where the natural rhythm is subject to
+frequent interruptions. Hence walking in the streets of a town is much
+more wearying than walking in the country; you have to break the
+rhythm at every few steps and never get the "swing." The constant
+interruptions of rhythm by goods in shop-windows, advertisements,
+etc., is, I am sure, largely the cause of nervous degeneracy in towns.
+
+It cannot surprise us to find that amongst primitive people dancing is
+the most universal occupation. All dance, dance to frenzy. Originally
+the dance does not express joy or any other emotion; it is simply the
+human impulse to activity, work, the most fundamental thing in human
+nature. From the dance rhythm finds its way into music and poetry,
+both being in the beginning intended to accompany dancing. One thing
+is certain, that neither music nor the dance originated in sexuality.
+Eroticism scarcely ever occurs in the poetry of primitive peoples. It
+enters at a later stage.
+
+It is not necessary to trace how, out of these primitive beginnings,
+there grew the ancient drama of the more civilized countries, always
+retaining the three elements from which it had sprung in closest
+union. Speaking of the Indian drama in the time of the semi-mythical
+Bharata, the Indian Thespis, Sir Monier Williams writes:
+
+  The drama of these early times was probably
+  nothing more than the Indian Nautch of the present
+  day. It was a species of rude pantomime, in which
+  dancing and movements of the body were accompanied
+  by mute gestures of the hands and face, or by singing
+  and music. _Subsequently dialogue was added_....
+
+In Greece the early lyric epoch is represented by the Paians,
+Dithyrambs, etc., at the festivals of Apollo and Dionysos, rhythmic
+dances to accompaniment of cithara or flute, with words generally
+improvised. Out of the Bacchic dithyrambs grew the tragedy. In the
+works of the great Attic tragedians the chorus, or dance-song, which
+had descended from earlier times still remained the principal feature
+of the representation. It was the drama that crystallized out of the
+music and dance, not the music that was called in to support or adorn
+the drama. Not until the time of Euripides did the chorus become a
+secondary element of the representation, and from this time on the
+drama begins to decline, becoming more and more a literary product.
+
+It would be a worthy undertaking for a competent student to set
+himself the task of bringing order into the chaos of Wagner's
+theoretical writings. They are crowded with thoughts of the deepest
+import, which seem to point the way to further inquiry, but which
+remain suggestions only. The most tiresome quality in Wagner's
+literary style is that he scarcely ever comes to the point. Whenever
+he asserts a rule in clear and unmistakable language, it is either
+brought in almost parenthetically amidst a mass of rhetoric, or--as,
+for example, in the dictum of music being a means to the dramatic
+end--he treats it with scorn, as something too obvious to be stated.
+In either case its chances of gaining the reader's attention are
+seriously diminished by such wrong method. A student who should
+undertake the task of ordering his thought would need to possess, in
+addition to the highest musical and dramatic qualifications a
+metaphysical habit of mind such as is rare at the present day, and a
+sympathetic capacity for discerning the grains of golden truth amidst
+the dross. He must construct anew. Wagner's theoretical edifice will
+not stand as it is; it is too loosely jointed; but the materials are
+valuable. That there will ever be a real science of aesthetics I do
+not believe; art would cease to be art if it lost its mystery. For the
+present at least we must be content to remain in darkness as to the
+precise conditions of musical expression, and eschew theory. That
+music does reveal the nature of things in a way different from words
+can scarcely be questioned. So, too, does all nature through its
+silent music reveal more than meets the senses. But we cannot say
+exactly how or why. Enough that the divine reason whereby the world is
+fashioned is not the same as our human reason, and will not be forced
+into its forms.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+I
+
+LUDWIG II. AND WAGNER
+
+Although I have no intention of defending the extravagances of the
+Wittelsbach kings and may say at once that my sympathies are entirely
+with the patriotic citizens of Munich who in 1865 succeeded in turning
+Wagner out of a position which he ought never to have held, it is only
+fair to point out that even from the standpoint of material gain the
+lavish expenditure of those art-loving princes has proved a splendid
+investment, of which the results may now be seen. What is it that has
+enabled Munich to double its population in about twenty years and has
+raised it from being a rather sleepy old-fashioned German town to its
+present flourishing condition and made it the most delightful capital
+in Europe, a meeting-place for the cultured of every country of Europe
+and America? What else but the art-collections and musical
+performances? Had Wagner then succeeded in founding his art-school and
+theatre, with Semper, the builder of Dresden, as his architect, and
+his own supreme mind directing the whole, who can say what the result
+might have been?
+
+
+II
+
+PLATO AS AN ART-CRITIC
+
+I ought to say here that I find nothing more admirable in Plato than
+his criticism of poetry, and I cannot understand the difficulties
+which scholars find in his treatment of artists in the _Republic_
+and elsewhere. After all, scholars have as a rule little experience of
+any art that lies outside the narrow range of their own studies.
+Plato's remarks appear to me the perfection of common sense. Would any
+sane statesman, when devising such a revolutionary political scheme as
+is contemplated in the _Republic_, not take the opportunity of
+putting a bridle upon the mischievous vapourings of political poets,
+reformers, dreamers, schemers, _et hoc genus omne_? It should
+never be forgotten that the poet with the attractive fascination which
+he possesses in his art is an enormous power in society, all the more
+dangerous because his power is so subtle, and his doctrines not in
+themselves untrue. Can it be doubted that our own Byrons and Shelleys,
+with their frothy extravagances about freedom, have largely
+contributed both to the socialism and to the libertinism with which
+the politics of every nation in Europe are now infected? Even the
+great Schiller was led astray by the false watchwords of his time, and
+highly as I revere Goethe I cannot deny that the sensuality of his
+poetry has had a most baneful influence upon modern Germany. Many more
+might be named, and the subject is well worthy of fuller treatment.
+With regard to Schiller, however, it ought to be explained that
+"freedom" at that time in Germany meant only one thing, freedom from
+the foreign tyrant--Napoleon.
+
+Remember that it is not all poets whom Plato wishes to banish, not
+those who feel the responsibility of their high calling, but only a
+certain class. Nowadays poets do not slander the gods; it is not worth
+their while, because nobody believes in the gods. They have other ways
+of undermining society. Plato everywhere shows an unerring feeling for
+art. Aristotle is a recorder and classifier, but no critic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ROOTS OF GERMAN MUSIC
+
+
+Dr. Milman, in his great _History of Christianity_, observes that
+no religious revolution has ever been successful which has commenced
+with the Government. Such revolutions have ever begun in the middle or
+lower orders of society. The same is true of other branches of the
+intellectual life of man. Neither Governments nor academies and
+schools can ever originate anything new in art, politics, language.
+All growth springs from the unsophisticated masses; growth is organic,
+from below. The blossom must fade, and the seed fall to the earth
+before it can bring forth new life. Academical training concerns
+itself with the models of the past; its useful work consists in
+criticizing, purifying, directing the raw material into something
+higher, better, more useful than it was in the rough, as the gardener
+produces new and better varieties; but it can no more originate than
+the gardener can create new plants; and in perfecting it often
+emasculates.
+
+The reason why the Elizabethan drama is so infinitely more impressive
+than the technically more perfect drama of the Restoration is that it
+is steeped in nature and reality, whereas the later stage represents
+men and women under the fashionable conventions of polite society.
+"The people" indeed includes high as well as low, but none but the
+very strongest natures--a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, a Goethe--can
+endure the stress of Court favour. Where the national nourishment from
+below is deficient, an elegant artificial semblance may indeed be
+forced; but it is felt to be wanting in root and to lack that
+spontaneity and universality which are the very life's breath of all
+true art and specially mark the art of the people.
+
+In England culture has severed itself entirely from popular life. The
+very word "popular," unlike the German _volksthümlich_, carries
+the notion of vulgarity. Yet the lower classes among themselves are
+never vulgar; they only become so when they copy the manners of those
+above them, and their poetry is the very reverse of what we understand
+by that word. The _Volkslied_ exhales the very perfume of nature.
+It may be uncouth, harsh, weather-beaten, but the perfume remains, and
+it is never offensive like the modern music-hall song, which is the
+_Volkslied_ of a class that tries to ape its social superiors.
+
+All, or nearly all, our foremost English poets of recent times have
+been products of that system of public school and university education
+which is justly the pride of modern English upper-class life.
+Admirable in many ways as this system is, it is essentially one of
+artificial forcing. The routine is rigidly prescribed by fashion, and
+is so devised as entirely to exclude all intimate fellowship with the
+common people. Nature and reality have no part in English scholastic
+life; "good form" and "sound scholarship" count for more than the
+heart of man. That such a system fosters character and produces
+first-rate men of action and rulers is undeniable, but it is fatal to
+poetry, and the poetry which we produce is what might be
+expected--refined, highly polished, but artificial and wanting in
+sincerity. It bears the same relation to true poetry that etiquette
+and polished manners do to truth and nature. To realize the difference
+between the poetry of the school and the poetry of nature compare the
+faultless English and elegant sweetness of the Idylls of the King with
+the vigorous and expressive, but often ungrammatical, prose of
+Mallory, or compare Virgil with Homer, Horace with Sappho, a chorale
+by Mendelssohn with a chorale by Bach. Or compare a modern refrain
+dragged in for no other reason than because the poet has felt that the
+form requires a refrain of some kind and has tried to find one that is
+suitable--compare such a refrain by Morris or Rossetti with
+
+  In the spring time,
+  The only pretty ring time
+  When birds do sing,
+  Hey ding a ding ding.
+
+sung in the very joy of its heart by a childlike and poetic soul. Both
+are poetry: but one is poetry of the drawing-room, the other of the
+fields and forests; one is pretence, the other reality; the latter is
+hardly poetry at all, and cannot be criticized logically; it is rather
+human feeling finding its natural expression in verse of greater or
+less perfection according to the skill of the versifier, but always
+truthful, never posing, using no sophistic formulas, meaning just what
+it says.
+
+These preliminary remarks were necessary because I am sure that it is
+to the narrow notions of classical elegance prevailing in England, and
+to the want of sympathy with nature and the children of nature, that
+so many fail to understand Wagner. German art, at least all that was
+produced before the Franco-German war, is redolent of nature. When
+reading a volume of typically German songs such as _des Knaben
+Wunderhorn_ (whether they are technically genuine _Volkslieder_ or
+not, is of no consequence) one feels as if one were walking through
+a German forest. Even in the art which is necessarily confined within
+a room the artist's mind seems to be wandering outside, and the
+portrait-painter will admit through some open window or crevice a
+breeze from field and forest beyond. In the same spirit the musicians,
+and particularly the most German of all, Bach, Haydn, Schubert,
+Beethoven, delight in the rhythms of the popular dance. Of all modern
+composers Wagner was the most _volksthümlich_; the roots of his
+art are in the _Volks-Sage_, the _Volkslied_, and the dance, and the
+masses have always been true to him. He makes it his boast that while
+intellectuals were raging and warning men not to heed his siren-tones,
+the public in Germany, France, Italy, England, wherever the
+performance was tolerably adequate, paid no heed, but invariably met
+him with the warmest enthusiasm.
+
+Jakob Grimm, in his essay on the _Meistergesang_, illustrates the
+deep and pensive innocence of the _Volkslied_ by the story of the
+infant Krishna, into whose mouth his mother looked and beheld within
+him the measureless glories of heaven and earth while the child
+continued its unconscious, careless play. "Such," he continues, "is
+the completeness (Ganzheit) of Nature as compared with the halfness
+(Halbheit) of human effort."
+
+The condition for the growth of truly popular art is that society
+shall present a coherent whole, the upper and lower classes united in
+a bond of common sympathy with a feeling of brotherhood between them.
+English society was not always so divided as we see it now. We possess
+a wealth of popular song which has come down to us from mediaeval
+times, a heritage nobler than that of any other nation; But can it be
+said that our national life is in the smallest degree inspired by
+these songs? They have indeed latterly become a fashion; we collect
+them, arrange them with pianoforte accompaniments, listen to them at
+concerts. It is a mere fashionable craze, like that for "the simple
+life," and differs in no whit from that ridiculed by Wagner in the
+Italian opera, and in Meyerbeer, as an attempt to extract the perfume
+from the wild flower that we may have it conveniently to put upon our
+pocket handkerchiefs and carry about with us, to enjoy the sweets of
+nature and care nothing for the soul. To know the _Volkslied_ we
+must descend from our fine palaces, and know it in the place where it
+grows, and become one with them who brought it forth. We must live
+their life, must learn so see what they see, to love what they love,
+if we would understand their language.
+
+Precisely parallel is the art in which the English genius specially
+delighted, architecture. Noble and simple, learned and lewd, severed
+by the Conquest, were united in the church, and our cathedrals are in
+the truest sense the creations of the people. Like the _Volkslieder_,
+like the great epics and the Icelandic Sagas, these works are anonymous.
+No one knows, and no one seems to have cared, who made them. They were
+built for the glory of God, not for that of man.
+
+In about the twelfth century in Germany the whole community was one
+body, scarcely differentiated into classes as regards their
+Intellectual life. There were masters and servants, noblemen and
+plebeians, as now, but they followed the same ends, received the same
+education, and shared the same amusements. The _Volk_ was the
+entire community, from the prince on the throne to the village child.
+Literary education was confined to the clerical orders. The word
+"ballad," which is, or was, the English equivalent of _Volkslied_,
+signifies a dance, and at this early period the bond between dance and
+song was still intact; the song was danced, and the dance sung to, as
+it is to this day in the Shetland and Faroe islands, and in parts of
+Norway and elsewhere. The ballad was a popular composition, in the sense
+just described, but this does not mean that ballads grew up of
+themselves, as wild flowers. Each owed its origin to some poet, who
+composed music and words together. But the people who sang it cared
+little for the personality of the poet; so long as his song was a good
+one it was received and sung, but he was forgotten. Nor did they show
+much respect for his text or tune; they trimmed both as they pleased, cut
+away what they did not like, added and altered, changed names, turned
+sense into nonsense, or less often nonsense into sense, moved by their
+sweet will alone. It can be seen going on now in Germany among
+students and foresters, and in all places where they sing. In a society
+where men are free to follow their own natural bent, their minds
+uncorrupted by books, the public taste is generally not only healthy, but
+often very dainty and critical. They will find at least what they like
+themselves, and have no need to consult any one else. Thus the
+_Volkslied_ was the creation as it was the property of the people in
+just the same sense as were our mediaeval churches. The fact that the
+authors are not recognizable is vital for this kind of art.
+
+The recreations of the people at this time were "_Sagen, Singen,
+Tanzen_," story-telling, singing, dancing, in which all joined,
+high and low together; no others were known. At the close of the
+twelfth century, a great change began to take place in German song,
+partly through the influence of foreign troubadours, but far more
+owing to changes in social conditions. The reviving interest in
+letters is indicated by the founding of universities in Italy and
+France, by the publication of cyclopedias and other educational
+treatises. There arises a cultured class outside the Church. When the
+nobleman received a scholastic education, and consequently could form
+a literary circle of his own, he began to look down upon the ignorant
+rustic and popular poetry was affected accordingly. The Courts
+attracted a special class of professional singers, the _Minnesingers_,
+and it was natural that the more talented among the people should be no
+longer content to blossom unknown, but should seek engagement at the
+Courts where they were honoured and paid. Thus the _Volk_ was
+drained of its talent; the poet becomes famous, art loses its native
+innocence and becomes more like what we see it now, where the name
+of the poet is of more consideration than the pleasure to be derived from
+the poem.
+
+The Court poets of the thirteenth century do not here concern us for
+their own sake. Their song was short-lived and eventually withered
+under the degenerate _Meistersingers_. But their work was not
+lost.
+
+With the decline of chivalry and the disappearance of Court life as a
+thing apart the _Volkslied_ began once more to flower. From the
+fourteenth century to the sixteenth song was universal, and it is from
+this time that the ballads of our collections are mostly gathered. But
+now its character has changed; the short period of fashionable
+prosperity has not failed to leave its mark. Words, music, and dance
+are no longer bound together in such close alliance. The first to part
+company from the rest to begin an independent existence is always the
+text, which becomes literary poetry for silent perusal or recitation.
+Song is then no longer poetry set to music, but rather music
+accompanied by verse. Instead of the two being co-ordinate, music is
+now first, and the words are only its vehicle. The change was very
+gradual, but the _Volkslied_ in its latest and most complete
+development is practically an instrumental composition, retaining,
+however, its bond with the past on the one hand through the words, on
+the other through the _canto fermo_ in the tenor, the familiar
+ancient tune round which the counterpoint was woven in a kind of
+canonical imitation, first (fifteenth century) in three parts then
+(sixteenth) in four, but always with the _canto fermo_ in
+rhythmic contrast to the rest of the composition. It has been pointed
+out by Liliencron[17] that what appears at first sight to be rhythmic
+chaos in the polyphonic _Volkslied_ is really a highly artistic
+and effective device for bringing the _canto fermo_--the ancient
+tune--into prominence; whilst the other voices are generally in
+_tempus imperfectum_ or square time, the tenor is in some other
+contrasting rhythm. The standard of musical education must have been
+exceedingly high at this period in Germany, since we hear of these
+difficult compositions being sung, not only at concerts and festivals,
+but in private circles as a common recreation. Indeed, as Sir H. Parry
+has observed,[18] the practice of combining several tunes is by no
+means so uncommon among people destitute of all musical training as
+might be expected. At the present day in Germany, a girl of the lower
+classes may often be heard singing at her work while her companion
+adds an extempore part with considerable skill.
+
+[Footnote 17: _Deutsches Leben im Volkslied_. Introd., p. xxix.]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Art of Music_, pp. 99 seq. For an account of the
+musical culture in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+see the Introduction to Dr. Naylor's _Shakespeare and Music_, a
+most interesting and useful little work.]
+
+The divorce between music and words became complete when songs were
+arranged in transcriptions for various instruments. For now the
+orchestra and the _Kapellmeister_ have come into being and the
+further development of music is instrumental. With the invention of
+printing and the influence of the Italian Renaissance with its
+humanistic and pseudo-classical ideals the dissolution is completed.
+Poems are no longer sung but only read, while instrumental music
+follows its own paths alone.
+
+In the Middle Ages instrumental music can scarcely be said to have
+existed as an art. Musical instruments--"giterne and ribible"--were
+known and played upon. "Fiddlers, players, cobblers, and other
+debauched persons" tramped the country and appeared at festivals in
+company with jugglers and mountebanks. Towards the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, private orchestras were maintained by the noble and
+the wealthy. Still the instrumental band held at best but a secondary
+place beside the vocal choir. "Harping," says the ancient bard, "ken I
+none, for song is chefe of myn-strelsé." The music which it played
+differed in no essential respect from that intended for singing;
+indeed the part-song was often arranged without alteration for
+instruments, and so instrumental technique grew out of vocal technique,
+but--and this is important--retaining important rhythmic characteristics
+from the dance. Exactly as all stone architecture--Gothic, Classic,
+Saracenic--bears the features of its wooden parent, so does our modern
+instrumental music reproduce the physiognomy of its origin, uniting the
+flowing cantilene of the voice with the marked rhythm of the dance, and
+we may notice in any modern instrumental composition how the two are
+contrasted together, now the one feature predominating, now the other.
+
+There remains yet another current in the stream of musical development
+of at least equal importance with the growth of dance and song. I
+cannot here enter fully into the history of ecclesiastical music. We
+are only concerned with the influence exerted by Dutch and Italian
+composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries upon the
+development of later German music.
+
+While pope and prelate cared only for the outer logical shell of
+Christian doctrine, which they could use as a weapon in their struggle
+for power, art laid hold upon its vital essence. Those politicians who
+are in the habit of sneering at Wagner's steadfast belief in the
+saving power of art for human society would do well to cast a glance
+at the course of each development of the Christian ideal, the
+political and the artistic respectively. In the Middle Ages the one
+showed itself in councils like those of Nicea and Ephesus, in
+political popes like Gregory VII. and Innocent III., in Isidorian
+decretals, excommunications, interdicts, tortures, indulgences; the
+other in our mediaeval cathedrals, in the poetry of a Dante, the
+paintings of a Giotto and a Raphael, the sculpture of a Michael
+Angelo, the music of a Palestrina, and our politician might then ask
+himself which he thought had been the more beneficial as a social
+force. There still remain as our meagre heritage from these times of
+"faith," on the one hand the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, on the
+other certain festivals and celebrations in the cathedral of a small
+Bavarian town, little known, scarcely noticed, but still in the full
+glory of their pristine mediaeval beauty.
+
+No one who has not attended the celebrations in the cathedral of
+Regensburg can fully measure what has been lost for mankind through
+the domination of human rationalism in the place of religious
+devotion. Here alone in Europe all who will may yet hear the great
+masters of the sixteenth century rightly performed with the ancient
+ritual, and Gregorian chant that belongs to it, without pretence,
+without pomp or pageant, with the single purpose of serving God
+worthily in that true spirit of mediaeval sincerity and purity which
+our historians are apt to pass over unnoticed in their rancorous
+eagerness to proclaim the sins of the Church. The compositions of
+Palestrina and his compeers represent music in its highest form as
+pure song in its most perfect consummation, attaining as song an
+elevation which has never even been distantly approached since. "The
+centuries have no power over the Palestrina style," says its
+historian; "it can neither fade nor die." Truly does Wagner say we
+shall never believe the vocal school which followed it to have been
+the legitimate daughter of that wondrous mother.
+
+The predominant feature of this music is harmony, brought forth by the
+union, not of sounds, but of melodies--different and contrasting
+melodies united in harmony, that is the characteristic of the
+polyphonic school, and the rhythm is marked, not by accents, but by
+changes of the chords. It is a rhythm of quantity alone, not of accent
+and quantity combined, as in the song and the dance and in modern
+music. Thus, although dancing was by no means excluded from the church
+in early times--its trace still remains in the name choir [Greek:
+choros] for that part of the church where the dancing was
+performed[19]--its most characteristic element, accent, came to be
+banished from the music of the church as something foreign to the
+character of religious worship. But the loss was amply repaid by the
+wealth and richness which the harmonic structure was able to acquire,
+and which was rendered intelligible by that fine and expressive method
+of handling the separate voices which we know as counterpoint. This is
+not without some interest for us, because, widely as Wagner's
+harmonies differ from those of Palestrina, we shall find that they too
+can often only be understood through the progression of the voices.
+The same is true of Bach's harmonies. Harmony was generated by
+polyphony, and not _vice versa_; that is, men first tried fitting
+melodies together, not chords, and when they had learned to do this
+skilfully, so that they sounded well together, harmony came into
+being. It does not follow that the music was unrhythmic because it was
+unaccented, and because in writing it was not divided into bars. No
+music can be intelligible without rhythm. The rhythmic pulsations are
+there; they are distinctly felt by the hearer in the performance, and
+in modern editions the barring is always introduced; but it is less
+crude, less obvious, through not being enforced by strong accents.
+
+[Footnote 19: Ménil, _Histoire de la Danse_, where an interesting
+account of church dancing in the Middle Ages will be found.]
+
+We have already seen how the _Volkslied_ became fertilized by the
+polyphony of church-music. At the same time the music of the mass
+itself received an important impulse from the _Volkslied_. The
+employment of well-known popular song-melodies as _canti fermi_
+in sacred contrapuntal compositions had a very beneficial effect upon
+those works, inasmuch as it introduced a bit of fresh popular life
+into music just at the moment when it was in danger of degenerating
+into pedantry and triviality.[20] Possibly the secularization of
+church music went too far, and at the Council of Trent the proposal
+was very seriously considered whether the music of the church should
+not be restricted to the traditional Gregorian chant, which had never
+been popular and never will be, because priests cannot ordinarily be
+found to sing it properly. The point at issue in this celebrated
+discussion really was whether in polyphonic song the words could be
+made intelligible,[21] for if not the music would become a mere
+decorative feature, and the mass itself unmeaning. Precisely as in the
+Wagner controversy of three centuries later, the question was whether
+art was a diversion only to be enjoyed for the sake of the pleasure
+which it afforded, or whether it had a serious didactic purpose
+founded on a reality. It is impossible not to be struck with the
+similarity of the issues involved with those of the Wagner struggle.
+In both the question was raised whether music could be justified in
+detaching itself from its basis--in the one case religious, in the
+other dramatic--and assert an absolute existence for itself. Still
+closer is the resemblance when we consider the dramatic character of
+the Roman ritual, with its sublime conceptions of Real Presence and
+Transubstantiation. The ritual during Holy Week, for example, is the
+story of the Passion, partly narrated, partly in a sort of idealized
+representation. When the solemn moment of the Crucifixion is reached
+on Good Friday, when the officiating priests advance in turn to
+adoration while the Cross itself lifts its voice in "Reproaches" to
+the multitude with Palestrina's music, who does not feel the dramatic
+directness of the representation?
+
+  Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi
+  te? responde mihi.
+
+  _Chor_. [Greek: agios ho theos, agios hischuros, agios
+  'athanatos.]
+
+  Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti: parasti crucem
+  Salvatori tuo.
+
+  _Chor_. Sanctus deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus et immortalis.
+  Miserere nobis.
+
+--The chorus answering each "Reproach" alternately in the Greek of the
+Eastern Church and the Latin of the Western Church. Such music as this
+has quite a different character from that of our concert-rooms; it is
+music which means something.
+
+[Footnote 20: Ambros., Gesch., ii. p. 286.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Ambros., Gesch., iv, pp. 14 seq.]
+
+The problem was definitely settled for the church by the music of
+Palestrina. But he did not change the course of history, and with his
+death in the same year (1594) as that of his great contemporary
+Orlando Lasso, his work came to an end. His influence had indeed been
+profound, and he left as his disciples and successors men of gifts
+scarcely inferior to his own; but the fashion had changed; Italian
+humanism and the sway of the Press destroyed worship, destroyed
+spontaneity, and by the year 1600 the pure vocal style and the
+_Volkslied_ had both passed away.
+
+Our results so far can be very shortly summed up. Modern music has
+three main elements, which were fed from three sources:
+
+      Rhythm    --    Cantilene    --    Polyphony.
+         |                |                  |
+      The dance      _Volkslied_         Church music.
+
+It has been my endeavour in the preceding to show how these three
+intermingled with and reacted upon one another. The outcome of all
+three has been modern German orchestral music; for the distinctive
+music of modern Germany up to Beethoven is orchestral. In saying this,
+I have not forgotten the great German song-composers, but even their
+work is insignificant beside that of the instrumentalists, and has
+been so affected both in design and in technique by instrumental music
+as in a great degree to lose its vocal character. The choruses of
+Handel and Bach are almost entirely instrumental in character.
+
+The change which came over artistic expression from about 1600 on
+implied a deeper and more vital change in the conception of art
+itself. Till then men had believed the things they told in their art.
+Byzantine saints, Cynewulf's Scriptural legends, German
+_Heldenerzählungen_, Icelandic _Sagas_, down to the saints
+and angels of the pre-Raphaelites, all represented realities to the
+poet; he would have felt no interest in telling of things which he did
+not believe to be true. But henceforward we have art for its own sake;
+the truthfulness of the subject-matter is of no account; the sole
+canon of art is beauty of form; its purpose not instruction but
+pleasure.
+
+I know no episode in the history of art that is more instructive than
+the birth of the Italian opera. It was typically a product of the
+Renaissance, but it came at the very end of that movement, when the
+freshness of its early vigour was past, when learning had declined
+into pedantry, and its graceful art was lost in _barocco_.
+
+The period of Italian history known as the Renaissance is important
+because it brought forth a greater number of geniuses of the highest
+rank than ever existed together in any country before or since, except
+perhaps in the great time of Athens. But in itself it was a falsehood.
+It was an attempt to revive former _Italian_ greatness,
+forgetting that the greatness of Italy had been exclusively military
+and political, whereas the modern movement was literary and artistic.
+It committed the blunder of confusing together under the term
+"classic" two very different forms of culture, the Greek and the
+Roman, very much as we now group Hindus, Moslems, and Chinamen
+together as "Orientals." All that was really great in art was Greek,
+but they were content to receive it through the tradition of the most
+inartistic nation that ever lived. Far indeed were the Renaissance
+humanists from the noble simplicity of Hellenic art.
+
+The Renaissance movement in Italy was not only, like the German
+Reformation, anticlerical; it was atheist and immoral, at least in its
+later degenerate period, and it is likely that the representatives of
+the latest modernism who met and aired their views in the Florentine
+salons at the end of the sixteenth century, were inspired as much by
+hatred of religion, or by what is called love of freedom, as by
+enthusiasm for art. Hitherto the Renaissance had taken little notice
+of music. It was a barbarian art; how could Florentine exquisites,
+disciples of Machiavelli, men of the vein of Lorenzo di Medici, Leo
+X., and Baldassari Castiglione be expected to occupy themselves with
+the art of men bearing such names as Okeghem or Obrecht? Popes and
+Cardinals, however, had shown themselves much better connoisseurs of
+art than the humanists, and had brought these barbarians to Italy, had
+given them high appointments and become their pupils. The fact that
+the antipathy of the humanists to music was extended to that of their
+own great countrymen, to Palestrina, Vittoria, Suriano, cannot be
+entirely accounted for by their dislike of everything clerical, still
+less by want of taste. The cause lay far deeper. It was the transition
+from the old order to the new, from mediaeval faith to modern
+rationalism, from art to science.
+
+Art and science both contemplate Nature, and seek to turn her gifts to
+account to better and ennoble human life. Art accepts the beautiful
+objects of Nature as they are, without questioning. The artist says:
+"Let me lead you by the hand; I have seen something new and beautiful;
+here it is; try to see it too, with my help, that we may both enjoy it
+together." But he uses no compulsion; with those who turn a deaf ear
+to him he is powerless. Science on the other hand tries to compel
+belief by irresistible processes of logic; the scientist's axiom is
+that if the premises be true the conclusion _must_ follow, and he
+pours scorn upon all who refuse assent to his interpretations,
+denouncing them as ignorant, superstitious, if not wilfully blind and
+perverse. Mystery, according to the ancients the beginning of
+philosophy, has no place in science; what cannot be explained is
+superstitious and must be rejected as false. The source of art, as of
+religion, must be sought not in the ineffable, incomprehensible
+phenomena of nature, but in the human mind, in reason, to which all
+art must conform.
+
+This was the spirit in which the founders of the _nuove musiche_
+sought to carry out their reforms; their intolerance rivals that of
+Lucretius or Haeckel. It is impossible to suppose that men of their
+highly-cultured aesthetic sense were deaf to the purely musical beauty
+of polyphony. They were trained in its school, and had employed it
+themselves most skilfully in their madrigals. It was the _mystery_ of
+the mass and of its attendant music which they detested.
+
+Another consideration must be added. Hand in hand with this
+rationalizing tendency, indeed only another phase of the same
+phenomenon, is the striving for self-assertion of the individual,
+which is the mark of all progress towards higher civilization. The
+contrapuntal mass or motet expressed the commonwealth of the Church,
+where the individual disappears, absorbed in the community. The
+_nuove musiche_ sought to emancipate the individual, and allow
+him to express his own independent existence. Thus the progress of the
+modern musical drama presents an exact parallel to that of the Greek
+drama, from before Thespis onwards, except that here the change from
+lyric to dramatic representation was slower, because, there being no
+preconceived plan or model for the reformers to work by, the
+development was gradual and natural instead of violent.
+
+The year 1600 marks with considerable accuracy the transition from the
+old order to the new. The two greatest masters of the old school had
+recently died, and with them their work expired. At the wedding of
+Henri IV. of France with Maria de' Medici in Florence, in that year,
+was performed the opera _Euridice_, the joint work of Caccini and
+Peri, which is the starting-point of the new music.
+
+The details of the invention of the _nuove musiche_, the ideas
+which brought it forth, how these were nursed in the salons of
+Florentine noblemen, especially in that of Bardi Conte Vernio, are all
+well known. They did not proceed in the first instance from musicians,
+but from scholars, who, having read in the course of their studies
+about Grecian (or Roman--it was all the same to them) dramatic music,
+determined to add to the other accomplishments of the new order that
+of reviving the ancient drama with its music. They were vehement in
+their denunciations of the barbarous institutions of counterpoint and
+loudly called for a return to the only true principles of music as
+taught by the ancients. With this end in view they drew into their
+circle the most gifted musicians whom they could find, and expounded
+to willing and zealous ears the principles of music as embodied in the
+rules of Plato and Aristotle, omitting, however, to state where they
+found them in the works of those philosophers. The first result was
+the opera, or operas (for there seem to have been two, one by Caccini
+and one by Peri, welded into one) _Euridice_ performed at the
+royal wedding. It was followed by other similar works and the series
+has continued in unbroken course for three centuries, through
+Monteverde, Carissimi, A. Scarlatti, down to our own time. The
+physiognomy of the early operas of the classic revival is still
+distinctly traceable in Rossini, Donizetti, and the early Verdi, after
+whom its career was suddenly cut short almost in the height of its
+fame by the publication of the first part of Wagner's _Oper und
+Drama_ in 1851.
+
+From the very beginning the Italian opera was what it is now,
+frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has
+been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their
+evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the
+absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of
+interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional
+chorus--introduced in conformity with supposed classical
+practice--must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses
+they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it was provided with
+all the paraphernalia of the stage and that the singers walked about
+as they sang. Possibly, too, the performers had some initiation into
+modern methods of operatic acting, and would raise one arm at the word
+_cielo_, two arms at certain other words, etc.; but it would be
+hard to detect any living dramatic idea in those mythological heroes
+and heroines, Dafnes, Amors, Tirsis, Ariannas dressed up as stage
+shepherds and shepherdesses. The only _raison d'être_ of the
+music in the minds of the fashionable audience was--then as now--to
+provide a stimulus for conversation and flirting, or a pleasant
+diversion in the intervals of their business transactions.
+
+But it is easy to ridicule the follies and failures of men who were
+striving after an ideal. More profitable to us it will be to trace
+what substantiality their dream of dramatic revival really possessed,
+and if we strip it of the false garment of classicity in which it
+masqueraded, and of its self-asserting intolerance, there is no
+question that, whatever the results of the efforts of these reformers,
+their intention was admirable. They themselves, the composers, were
+deeply in earnest; their objects were not what they supposed, but they
+were entirely worthy, and though we may wonder at their failure to
+appreciate the entrancing beauty of polyphonic music, we must admit
+even here that their objections were not without some force. To
+realize this we must transfer ourselves in imagination to their
+conditions and endeavour to consider the problems from their
+standpoint, remembering how they were impelled by the irresistible law
+of progress, the assertion of individualism, and by the desire for
+dramatic treatment.
+
+The main objection brought by the reformers against polyphony was that
+the elaborate imitative treatment of the voices made the words
+unintelligible. We may remember that exactly the same objection had
+already been raised at the Council of Trent by clericals themselves.
+Vocal music alone, the reformers contended, can be recognized as true
+music, for music is essentially language and rhythm, and only in the
+last place tone.[22] Consequently, _right declamation_ is of its
+essence. On this ground they objected to mixing together high notes
+and low, fast movement and slow, to dividing a syllable between many
+notes, to repetition of words and phrases. Especially significant is
+the advice given by Vincentio Galilei to composers to study the
+expression of gifted actors.[23]
+
+[Footnote 22: Ambros., iv, p.165.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Ib._., p. 170.]
+
+It is impossible not to treat seriously a movement founded upon such
+arguments as these. They are in the main incontrovertible. We seem to
+be breathing the very atmosphere of Wagner, and it would be scarcely
+too much to say that the humanist movement of the Bardi salon was in
+its _intention_ the forerunner of the German movement dreamed of
+by Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul, and accomplished by Wagner, who at
+last succeeded in finding what the others had sought, namely, the true
+relations between words, music, and acting. Even the idea of
+concealing the orchestra originated with them. Why, then, did it not
+succeed? Why did the very name of Italian opera become a by-word for
+all that is frivolous and inartistic in dramatic art? The answer must
+be sought in the dictum of Dean Milman quoted at the beginning of this
+chapter. Art is an organic growth, and cannot be created by authority.
+A drama which has been manufactured by fitting together words, action,
+and music in such manner as appears right to the composer, or
+according to models, real or fanciful, however skilful be the
+execution, is no drama; it lacks the breath of life; it is not a
+living organism, but an artificial counterfeit.
+
+In Wagner's theoretical writings there are few things of more
+practical importance than the principle repeatedly insisted upon that
+a work of art is not a production of a gifted artist which he exhibits
+for his audience to criticize, and either to admire and enjoy or to
+reject according to their capacities, but is a mutual interaction, a
+conversation as it were between the artist and his public, _to which
+both contribute_. Nor is art a diversion to be taken up as a
+relaxation after the fatigue of serious work, but a labour requiring
+the best efforts of the hearer's faculties. Every artist worthy of the
+name has something new to say, something which has not been heard
+before, but is characteristically his own, and cannot be understood
+without an effort. Artist and hearer must co-operate together towards
+a common end. Wagner's first purpose throughout his life was to
+educate his public, or, to use his own phrase, prepare a soil in which
+his art could flourish. Whenever an attempt is made to create an art
+by authority, whether it be Court patronage, theoretical exposition,
+or any other form of authority, this important principle is forgotten.
+The would-be teachers of the people scatter the seed irrespectively of
+the soil, and the attempt, however laudable, is ill-timed.
+
+The subsequent history of the Italian opera has been told by Wagner
+himself in the entertaining pages of the first part of his _Oper und
+Drama_, which should be carefully read by all who wish to gain a
+distinct understanding of his aims. A useful supplement to Wagner's
+treatise will be found in a conversation which took place between him
+and Rossini in 1860, a "scrupulously exact" account of which has been
+published forty-six years after it took place from notes taken at the
+time in a pamphlet by E. Michotte of Brussels.[24]
+
+[Footnote 24: Paris, _Librairie Fischbacher_, 1906.]
+
+It would have been impossible for the opera to continue as it had
+begun. People would not have gone to the theatre to hear dreary
+recitatives, and from the very first we hear of concessions being made
+to the singers--i.e. to the audience. By degrees there forms itself
+that peculiar kind of vocal melody which we recognize to-day as
+distinctively Italian. Not, be it noted, melody proper, which is the
+very truest expression of the human soul; not the melody that was
+known to the great Germans, but "naked, ear-tickling, absolute melodic
+melody; melody which is nothing but melody; which glides into our
+ears--we know not why; which we sing again--we know not why; which
+to-day we exchange for that of yesterday, and forget to-morrow--still
+we know not why; which is sad when we are gay, merry when we are
+sorrowful, and which we yet hum--just because we know not why."
+
+Let us not be misled by Wagner's bantering description into despising
+Italian melody and supposing it to be a thing utterly worthless. True,
+it has not the musical elevation of German melody. The little
+Neapolitan urchin who basks all day in the sunshine, sings, steals,
+and is ready to drive a knife into his companion, is not perhaps as
+high a type of humanity as the English public-school boy. Nevertheless
+he has a charm entirely his own, and his large round eyes will make
+you forget his sins. Woe to art and to mankind when our hearts are
+closed to such influences! Italian operatic melody is the expression
+of Southern Italian individuality, and has in its very irresponsibility a
+certain fascination different from that of the far nobler German music.
+Wagner waged warfare, not against the Italian opera, not against
+operatic composers, but against impostors and sophists, and while
+trampling upon the serpent in his own path he was as little likely to
+remain untouched by the good-natured lovableness of the Italian as
+he was to slight the high intelligence, the artistic receptiveness and
+thoroughness of the French. On reading his works it is hard to escape
+the impression of a lurking fondness for Rossini on Wagner's part,
+even while he is making game of the whole school. Above all, Italian
+melody possesses one quality which is the highest of all in melody--it
+is eminently singable. No German, unless perhaps Handel, ever
+understood the human voice as did the Italians. Wagner's own
+words leave no doubt as to what he thought. In one of his earliest
+writings he utters a prayer that German composers may one day write
+such melody and learn such treatment of the voice as are found in
+Bellini's _Norma_. But, like Odysseus, he stopped his ears to the
+siren-song (his own expression) while at the same time learning from
+it and assimilating what was good therein. Wagner's vocal melody was
+largely modelled on that of the Italians. Tristan itself was conceived
+for Italian singers, and the part of Isolde was originally intended
+for Mdlle. Tietjens. He even adopted Italian mannerisms, operatic
+turns, trills, suspensions, cadences, and bravura tricks. We may
+follow how these Italicisms appearing in all their banality in his
+earlier works become more and more expressive as his style develops.
+
+[Music: _Rienzi_, ACT V.
+Du stärk-lest mich, du gabt mir ho-he Kraft]
+
+[Music: _Tristan und Isolde_, ACT III.
+Won . . . ne Kla-gend]
+
+Cadences of the common Italian type with 6/4 chord or suspension swarm
+in _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. In _Tristan_ they never have the
+stereotyped character which they have in his earlier works.
+
+[Music: _Lohengrin_, ACT II.
+Ein Glück dass oh-ne Reu]
+
+The finer characteristics of Italian melody, that easy tunefulness
+which seems to have sprung naturally and without effort out of the
+mechanism of the vocal organs, is above all noticeable in the music of
+his noblest creation, Brünnhilde.
+
+[Music: _Walküre_, ACT III. SCENE I.
+O heh re-stes Wun-der]
+
+[Music: herr - - - lich-ste Maid]
+
+[Music: _Siegfried_ ACT III. SCENE III.
+Sieg-fried-es Stern ... Sie ist mir e-wig, ist mir
+im-mer Erb' und Eig - en ... Ein ... er ist mir]
+
+The flower-maidens' chorus in _Parsifal_ might be called the
+apotheosis of Italian song. What Wagner means by his scathing ridicule
+of the Italian opera and Italian melody, is not that it is worthless,
+but that it has no meaning. In short it is not the drama.
+
+We recognized the radical fault of the Italian opera to be its
+subordination of the drama to the music. In opposition to this it has
+been asserted that the music aids the drama by carrying on the action.
+Let us examine this by the light of one example, the well-known
+seduction scene of Zerlina in _Don Giovanni_. The form of music
+as such is determined by rhythmic repetitions of themes, varied or
+not. The scene is full of dramatic charm and has great capabilities.
+Don Giovanni begins insinuatingly: "Give me your hand, Zerlina; come
+away with me to my castle." The timid peasant girl at first hesitates.
+"No, no," she replies, "I dare not--yet how I should like to!--but
+what would Masetto say?" All this is in the most winning and seductive
+melody; it is exactly the tone in which a young nobleman and a rather
+coquettish but entirely innocent young girl would express themselves.
+The situation becomes warmer; Don Giovanni is more pressing--he puts
+his arm round her--he is just about to kiss her, when suddenly the
+scene begins over again from the beginning with "Give me your hand,"
+etc., and the whole episode is rendered absurd! Up to this point we
+have been so transported by the interest of the scene and the
+appropriateness of the expression that we almost feel ourselves to be
+taking part in it, but the repetition checks our feelings like a
+douche, by the necessity felt by the composer of preserving the
+musical form. Had the action and the music been carried right through
+to the second part, Zerlina's inexpressibly tender
+
+[Music: An-diam!]
+
+would have been most thrilling, and the way would have been naturally
+prepared for the entry of Elvira just in time to save her.
+
+Absolute or instrumental music requires the strict form which is
+effected by means of balanced repetitions in order to supply that
+intellectual element without which it cannot be understood, and which
+in vocal music is afforded by the words. The drama needs no such
+restrictions and cannot endure them. Human actions are not subject to
+mechanical laws; they are intelligible in themselves, but cannot be
+measured out. Human life is a continuous whole, one action leads
+naturally on to another, without any break, and to attempt to range
+the actions of men and women under schemes of arias, cavatinas, duets,
+choruses, each existing for itself and sharply separated from all
+others, can only render them unintelligible and ridiculous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA AND ITS ANTECEDENTS
+
+
+We have already seen that the drama is distinguished from all other
+forms of art by its essential quality of directly enacting the things
+to be communicated instead of merely describing them. Since only human
+things can fitly be so enacted by human beings, dramatic art is
+generally identical with human art; it is the art of representing the
+actions of men and women--or of deities conceived as idealized human
+beings--in such a way as to reveal the motives by which they are
+impelled, their characters. The adjective "dramatic" may, however, be
+understood in two ways, according as our interest is centred in the
+actions themselves, their contrasts and conflicts, or in the motives
+or _characters_ of the persons engaged. In the former case the
+drama will endeavour to represent decisive and exciting actions
+passing in rapid succession before the eyes. This may be called the
+spectacular drama, and its greatest master is Schiller. When Goethe is
+described as "the least dramatic of all great poets" it is in this
+sense that the word is used. Goethe often hankered after spectacular
+effects, but was never very successful in producing them.
+
+But if we consider the essence of a dramatic conception to lie in the
+conflict of opposing motives, not necessarily discharging themselves
+as action, but subdued, and the more impressive because kept under
+restraint within the soul of the actor, we shall rank Goethe amongst
+the very foremost of dramatic poets. Examples of what I will call the
+moral drama are all Goethe's maturer plays, such as _Tasso_ and
+_Iphigenie_. To this class also belong Lessing's _Nathan der
+Weise_ and the representative French plays of the classic epoch.
+They are, generally speaking, bad stage plays, but are extremely
+interesting to read, and gain in interest the more they are studied.
+In the works of the greatest of all dramatists, such as Sophokles and
+Shakespeare, the spectacular and moral elements are so closely united
+as to be inseparable. In the Attic drama the more striking spectacular
+events had, for technical reasons, to be kept out of sight. Ajax
+piercing himself with his sword, Oedipus tearing out his own eyes,
+are, like the thunderstorm in _Lear_, the outcome of terrific
+internal motives bursting all confines with the force of an
+irresistible torrent. Our interest is centred, not in the actions
+themselves, but in the motives which produced them, in the characters.
+
+Wagner, with his conscientious habit of accounting to himself for
+everything that he did, found his artistic level more slowly than do
+most poets. When the stylistic crudities of his earlier productions
+had been overcome, he began the work of his maturer life with
+_Rheingold_, the most spectacular drama ever written. _Walküre_
+and _Siegfried_ were continued in the same vein, and it is very
+significant that he broke off the composition and laid the work aside
+just at the monstrous dragon-fight. It is no strained conjecture that as
+the difficulties of his gigantic subject accumulated he at last realized
+the practical impossibility of what he had undertaken. To bring the
+whole story of the fall of the ancient Germanic gods into a spectacular
+drama on the scale of the _Ring_ was beyond even his mighty powers,
+and in _Die Walküre_ he is like a man trying to break away from the
+path which he has laid down for himself, to get rid of the cumbersome
+spectacular element and let the action develop itself naturally from
+within. With all its unrivalled beauties the _Ring_ as a _drama_ is a
+monstrosity. It turns upon motives which are not apparent from the
+actions and have to be explained in dreary and most undramatic length.
+Its very foundation is wrong; its central figure, the prime author of the
+new and more blessed world which is to follow, is the offspring of an
+incestuous union for which there is no occasion whatever. The myth
+itself has sometimes been held responsible, and it has been asserted
+that Wagner had to reproduce the tradition as he received it. Nothing
+of the kind is true; Wagner has altered the entire story, taking,
+leaving, or altering just as he pleased. In the _Völsunga_ paraphrase of
+Eddic lays, upon which the story of the _Ring_ is founded, the child of
+the unnatural union is not Sigurd, not the golden hero "whom every child
+loved," but the savage outlaw Sinfjötli, half wolf, half robber, one of
+the most terrible creations of mythology. To conceive such a union
+as bringing forth a hero whom we are expected to regard as the very
+type of human nobility and guilelessness is an artistic blunder which
+we can only explain by supposing that Wagner found his material
+unmanageable. He was struggling with impossibilities and gave up
+the attempt.
+
+From this he turned to _Tristan_, rushing at once to the opposite
+extreme. The absence of clear and decisive action in _Tristan_ is
+as remarkable as the excess of action in the _Ring_. Persuaded
+that the motives and characters of men must be known before their
+actions can be understood, and that these can only be revealed in
+music, he has given us in _Tristan_ music such as no mortal ear
+ever heard before or since; but action there is little or none. He
+scarcely deigns to tell even the most vital incidents of the story.
+Can any one say that he has understood the events connected with
+Morold and Tristan's first visit to Ireland and the splinter of the
+sword from the play itself without an independent explanation? Or that
+Tristan's reasons for carrying off Isolde are clear to him from
+Marke's account? Without these incidents the whole story is
+unintelligible, but with Wagner in his then mood they counted for
+nothing in the flood of emotional material. It was in _Die
+Meistersinger_ that Wagner found the final equation between impulse
+and action, and the public has again judged rightly in placing that
+work first among all his dramatic compositions. But the musician and
+the philosopher will always turn to _Tristan_.
+
+There are four principal epochs in which the drama has been a
+flourishing reality in Europe. They are: 1. In Athens in the fifth
+century B.C. 2. In Elizabethan England. 3. In Spain in the seventeenth
+century. 4. In France under Louis XIV.
+
+Of the influence of the Elizabethan drama upon the Wagnerian drama it
+is difficult to speak to any good purpose. Shakespeare is the common
+heritage of all German dramatists, Wagner as well as others, and it is
+not too much to say that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare which began
+towards the end of the eighteenth century was the stimulus which
+roused the German nation to create a drama of its own. It is enough
+for the present if we note that the Elizabethan drama is
+characteristically human and popular. True, the Elizabethans revel in
+courts and high society, as do the populace; they represent kings and
+rulers as they are beheld from outside, and there is always a
+"Sampson" or "Gregory," or "Citizen" or "Merchant" ready as a chorus
+to express with great shrewdness his opinion of the doings of his
+betters.
+
+For an opposite reason we may pass over very shortly the French
+classical drama, namely, because it does not seem to have weighed with
+Wagner at all. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries are little
+mentioned in his writings; certainly he shows no enthusiasm for their
+art. Yet the influence of the French stage was by no means a
+negligible quantity in the development of the German drama.
+
+It was Lessing who in the trenchant prose of his _Hamburger
+Dramaturgie_ first revolted against the French domination, the
+strength of which may be judged from the list there given of works
+performed in the Hamburg theatre from April to July 1767. Of the
+fifty-two plays there enumerated, fifteen were German, thirty-five
+French, and two from other languages--only one being English. In
+itself the French influence was not altogether for evil; what was bad
+was the unlimited sway of a foreign art. The French sense for elegance
+of form is far more acute than that of either Germans or Englishmen,
+but with the Louis Quatorze dramatists it had degenerated into
+pedantry. The "Unities," rightly understood, are a very important
+feature of every drama. Aristotle has treated this much vexed question
+with his customary Hellenic moderation. Inner unity is an
+indispensable qualification of every work of art; dramatic unity is
+technically called Unity of Action, that is, the mind must be able to
+receive the work as a whole, and it must have a beginning, a middle,
+and an end. Only nature is at once varied and eternal. Out of this
+_may_ proceed the Unities of Time and Place, but so far from
+being obligatory they were not even always observed in the Greek
+tragic drama itself, where they seem specially called for by the
+presence of the chorus and where the fact that a dramatic performance
+was always a competition made some restrictions binding upon all
+competitors necessary. Aristotle's only rule about time is that the
+length must be such that it can be easily comprehended (_Poet._,
+vii. 1450_b_), and he adds in a general way that in his day
+tragedy generally tried as far as possible to keep within one
+revolution of the sun, or thereabouts (_Ib._, v. 1449_b_).
+Of the third Unity, that of Place, he says nothing at all.
+
+Aristotle's eminently practical generalizations of the features of the
+drama as it existed in Athens in his day were exalted by the French
+dramatists of the seventeenth century into rigid inviolable laws, and
+a dramatist would in a doubtful case think it necessary to demonstrate
+to his public in a special discourse that he had not been guilty of
+any breach of the law in this respect! The authority of the supreme
+law-giver was incontestable; the only question was how to interpret
+his enactments. Does, for example, "one revolution of the sun" mean
+twelve hours or twenty-four? This and other such weighty matters were
+subjects of warm controversy. Lessing's mind was critical rather than
+creative; he, too, was an enthusiastic student of Aristotle, and read
+with far truer artistic intelligence than Corneille. The criticism of
+his _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_ cleared the way for the great
+creative poets of the end of the eighteenth and first half of the
+nineteenth century. It was a period of experiment, both in
+subject-matter and in form. The latter hovers between that of classic
+tradition and the licence of Shakespeare, while the subjects are
+generally taken from foreign history or from Greek mythology; only
+occasionally, as in _Götz von Berlichingen_ and _Wallenstein_, from
+German history. The entire dramatic movement of this period is an
+endeavour to find a workable compromise between the classic and
+the Elizabethan drama, an endeavour which attained a fair measure
+of success a little later in the superb classic tragedies of Grillparzer.
+Still, noble as were its achievements in this direction, the German
+nation had higher aims. As it gained in self-consciousness and
+conceived its own artistic ideals it could not but feel itself worthy to
+bring forth an art characteristically its own. Till now the only
+indigenous German art had been instrumental music, and the stupendous
+achievements of a Bach, a Haydn, a Beethoven must have helped to
+bring home to the Germans the artistic capabilities latent within them.
+
+The decisive step in German art was taken by Richard Wagner, whose
+appearance is like a world-catastrophe. In one vast flood, comparable
+only to the tide of his overwhelming music, all that was trivial and
+experimental was swept away. What was strong enough to swim in the
+tide was invigorated and strengthened; Goethe, Schiller, Kleist,
+Grillparzer, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, and their compeers are both
+better performed and better understood now than they were before
+Wagner's appearance, but all the second-rate has perished. The days of
+experimenting have passed; the danger now threatening German art is
+not from abroad, but is within itself, from those of its own body who,
+just when the only hope lies in sobriety and self-restraint, are
+goading it on the career of intoxication.
+
+There remain the Hellenic and the Spanish dramas. Wagner's true
+spiritual progenitors were Sophokles and Calderon. Different as are
+the creations of two such widely separated epochs in their external
+physiognomy, they possess one vital characteristic in common. In both
+man is the instrument of higher powers; whether they be, as in the one
+case, Zeus or Ate, or, as in the other, Honour or Christian faith,
+matters little. These are the real actors, impersonated in flesh and
+blood in the heroes.
+
+An Englishman who, like myself, is ignorant of the Spanish language
+and people can never hope to understand, still less to expound, their
+literature. The Spanish drama is largely dependent upon subtleties of
+metre and diction which cannot be reproduced in translations, and it
+is inspired by motives very different from our own. Our watchwords are
+"self-interest," "freedom," "progress"; those natural to the Spaniard
+are "honour" and "Catholic Christianity." No great people has been so
+uniformly true to the traditions of its nationality as the Spanish.
+Alone among the nations Spain has refused to assimilate the
+rationalist formulas fashionable in other countries; she has preferred
+to relinquish her foremost place in the European commonwealth rather
+than her ideals. To us the policy of Philip II appears as perverse as
+the notions of honour and Christianity appear extravagant in Spanish
+dramas; the reason is that we are not Spaniards, and we read their
+history through the spectacles of rationalist historians. But if we
+once concede their fundamental notions as they understand them, we
+must acknowledge that Spanish history and Spanish art proceed directly
+out of them more logically, more naturally, than in those nations
+which are continually being drawn aside, now this way, now the other,
+by the political notions and passing philosophies of the day.
+
+Wagner made his first acquaintance with the Spanish drama in the
+winter of 1857-58, when engaged on the composition of _Tristan_,
+and at once seized its character with the sympathetic insight of
+genius. His remarks in a letter to Liszt written at this time[25] are
+so noteworthy, and bear so directly upon the work with which we are
+concerned, that I will add a translation of a portion of the letter:
+
+  I am almost inclined to place Calderon by himself
+  and above all others. Through him, too, I have learned
+  to understand the Spanish character. Unprecedented,
+  unrivalled in its blossom, it developed so rapidly that
+  its material body soon perished, and it ended in
+  negation of the world. The refined, deeply passionate
+  consciousness of the nation finds expression in the
+  notion of _honour_, wherein its noblest and at the same
+  time its most terrible elements unite to a second
+  religion. Extremes of selfish desire and of sacrifice
+  both seek to be satisfied. The nature of the "world"
+  could not possibly find sharper, more dazzling, more
+  dominating, and at the same time more destructive,
+  more terrible expression. The poet in his most
+  vigorous presentations has taken for his subject the
+  conflict of this _honour_ with the deep human feeling of
+  _sympathy_ (_Mitgefühl_). The actions are dictated by
+  "honour," and are therefore acknowledged and
+  approved by the world, while the outraged sympathy
+  takes refuge in a profound melancholy, the more telling
+  and sublime for being scarcely expressed, and revealing
+  the world in all its terrible nullity. Such is the wondrous
+  and imposing experience which Calderon presents
+  to us in magic creative charm. No poet of the world
+  is his equal in this respect. The Catholic religion
+  intervenes as a mediator, and nowhere has it attained
+  greater significance than here, where the opposition
+  between the world and sympathy is pregnant, sharp,
+  and plastic, as in no other nation. How significant
+  too is the fact that nearly all the great Spanish poets
+  in the latter half of their lives retired into the Church,
+  and that then, after complete ideal subjugation of
+  life they could depict that very life with certainty,
+  purity, warmth, and clearness, as they never could
+  before when actively engaged in it. Their most
+  graceful, most whimsical creations are from the time
+  of their clerical retirement. Beside this paramount
+  phenomenon all other national literature seems
+  insignificant.
+
+  [Footnote 25: No. 255 of the _Collected Letters_.]
+
+Wagner knew Greek, but seems to have read his Aeschylos and Sophokles
+in the excellent translation of Donner. From his seventeenth year
+onwards, his exclusive occupation with music and the drama left him
+little time for the study of classics. Yet he was a born classic. In
+the earlier period of his school life, when at the _Kreuz-Schule_
+in Dresden he showed remarkable aptitude for Greek, and translated
+half the Odyssey into German as a voluntary task when he was about
+thirteen. Unfortunately in the next year his family moved to Leipzig,
+where his zeal was checked by the pedantry of schoolmasters, and his
+studies soon began to take another direction, but throughout his life
+he remained ardently in sympathy with Hellenic culture. His remarks on
+the Oedipus tragedies of Sophokles are well worthy the attention of
+those who value the poetry above the letter of a work. He was
+attracted to the Spanish and to the Hellenic drama because they were
+akin to himself. He was himself cast in a tragic mould, in that of the
+heroes of Aeschylos, Sophokles, and Calderon. Prometheus suffering
+torments rather than submit to the will of an iniquitous ruler is
+Wagner voluntarily sacrificing all that made life dear to him rather
+than adopt the conventional falsehoods of society. He is Prince
+Fernando suffering disgrace and imprisonment rather than betray his
+country. He is Tristan and Isolde going willingly to death rather than
+sully their honour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE EARLIER VERSIONS OF THE TRISTAN MYTH
+
+
+The origin of the Tristan myth is lost in antiquity. The Welsh Triads,
+of unknown date, but very ancient, know of one Drystan ab Tallwch, the
+lover of Essylt the wife of March, as a steadfast lover and a mighty
+swineherd. It is indubitably Celtic-Breton, Irish, or Welsh. There
+were different versions of the story, into the shadowy history of
+which we need not enter; the only one which concerns us is that of a
+certain "Thomas." Of his French poem fragments alone have come down to
+us, but we have three different versions based upon it:
+
+1. The Middle-High-German poem of Gottfried von Strassburg, composed
+about 1210-20. 2. An old-Norse translation made in 1226 by command of
+King Hakon. 3. A Middle-English poem of the thirteenth century
+preserved in the so-called Auchinleck MS. of the library of the
+Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, and familiar to English readers
+from the edition published by Sir Walter Scott. The poem was probably
+composed by the famous Thomas the Rhymer of Ercyldoune or Earlstown in
+Berwickshire. A reliable edition by G. P. MacNeill has been published
+by the Scottish Text Society, with an introduction giving a full and
+interesting account of the legend in its various recensions.
+
+In these versions the story of Tristan and Isolde has nothing whatever
+to do with the Arthurian court or the quest of the Grail. It became
+exceedingly popular and was told again and again in varied forms in
+every language in Europe. But even before this Sir Tristan had
+sometimes been included among the Knights of the Round Table, such
+honour being deemed indispensable to the dignity of every knight who
+had any pretensions to fame.
+
+Wagner was well versed in all the Tristan literature, and composed his
+own version for the stage out of the materials which he found. In
+order to understand his way of dealing with his subject-matter it will
+be worth our while to follow the outlines of the old story, which is
+essentially the same in all the three versions, though the incidents,
+and especially the names, are somewhat varied. I shall follow in the
+main the most important of the three, that of Gottfried von
+Strassburg, so far as it goes, with occasional supplementary additions
+from the Norse and English.
+
+There was a certain King of Parmenia named Riwalin Kanelengres (in the
+Norse saga he is King of Bretland; in the English he is called Rouland
+rise, King of Ermonric), who, leaving his own country in the charge of
+his marshal, Rual li foitenant, joined the court of the powerful King
+Marke of Cornwall "and of England" in Tintajol. There he falls in love
+with Blanscheflur (Norse: Blensinbil), the king's sister, but, on his
+being recalled to his own land to meet an invasion from his enemy
+Morgan, she begs him to take her with him. "I have loved thee to mine
+own hurt," she says. "But for my being pregnant I would prefer to
+remain here and bear my grief, but now I choose to die rather than
+that thou, my beloved, shouldst be put to a shameful death. Our child
+would be fatherless. I have deceived myself and am lost." She is
+married to Riwalin and placed for safety in his stronghold Kanoël
+while he marches to battle. He is killed, and she, on hearing the
+news, dies after giving birth to a son who, in allusion to the
+melancholy circumstances of his birth, is named Tristan.
+
+Tristan is instructed by his tutor Kurwenal in the seven arts and the
+seven kinds of music, and in all languages. One day he is carried off
+by some pirates, and, on a furious storm arising, he is put on shore
+alone on the coast of Cornwall, and finds his way to King Marke's
+court at Tintajol, where he is honourably received.
+
+Meanwhile his marshal, Rual li foitenant, has set out in search of
+him, and, after wandering through many countries, arrives disguised as
+a beggar at Tintajol. Tristan brings him before the king, to whom he
+relates the whole story of Tristan's birth and parentage, which he has
+hitherto kept secret, showing how he is King Marke's own nephew. He is
+now overwhelmed with honours, and dubbed a knight, but is soon obliged
+to return to Parmenia to fight the old enemy Morgan. He is victorious
+and after some time returns to Cornwall, where he finds that the
+country has been subjugated by the King of Ireland, Gurmun the Proud,
+who has sent his brother-in-law, Morold, to collect tribute--thirty
+fair youths--from the Cornishmen. Tristan, on arriving, at once
+challenges Morold to decide the question of tribute in single combat
+with himself. They fight: Tristan is wounded; Morold calls upon him to
+desist from fighting, saying that his weapon is poisoned, and that the
+wound cannot be healed except by his sister Isot, the wife of King
+Gurmun. Tristan replies by renewing the attack; Morold falls, and
+Tristan severs his head from his body, and, on Morold's discomfited
+followers embarking hastily for their own country, Tristan throws them
+the head, scornfully bidding them take it as tribute to their king.
+But on their reaching Ireland, Isot the queen, and Isot the Fair, her
+daughter, cover it with kisses, and treasure it up to mind them of
+vengeance upon the slayer of their kinsman. In the skull they find a
+splinter from the sword, which they keep.
+
+Tristan's wound refuses to heal, and he sets off for Ireland
+accompanied by Kurwenal to be treated by Queen Isot. On reaching
+Develin (Dublin), he puts off alone to the shore, in a small boat,
+taking only his harp with him. He introduces himself to Queen Isot as
+a merchant named Tantris; she receives him favourably, heals his
+wound, and appoints him tutor to her daughter, at last, on his earnest
+entreaty, dismissing him to return to his home.
+
+On returning to Marke's court he finds that intrigues have arisen and
+a party has been formed to overthrow him. As the nephew of the
+childless king he is the next heir to the throne of Cornwall, but,
+being in fear of his life, he persuades Marke to marry, that he may
+beget a child to be his successor. Reluctantly King Marke permits him
+to return to Ireland to obtain "the maiden bright as blood on snow,"
+Isot the Fair ("by cunning, stealth, or robbery," says the Norse).
+There now follows an episode of the regular type. On Tristan reaching
+Ireland disguised as a merchant, he finds the country being ravaged by
+a terrible "serpant," and the king has promised his daughter with half
+of his kingdom to whoever shall rid them of the scourge. Tristan slays
+the monster, a certain "Trugsess" or steward, who wishes to marry
+Isot, claims to have achieved the deed, but his fraud is exposed
+through the machinations of the women. Queen Isot and her daughter
+have recognized in Tristan their former acquaintance Tantris, and when
+polishing his armour the princess finds the sword with a gap in its
+blade exactly fitting the splinter which she has taken from Morold's
+skull. She now realizes who Tristan is, and, filled with anger and
+hatred, she goes with the sword to where Tristan is in his bath,
+determined to wreak instant vengeance upon the slayer of her uncle.
+Tristan cries for mercy, obscurely hinting that he is able to reward
+her richly if she will only spare his life. Her mother enters with her
+attendant or companion, Brangäne (Norse: Bringvet); matters are
+discussed, Brangäne argues with great eloquence that he will be much
+more useful to them alive than dead, and at last a bargain is struck.
+In return for his life Tristan promises that he will find the Princess
+Isot a husband who is much richer than her father. They all kiss and
+are reconciled, the princess alone hesitating to make peace with the
+man whom she hates in her heart. Everything is speedily arranged, King
+Gurmun consenting to the marriage of his daughter to his country's
+enemy, the slayer of his kinsman.
+
+Before they depart on the voyage to Cornwall, Queen Isot brews a
+philtre, which she entrusts to Brangäne, directing her to administer
+it to King Marke and his bride on the day of their wedding. On the
+ship Isot continues to nurse her hatred for Tristan. "Why do you hate
+me?" he asks. "Did you not slay my uncle?" "That has been expiated."
+"And yet I hate you." By and by they are thirsty, and a careless
+attendant finding the love-potion handy, gives it to them to drink. At
+once they are overcome with the most ardent love for each other.
+Brangäne is drawn into the secret, and on reaching Cornwall, is sent
+to take Isot's place in King Marke's bed.
+
+It will not be worth our while to follow the details of the rest of
+the story, which is made up of a series of shameless tricks played by
+the lovers upon King Marke, whereby they are enabled to enjoy their
+love together in secret. At last Tristan is banished the court, and
+takes refuge with a duke of Arundel in Sussex, named Jovelin, who has
+a daughter, named Isot of the White Hand, of whom he becomes
+enamoured. Here Gottfried's story ends, unfinished, but it is
+continued in the other versions. Isot of the White Hand is married to
+Tristan, but remains a virgin. We can omit the adventures with giants,
+etc., which follow, but the end must be related. Tristan has been
+wounded in a fray, and again no one can heal the wound but his former
+love, Isot the Fair. A messenger is sent to bring her, with orders
+that if he has been successful he shall hoist a blue-and-white sail
+for a signal as the ship approaches; if unsuccessful, a black one. She
+comes, and the blue-and-white sail is seen; but Isot of the White
+hand, out of jealousy, informs Tristan that the sail is a black one.
+Uttering the name Isot he expires. She enters too late, and dies with
+her arms around him. "And it is related that Isot of the White Hand,
+Tristan's wife, caused them to be buried on opposite sides of the
+church, that they might not be together in death. But it came to pass
+that an oak grew from the grave of each, and they grew so high that
+their branches twined together above the roof."
+
+Such is the story from which we are asked to believe that Wagner drew
+the materials for his Tristan drama. The earlier part of Gottfried's
+story is not unskilfully told; all that relates to Riwalin and the
+birth of Tristan is worthy to stand beside the best products of German
+mediaeval poetry. But from the time when Isot and her intriguing
+mother enter on the scene the story is as dull as it is immoral. What
+sane-minded person can possibly take an interest in a succession of
+childish tricks played by two lovesick boobies upon a half-witted old
+man? The plot is trivial in the extreme, and the characters are
+contemptible; most contemptible of all are the hero and the heroine.
+The spectacle of a knight on his knees before two women, imploring
+them to have mercy upon him, and, in return for his life, promising to
+find a rich husband for one of them would be hard to match. Add to
+this the constant obtrusion of the poet's own personality, with his
+moral reflections and trite philosophy, one can only wonder how the
+much admired epic can ever have been listened to with patience. Deep
+indeed must culture have sunk at the courts of Germany when princes
+and nobles could take pleasure in such fustian while they possessed
+the stories of the great epics, the Nibelungenlied, the Gudrunlied,
+and the delicate lyrics of Walther von der Vogelweide.
+
+Wagner's procedure in dealing with such a story as this is that of
+Siegfried with the sword. Instead of trying to patch and adapt he
+melts the whole down to create something entirely new out of the
+material. Wagner's story is not the same as that of "Thomas" and
+Gottfried, if for no other reason than that he has only one Isolde.
+Whatever dramatic interest the older story may possess lies in there
+being _two_ Isoldes, and in Tristan's desertion of one for the
+other, of an unlawful mistress for a lawful wife. It seems from
+certain remarks of Wagner[26] that he at first intended to preserve
+this feature of the original, but discarded it as the emotional unity
+of his subject-matter grew upon him.
+
+[Footnote 26: Especially his remark on the kinship of the Tristan and
+Siegfried myths (_Ges. Schr._, vi. 379), for the kinship lies in
+the feature I have mentioned, the desertion of one love for another.]
+
+The essential feature of Wagner's drama is that the love of the hero
+and heroine remains unsatisfied. Their motives are consequently quite
+different from what they are in Gottfried, and all the complex
+intrigue which is the chief interest of the older story falls away of
+necessity. On the other hand he has retained from Gottfried much more
+than the names of the persons, many subordinate motives, not vital to
+the story, and likely to be unnoticed by many, but which his skilled
+eye detected as effective for scenic representation. Such are Isolde's
+hatred and violent denunciations of Tristan before they drink the
+philtre (Gottfr. 14539, 11570),[27] Brangäne's distress and remorse at
+the effect of her trick (11700, 12060); the play upon his name,
+"Tantris" for "Tristan." Kufferath quotes--unfortunately without
+giving a reference--a _Minnelied_ of Gottfried, which is
+obviously reproduced in the second act, where the lovers keep harping
+upon the words "mein und dein." Many references which are obscure in
+Wagner are explained in Gottfried's epic, such as the circumstances of
+Tristan's first visit to Isolde in Ireland, with the splinter in
+Morold's skull. Even the description of the boat in which he came as
+"klein und arm" is accounted for by Gottfried (7424 seq.). Tristan's
+motives for insisting upon Marke's marriage are, as we gather from
+casual indications, the same as those set forth in Gottfried. He has
+been entangled in political intrigues. Utterly free himself from any
+sordid or selfish motive, he insists upon Marke's marriage as the only
+possible means of obtaining tranquillity for his distracted country,
+whereas in Gottfried he acts under fear of assassination.
+
+[Footnote 27: I quote from the German translation of Karl Pannier in
+Reclam, which is the most recent.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WAGNER'S CONCEPTION OF THE TRISTAN MYTHOS
+
+
+Wagner's treatment of his material is worth a closer consideration
+because it is characteristic of his conception of the drama. Like
+every poet of the first order he regards it exclusively from the moral
+standpoint. In a former chapter I drew a distinction between the drama
+which depends upon the play of human actions for their own sakes and
+that in which the interest is centred in the motives or characters of
+the actors. The character of any individual is only another name for
+his permanent will, the abiding metaphysical side of his being and its
+most direct expression is music, while words are the proper vehicle of
+the logical intellect. Gottfried's epic--the latter part of it I mean,
+with which alone we are concerned--is entirely spectacular in the
+sense in which I have used that term. The poet conducts us through a
+succession of incidents related as being interesting or amusing in
+themselves. Wagner, for reasons which I have explained, in dramatizing
+the story, went to the opposite extreme, and composed a work so
+entirely musical that it makes the impression of a gigantic symphony.
+Gottfried cares nothing for the moral characters of his heroes.
+Wooden, soulless puppets are sufficient for him so long as they act
+and react upon one another. But the drama which centres in these
+characters cannot be satisfied with nonentities; the poet had
+therefore to create them himself, and the incidents then dropped out
+as superfluous.
+
+For a character to be poetically interesting it is not necessary that
+it should be faultless. But it must be human--intensely human, both in
+its virtues and in its defects; then the large-hearted spectator can
+reverence its nobility and sympathize with its shortcomings without
+his aesthetic or moral faculties being outraged. Some loftiness of
+purpose there must be in a dramatic hero, something which raises us
+out of ourselves and calls forth feelings of worship and awe in spite
+of what seem to be his errors. "Es irrt der Mensch so lang er
+lebt"--"It is not the finding of truth, but the honest search for it
+that profits"; the spectacle of a noble soul striving against
+adversities and often failing, but never crushed, is one which touches
+the heart most deeply, and is the proper subject of tragedy. Above all
+the hero must be truthful; we must not be always on the watch to find
+him out unawares, as in actual life.
+
+Wagner's drama has been often described as a story of adultery; we are
+even told that it would have no interest were it not a tale of illicit
+love, and so it is regarded by nine out of ten of those who witness
+the performance without having closely studied the text. That such a
+notion should prevail in spite of the clearness of the text on this
+point is due to the fact that most people can only conceive of a drama
+as spectacular. They expect incidents, and, finding none, they seek
+for pruriency. All they see is a man and woman in passionate love for
+each other without any hope of ever being married, so they conclude it
+must come under the familiar heading of illicit love. The difficulty
+of the language is no doubt partly responsible for this gross
+misapprehension, and the music gives no help. It tells of the passion,
+but can say nothing about its legality. Of adultery or illicit love
+there can be no question in Wagner's _Tristan_, if for no other
+reason than that Isolde is not married to King Marke, and owes him no
+allegiance. She has been carried off to be married to him, but that is
+quite a different thing. Are we to suppose that after all that
+happened on board the ship she consented to become the wife of King
+Marke? Certainly the text gives us no authority to suppose anything so
+incredible; we only learn from some words of King Marke in the second
+act that she is still an inviolate virgin. Even if we could believe
+the gentle and chivalrous Marke capable of committing such an outrage
+upon a woman as to go through a form of marriage with her against her
+will, no rite so performed would be binding by any law of God or man.
+Without her consent she cannot be the wife of King Marke. The point
+would not be of any real importance did it not seem to lend colour to
+the absurd charge of licentiousness and sensuality which has so often
+been brought against Wagner.
+
+I have already remarked that an important difference between the old
+conception of the story and Wagner's lies in the fact that in the
+latter their love remains unsatisfied. The notion of their longing
+being fulfilled is utterly foreign to Wagner's _Tristan_, nor is
+there at any moment the smallest hope of their ever possessing each
+other in this life. However consumed they are with love they retain
+perfect mastery over themselves. This is so abundantly clear from the
+first moment when their love is revealed--when they drink the
+potion--that it is inconceivable for a misunderstanding to occur to
+any one who follows the text with any attention. Were the mistake
+confined to vulgar and careless people who make up the bulk of the
+audience, however deplorable, it would be intelligible, but from
+scholars and professional critics we expect at least acquaintance with
+the text. An author who enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an
+authority upon Greek art and is widely read by young students writes
+in a recent work: "Any one at first hearing of Wagner's _Tristan und
+Isolde_ would perceive that it was a most immoral subject.... It is
+an artistic glorification of adultery." How, one must ask, does the
+learned author reconcile this statement with Tristan's words just
+before he drinks the supposed poison: "Tristan's Ehre--höchste Treu'"?
+What is the meaning of the whole dialogue of the second act, of
+Tristan's address to Isolde at the end, and of her reply to him when
+both go forth to die? How does it come that at last, when all
+obstacles have been surmounted, when nothing more hinders the lovers
+from full possession of one another, he deliberately puts an end to
+his own life? This and much more could only be explained by supposing
+that Wagner wrote, in operatic fashion, words without meaning, with an
+eye solely to stage effect. It is the old story! Wagner having been
+once written down as the poet of licence and immorality, the facts
+have to be altered to suit the theory.
+
+Tristan's crime is indeed in the eyes of a chivalrous soul a far
+blacker one than that of adultery. He has betrayed his friend, his
+sovereign, his kinsman, his benefactor, and has broken his faith
+towards the woman who trusted him. He is so completely overcome with
+love for the woman whom he himself has brought to be the bride of his
+uncle, that no going back is possible. But one course is yet open to
+him to save his honour. He may die; and he accordingly seeks death
+with full consciousness and determination. Three times he tries to rid
+himself of life: first when he drinks the supposed poison with Isolde;
+again when he drops his sword in the duel with Melot; the third time
+he succeeds, when he tears off his bandages at the decisive moment,
+when no escape is possible but by instant death.
+
+Love for its own sake is not a subject for dramatic treatment.
+Love-stories are the bane of love. In real life we do not talk about
+our love-affairs, most men thinking that they have quite enough to do
+with their own without caring to hear those of other people. Still
+less do we wish to hear the vapid inanities which seem proper to that
+condition poured forth on the stage. I know of no European drama of
+any importance which treats of a prosperous and happy love as its
+principal subject; it needs the delicate pen of a Kálidása to make it
+endurable. It does not of course follow that love is to be altogether
+banished from dramatic art. The dramatist surveys the whole field of
+human life and could not, if he wished, afford to neglect the most
+powerful and universal of human motives. All depends upon the
+treatment, and no subject is more beset with difficulties. The earlier
+Greek dramatists, with their usual unerring judgment, avoided sexual
+love, i.e. the love between a young woman and a young man, although
+love-stories and love-lyrics were well known to them. The only play
+which has come down to us where love is a predominant motive is the
+_Trachiniae_. The love of Deianeira is the ardent longing of a
+highly emotional young woman and mother, but its very intensity brings
+disaster on both herself and her husband. Broadly speaking, love is a
+legitimate motive for the dramatist when it is used, not as a purpose
+in itself, but as a setting for something else. In the words of
+Corneille, "l'amour ne doit être que l'ornement, et non l'âme de nos
+pièces," and this is how it is generally employed by the best
+dramatists. The love of Benedict and Beatrice, for example, is simply
+a setting for their witty talk and repartee. On the Spanish stage love
+is often a setting for entertaining intrigue, as in Lope de Vega's
+_El Perro del Hortelano_. In Schiller's _Wallenstein_ the
+love of Max and Thekla is a refreshing breath of pure air through the
+abyss of treachery and corruption; almost the same applies to _Romeo
+and Juliet_, and in both the end is death. Of the Elizabethans,
+Ford seems to have had a predilection for love-plots, but all, as far
+as I remember, end tragically. I have selected, as they occurred to
+me, a few representative plays from the dramatic literature of
+different countries; an exhaustive inquiry would, I feel sure, only
+confirm the view that a preference for love subjects for their own
+sake is a sure sign of decadence in the drama. Goethe, who in his
+youth swore to dedicate his life to the service of love,
+and--unhappily--kept his vow; Goethe, who nauseates us with love in
+his romances and lyrics, who even in the Eternal City cannot forget
+his worship of "Amor" and his visits to his "Liebchen," never misuses
+love in his dramas. He tells us sarcastically that on the stage, when
+the lovers are at last united, the curtain falls quickly and covers up
+the sequel.
+
+A work of art like _Tristan und Isolde_ can never be understood
+by the norms which prevail in society. By the social theory, marriage
+is a contract between two parties for their mutual advantage; it is
+inspired by a refined form of selfishness. That spontaneous
+self-immolation which marks the love of pure and vigorous natures lies
+beyond its intelligence. The law is satisfied if only the parties
+subscribe their names in solemn agreement before a proper civil or
+ecclesiastical authority. It could not well be otherwise, for the
+true-born _Aphrodite Ourania_ will not submit to any bonds but
+her own. I should be indeed misunderstood if it were thought that I
+was advocating licence in any form whatever. What is called
+"free-love" is pure sensuality, the bastard _Aphrodite Pandemos_.
+Nothing is more sacred to me than the marriage vow, but I hold that
+the marriage vow itself needs the sanction of love, and that when this
+is absent, or has broken down in the stress of life, I say--not that
+sin is justified, but that love will take vengeance upon those who
+have insulted her name. Lovers whose object is sensual enjoyment with
+as little personal inconvenience as possible, who break the law while
+wishing to escape the legal penalty, have nothing in common with
+Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_. Those who love for the sake of
+loving, whose love is stronger than life, who readily and cheerfully
+accept death as the due penalty of sin, these, and these alone, are
+beyond the pale of human conventions; they can only be judged by the
+laws of a higher morality than that of human tribunals.
+
+Some details of the story we must construct for ourselves, and are
+entitled to do so when they are not essential. The poet is himself not
+always conscious of all the bearings of what he composes; he works by
+inspiration, not by reason, and we know that Wagner himself was
+sometimes under singular delusions with regard to his own works. Two
+questions will occur to everybody at the beginning: 1. Has Isolde
+started on the voyage to be the bride of King Marke with her own
+consent? 2. Does she love Tristan before they drink the potion? Many
+will answer these questions quite positively, the first in the
+negative, the second in the affirmative. But the indications are very
+shadowy indeed in the text, and the old story, the only source which
+could throw any light on the question, tells the contrary in both
+cases. Perhaps it will be contended that the constant presence of the
+love-motive at decisive moments leaves no doubt that they love each
+other from the beginning. To this I reply that it is not possible for
+a musical strain by itself to prove anything. It can only call to mind
+as a reminiscence something with which it has been definitely
+connected before. We cannot do better than leave such questions to be
+answered by each according to his own judgment. Like a skilful painter
+Wagner has drawn secondary incidents with a shadowy outline in order
+that the attention may be concentrated on the main features. The main
+thing is to realize that they are inessential, but those who feel the
+need of greater clearness may reconstruct for themselves. My own
+belief is that their feelings at the beginning of the first act are a
+very subtle and complex mixture, of which they could not then have
+given a very clear account even to themselves, and that the poet has
+therefore, with consummate artistic skill, purposely left them
+unexplained.
+
+The one decisive and all-important motive of the drama is the love of
+the hero and the heroine in conflict with Tristan's honour; and on
+this the whole force of the musical torrent is concentrated. In the
+end love must prevail. Love, with Wagner, is the divine possession
+which dominates every noble heart, but here it is incompatible with
+the conditions of human life, and of that honour which is its very
+breath. And so at the end, as the lovers pass through their
+death-agony clasped in each other's embrace, the love-motive soars
+triumphant and joyous above the surging billows of the orchestra, and
+they are united in the more glorious love beyond, in the "love that is
+stronger than death."
+
+I have now to speak of Wagner's much discussed "pessimism." At first
+sight it might seem a strange contradiction to speak of pessimism in a
+man who composed _Die Meistersinger_, whose love of all things
+beautiful was a passion, whose faith in human nature, unshaken by
+every disillusionment, would almost seem like madness, did we not know
+that it was that very faith which finally carried him through to
+victory. Wagner's pessimism was not borrowed from Schopenhauer, but
+was his own, as it is, in one form or another, the creed of every
+thinking man, the foundation of every satisfying philosophy and art.
+Pessimism does not consist in looking only at the dark side of things,
+and closing the eyes to all that is beautiful; that is blindness and
+ignorance, not philosophy. Pessimism is on the contrary the outcome of
+an intense love, of a passionate delight in the harmony, the fitness,
+and beauty of nature, inspiring a keenly sympathetic soul. He cannot
+close his eyes to the fact that all this lovely world is made to
+perish; that its individuals are engaged in a fierce warfare upon one
+another; each preys upon its fellows with a savagery which shuns no
+cruelty and recks of no crime. Love itself in its mortal embodiment
+withers and turns to evil. His moral sense tells him that this ought
+not to be; there must be some delusion; is it in nature or is it in
+his own understanding? As a rule we put this darker aspect of nature
+out of sight; we exclude the poor, the vicious, the unhappy from our
+company, because they would hinder us in our mad pursuit of pleasure,
+and it needs the strength and sincerity which accompany the advance of
+years to bring a revolt against the selfish blindness of our youth. As
+we watch and learn from the terrible tragedy of nature, as we realize
+more and more the baseness and depravity of human life, our faith
+becomes stronger that beauty, truth, righteousness, are eternal and
+cannot be born only that they may perish; that man is not "a wild and
+ravening beast held in check only by the bonds of civilization," but
+is a divine and immortal being. Our vision gradually opens and we
+learn more clearly that all which we once took for pleasure and for
+pain are unreal, visionary reflections from a higher and purer
+existence where all creation is united in the eternal embrace of love.
+For those who, through courage and sincerity, through faith and hope
+and love, have attained the higher insight, have seen the very face of
+Brahm behind the delusive veil of Mâyâ, there is no discord or
+contradiction in all this; despair gives way to a resigned quietism,
+to that "peace of God which passeth all understanding." Such is the
+ineffable insight of the artist, and no poetry is satisfying which
+does not spring from this source. Wagner in the letter I quoted
+before, speaks of the cheerful playfulness of Spanish poets after they
+had adopted the ascetic life. The philosophic pessimist is not a
+fretful and malignant caviller who sneers at the follies of others
+because he thinks himself so much wiser than they. Any one may note
+among the ascetics of his acquaintance, those who take no pleasure in
+what delights others and live a life of self-denial and
+abstemiousness, how cheerful is their conversation, how bright and
+steadfast their glance, how their tolerance of the follies of others
+is only equalled by the saintliness of their own lives.
+
+Such is Wagner's pessimism; it is the pessimism of the Vedânta
+philosophy; that is to say, it is most clearly formulated in that
+system, and in the Upanishads upon which it rests, but really it is
+the common basis of all religions.[28] It breathes in the poems of
+Hafiz, in the philosophy of Parmenides, Plato, and the Stoics, in the
+profound wisdom of Ecclesiastes, in mediaeval mysticism, and the faith
+of the early Christian Church. Buddhism and Christianity are both
+pessimist in their origin. It is not an "opinion," i.e. a creed or
+formula which may be weighed and either accepted or rejected, but is
+an insight which, when once understood and felt, is as self-evident as
+the air we breathe. But it is an insight which can only be attained
+through moral discipline, never through the rationalism of vulgar and
+self-seeking minds. Nor is it for those who are enlightened at all
+moments of their lives, but only in times of poetic exaltation, when
+the faculties are awake and become creative.
+
+[Footnote 28: Except Islam, which is rather a moral discipline than a
+religion.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ON CERTAIN OBJECTIONS TO THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA
+
+
+In this chapter I propose to consider certain criticisms which are
+often made on Wagner's treatment of the drama, which differ from some
+of those mentioned before, in being intelligible and worthy of
+respect, since they have not been made maliciously or through
+ignorance. In so far as they are invalid they rest upon
+misunderstandings which can easily be accounted for by Wagner's
+unparalleled originality, by the novelty of his art, necessarily
+involving a wide departure from the classic standards by which alone
+the critic can form his judgment. To comprehend his work we must give
+up many of those cherished canons which hitherto have passed
+unquestioned.
+
+Wagner's _Tristan_ has often--even by Lichtenberger--been
+described as a philosophic work; and as abstract thought or
+philosophy, it is said, is foreign to art, a work which admits it must
+be condemned. Let us first understand what is meant by philosophy. It
+is surely a train of thought in the mind of the spectator, not in the
+object which he contemplates. Anything in the world may be the subject
+of philosophic thought, or may suggest it; there is plenty of
+philosophy to be drawn from a daisy, but we do not therefore call a
+daisy a philosophic flower. So, too, we may philosophize about
+Wagner's _Tristan_, but the philosophy is our own; it is not in
+the work. What is meant no doubt is that the work itself is not a
+concrete reality, but an exposition of an abstract conception.
+Philosophy has only herself to blame if abstractions are in the naïf,
+ordinary mind opposed to realities, for it is unhappily true that
+nearly the whole of our current philosophy does consist of
+abstractions which are mere "Hirngespinnste," rooted in words and not
+in nature; philosophy itself has in art become a term of reproach from
+being associated with unreality. We must, however, distinguish between
+notions which are real but difficult to grasp and those which cannot
+be grasped, because there is nothing in them, and this distinction
+cannot be made without thought and labour from which the ordinary mind
+shrinks, being too indolent or indifferent. Poetry is not opposed to
+philosophy, and is not the less poetry when it concerns itself with
+those higher notions which are outside the range of our more ordinary
+comprehension, [Greek: ho¯s philosophias ousaes megistaes monsikaes].
+Both poetry and philosophy deal in abstractions, only in both the
+abstractions must be true, i.e. must be true general statements of
+ideas found in nature; when this is the case poetry and philosophy
+are indistinguishable, except by mere external and conventional
+features. Under which heading are we to class, for example, Plato's
+_Republic_? Or the _Upanishads_? or the book of _Job_? They
+are generally thought of as philosophy, but all who have even partially
+understood them will feel their poetic spell. Or if we take our greatest
+poems, to mention only some of those most familiar to us: _Paradise
+Lost_, Goethe's _Faust_ or Marlowe's, Tennyson's _In Memoriam_,
+Fitzgerald's _Rubáiyát_--all of these might be just as well classed under
+philosophy as under poetry. Only untrue philosophy is unpoetical, that
+which has grown out of the reason of man. Abstractions manufactured
+by human reason are no more philosophy than an account of centaurs
+and gryphons is natural history. They are not to be found in Wagner's
+_Tristan_.
+
+The particular philosophy which Wagner's _Tristan_ is supposed to
+set forth is that of Schopenhauer. But Schopenhauer's doctrine of
+Negation of Will or Nirvâna--for it is identical with that of
+Buddhism--is a negation of existence itself absolutely. The man who
+puts an end to his own life does not attain Nirvâna; he is not
+dissatisfied with life in itself, but only with its conditions, and he
+passes through the endless cycle of Samsâra until the moment arrives
+when, sickened with the wearisome struggle, he longs for complete
+annihilation. The lovers in _Tristan_ look forward to a renewed
+existence beyond the grave, in the "realm of night," where, freed from
+the trammels of the senses their love will endure, purified from the
+pollution of human lust in glory undimmed by the sordid conditions of
+human life.
+
+  Sehnen hin zur heil'gen Nacht
+    Wo ur-ewig einzig wahr
+  Liebes-Wonne ihm lacht.
+
+Such a future life would with Schopenhauer only be a renewal of the
+misery of existence in another form. It is the Christian, not the
+Buddhist, way of feeling that inspires the lovers. Christianity starts
+from the insufficiency and misery of human life, but contemplates
+redemption therefrom by love, whereas Buddhism conceives of no
+possibility of redemption. Its release is annihilation, and it is a
+religion of despair, not of hope.
+
+It would be interesting, if it did not take us too far from our
+present subject, to compare this conception of love with that of
+Sokrates as set forth in the _Symposium_ of Plato. Sokrates
+believed fully in immortality, but wisely refrained from speculating
+on the conditions of existence after death. His _Eros_ is
+confined to this life, but none the less he treats it as a divine
+gift. Love is the mediator and interpreter between gods and men; and
+love of the beautiful, which manifests itself in the procreation and
+love of offspring, is the desire for immortality, the children being
+the continuation of the immortal part of their parents.[29] This is
+the lower mystery. The higher, which is not revealed to all, is the
+gradual expansion of love until it comprehends the eternal Idea. The
+beauty which we love in the individual becomes a stepping-stone from
+which we may rise to the love of all beautiful things, passing from
+one to many, from beautiful forms to beautiful deeds, from them to
+beautiful thoughts, laws, institutions, sciences, until we contemplate
+the vast sea of beauty in the boundless love of wisdom, a beauty which
+does not grow and perish, but is eternal. There could be no finer
+commentary on Wagner's _Tristan_ than this wondrous speech of
+Sokrates in the _Symposium_.
+
+[Footnote 29: It is worth noting in passing how this beautiful
+conception of Plato coincides with views expressed in our own day by a
+scientific man of the highest distinction, the foremost living
+representative of Darwinian evolution, Professor Weismann. See his
+_Essays on Heredity_.]
+
+It is true, however paradoxical it may seem, that Wagner's very
+stupendous power is itself a source of weakness; it is too great for
+more limited minds to grasp. If love is really the one divine fact of
+human existence, to which all else is as nothing; and if at the same
+time a pure and burning love resolutely followed of necessity leads to
+destruction, then how are we to live at all? Is this life to count for
+nothing? I shall not attempt to answer this question. I cannot bring
+the truth that all noble and generous actions are bound to end in
+failure, to bring death upon their doers, within the scheme of a
+divinely ordered universe. I will only observe that it is a truth
+tacitly acknowledged by all who compose tragedies or take pleasure in
+witnessing them. How else could we endure to contemplate the failure
+and destruction of a Lear, a Wallenstein, a Deianira, an Antigone?
+
+Here our attempts to extract philosophy out of the Tristan drama must
+cease. My only purpose has been to show that its abstractions are warm
+with the living breath of reality, and whatever is beyond this must be
+left for the student to carry out for himself, from the point of view
+of his own mind. Such exercises are interesting and salutary to the
+philosophic mind, but for minds trained in the modern formulas of
+"self-interest" and "liberty" they are only possible after a complete
+reconstruction of the foundations of knowledge, a "revaluation of all
+values."
+
+The decisive part played by the magic love-potion has given rise to
+much comment. Hostile critics ridicule it, and condemn the whole work
+as turning on an absurdity, while those who are favourable try to
+explain it away, but their explanations have always seemed to me more
+unnatural than the thing explained. Why may we not accept it as it is
+evidently intended? In art at least, rationalism has not yet--thanks
+perhaps to Shakespearian traditions--prevailed so far that we must
+exclude supernatural motives altogether. Wagner could scarcely have
+used the myth and the names of Tristan and Isolde without introducing
+the philtre with which they have always been associated. It would be
+just as reasonable to explain away the ghost in _Hamlet_ as the
+love-potion of Isolde; if we accept one we can accept the other, for
+in both the prime mover of the tragedy is supernatural. Lessing, in
+comparing the ghost of Hamlet's father with the ghost of Ninus in
+Voltaire's _Semiramis_, has some remarks which are equally valid
+for all supernatural motives in the drama. The principle which he
+evolves is that a supernatural being to be admissible must interest us
+for its own sake as a living and acting personage; in other words, it
+must be an organic portion of the play, not a mere machine brought in
+for stage effect. "Voltaire treats the apparition of a dead person as
+a miracle, Shakespeare as a perfectly natural occurrence." I do not
+think that the difference between what is allowable and what is not
+could be more clearly put than in this last sentence. We are not
+obliged to believe that the potion is the sole cause of their love;
+that they hated each other as deadly enemies at one moment and became
+lovers at the next. Such a notion would be altogether too crude. We
+are justified in supposing that behind Isolde's rage and Tristan's
+disdain there lies a deeper feeling, as yet unconfessed but
+sufficiently deep-rooted to endure when the anger of the moment has
+passed away, and that this is what is effected by the draught.
+
+A very marked characteristic or mannerism of Wagner's dramas is the
+tedious length of explanation in some scenes or soliloquies, and they
+have often been severely criticized. There is one in _Tristan_,
+King Marke's speech at the end of Act II., and I may say at once that
+after all that has been said the objections cannot be entirely set
+aside. It numbers nearly two hundred bars in slow tempo, and takes
+about ten minutes. The argument generally used in defending it is that
+the action is laid within, and the interest is in the music. But the
+objection--to me at least--is not that the action is at a standstill,
+but that the scene is undramatic, and much of it unmitigated prose.
+The action has stood still nearly all through the act, but no one
+would wish to miss a bar of any other portion. The king's reproaches
+of his friend and vassal for his treachery, and the music with its
+gloomy orchestration, mostly of horns, bassoons, viola, and lower
+strings, with occasional English horn, and the deepest notes of the
+clarinet interspersed with wails of the bass-clarinet, are profoundly
+touching and proceed naturally out of the situation. Had there been
+nothing more than these it might have been much shorter, but Wagner
+has taken the occasion to try to throw some light upon the
+circumstances that preceded the events of the play. If they were to be
+told they should have been told earlier. Here we have forgotten our
+perplexity at the beginning and are now thrilled with the situation,
+not at all in the mood for hearing explanations. Nor does it really
+explain; if the hearer does not already know why Isolde was brought to
+be the bride of King Marke, he will scarcely learn it from Marke's
+speech.
+
+When I spoke just now of Wagner's predilection for long soliloquies
+and prosy explanations as a mannerism, I do not think that I was
+expressing myself too strongly. Thus in _Die Walküre_, in Wotan's
+long speech to Brünnhilde in Act II., he sketches the main events of
+_Das Rheingold_. In _Siegfried_ the amusing riddle scene, a
+reminiscence of the Eddic _Alvísmál_, seems intended to relate
+events which have gone before. In _Götterdämmerung_ it is
+Siegfried who just before his death tells the story of the preceding
+evening.[30] In _Parsifal_ Gurnemanz explains all the circumstances
+to the Knappen. How undramatic are these explanations we shall
+realize when we compare them with such soliloquies as Tannhäuser's
+account of his pilgrimage or Siegmund's story of his life, which, though
+equally lengthy, keep us spellbound from the first bar to the last,
+because they directly lead up to and form part of the scene which is
+actually before us. Tannhäuser's wild aspect and manner, Siegmund's
+desolation and longing for community with other human beings, are in
+direct connection with the story told.
+
+[Footnote 30: From which we may conclude that Wagner when composing
+the tetralogy contemplated the separate numbers being sometimes
+performed singly. For this the explanations are again inadequate. Much
+better it would have been to provide at the performance a short
+printed or spoken introduction, a plan which in my humble opinion
+might well be adopted in most plays.]
+
+I am, of course, only expressing an individual opinion, because I feel
+bound in giving a full account of the work to say how it appears to
+me; others may very probably feel it differently. It matters little.
+Even if I am right in thinking that Wagner has miscalculated the
+effect on the stage, _Tristan_ will still remain a work
+immeasurably superior to a thousand that are faultless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MUSIC AS AN ART OF EXPRESSION
+
+
+"Art generally ... as such, is nothing but a noble and expressive
+language, invaluable as a vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
+
+"Art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at
+spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. It is no
+handiwork for drawing-room tables, no relief of the ennui of boudoirs;
+it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all. To
+advance it, men's lives must be given, and to receive it, their
+hearts."
+
+These words, among the first written for serious publication by John
+Ruskin when he was a young graduate of Oxford, are the text of his
+whole life's teaching.
+
+"Daily and hourly," writes Carlyle, "the world natural grows out of a
+world magical to me.... Daily, too, I see that there is no true poetry
+but in reality."
+
+More than two thousand years before Plato had written in the third
+book of his _Republic_ against the indifference to manly virtue
+and the cult of a languishing effeminacy in the poetry and art of his
+day. He inveighs against the [Greek: panarmonia] and [Greek:
+poluchodia] of the musicians, by which we may understand
+over-instrumentation,--as if the Athenians even then had their
+Berliozes and Strausses--and continues (I quote from Jowett's
+translation): "Neither we nor our guardians whom we have to educate
+can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms of
+temperance ([Greek: so¯phrosunae]), courage, liberality, magnificence
+([Greek: megalorepeia]), and their kindred, etc."
+
+The teaching of all these three great masters, and I might have
+multiplied quotations from the works of the greatest--but only from
+those of the greatest--thinkers of ancient and modern times, is the
+same: that art is not a mere play of beautiful forms, but that the
+artist must know a truth and have been able to express it; that his
+work must be approved or condemned according as that truth is
+healthful or the reverse. It is the doctrine of sincerity, and is
+opposed to the common and weaker doctrine of "art for art's
+sake"--i.e. that art is self-contained, that we occupy ourselves with
+it solely for the pleasure which it affords through our senses, that
+it has no didactic purpose. By this latter view, beauty in art is an
+idea quite distinct from utility or morality; by the other, beauty,
+utility, and morality are fundamentally one, being all emanations from
+the one supreme Idea of creation named by Plato--"the Good," or "the
+Good in itself," "the Idea of Good."
+
+Can we apply this distinction to music? All the other arts derive
+their subject-matter from the material world, but Polyhymnia seems to
+detach herself from her sisters, to soar away from the things of this
+earth, and to dwell in the ethereal regions of pure ideality. The
+objects of painting, poetry, sculpture, etc., are those of our
+surroundings; the artist only puts the things familiar to us in nature
+in a new light, and, by concentrating the attention upon certain
+aspects, reveals much that minds less poetic than his had not noticed
+before. The morality which these arts are able to convey is the
+morality of nature. But music is not concerned with any material
+objects; its means are rhythm, melodic intervals, harmony, all purely
+ideal existences, and seemingly all connected in some mysterious way
+with number, itself an immaterial idea of time. And although the
+manner of our perception of harmony has, to some extent, that of
+melody to a still smaller extent, been explained in our time by
+physiologists, the explanations only relate to the form of our
+perception. They show how, through the harmonic overtones, the mind is
+able to recognize the connection between a chord and the one which
+preceded it, but cannot tell why one progression of harmonies is
+pleasant, another the reverse, as Helmholtz himself was fully aware.
+How then can it be possible for music to be a vehicle of thought? What
+can it have to do with "temperance, courage, liberality"?
+
+The question is not one which I can hope fully to answer within these
+pages, but it cannot be altogether passed over; we must know something
+of the nature of music, must have some clear notion of what it is if
+we are to understand its relation to language in the drama. The
+explanation given by Leibnitz that it is an _exercitium arithmeticae
+occultum nescientis se numerare animi_ is quite inadequate. Music
+is not a purely intellectual affection like that of number and
+proportion, but is in the highest degree emotional. The pleasure which
+we receive from contemplating a mathematical process of great
+complexity is altogether different from that of music. Highly complex
+as are the mathematical relations of the vibrations which convey
+musical tones from the instrument to the ear the final result of those
+relations, the impression on the rods of Corti's organ in the Cochlea,
+are as purely physiological as the impressions of touch. Scientific,
+i.e. inductive, research must always find an end at the point where
+the organs become too small for observation; it can throw no light on
+the nature of the impression transmitted from Corti's organ to the
+consciousness.
+
+A suggestion has been put forward by Schopenhauer which may be viewed
+as an attempt to explain transcendentally the nature of music. It is
+well known that, according to Schopenhauer, a work of art represents
+the (Platonic) Idea of the object which it depicts, this Idea being
+itself the first and highest stage of objectivation of Will. Music is,
+however, a direct objectivation of Will, i.e. not through an Idea.
+
+Music, therefore, is not like the other arts the image (Abbild) of an
+Idea, but an image of the Will itself, of which the Ideas are also the
+objectivity. This is why the impression which music makes upon us is
+so much more powerful and more penetrating than that of the other
+arts, for they tell only of the shadow, music of the substance. But
+inasmuch as it is the same will that objectivates itself, only in
+quite different ways in the Ideas and in music, so there results, not
+indeed a _resemblance_, but rather a _parallelism_, an _analogy_
+between music and the Ideas which appear in the world, multiplied
+and imperfect as phenomena.
+
+Beyond this we must not follow our author. Schopenhauer no doubt
+possessed a very keen sense for music, but his theoretical education
+was of the slightest, and his further remarks make the impression of
+his having read up _ad hoc_ some theoretical writer of his time.
+But we may accept his definition as at least a first step in the
+inquiry.
+
+The objective world lies before us in two forms, as light and as
+sound. From the visible world of light we receive all the data for our
+_understanding_, in the forms of time, space, and causality.
+Beside it lies the world of sound, in time alone, and appealing
+directly to our inner emotional consciousness, or, as we vaguely
+express it, to the "_feelings_," which the light-world can only
+reach indirectly through the understanding. Both these worlds are
+fundamentally one, differing only in their manifestation, and, however
+diverse they may appear, they are united by the element common to
+both, Rhythm. In general the language of the understanding is
+articulate speech, that of the emotions is music. The Unity subsisting
+between these two worlds, of understanding and emotion, of language
+and music, can only be realized intuitively; it can scarcely be
+demonstrated. But we have vivid illustrations of it in many familiar
+facts, for instance, that animals are able to make themselves
+understood to us and to each other without articulate language, by
+gesture and song. Thus we have the mutual relations of the two
+dramatic elements. Shortly stated, words tell the story, music the
+feelings of the persons. Gesture would seem to hold a place between
+language and song, appealing to the emotions as directly, and
+sometimes almost as forcibly as sound.[31] These relations are not so
+sharply marked off from each other as appears in the analysis. In a
+highly wrought organism each part, while keeping strictly to its own
+functions, is nevertheless capable to some extent, when necessity
+arises, of extending its field. It is like a well-disciplined army
+where the duties of each unit are strictly laid down, but where the
+units themselves possess intelligence and are capable when needful of
+independent action, and a continual intercommunication between all the
+parts ensures their harmonious working.
+
+[Footnote 31: The reader who is interested will find the subject more
+fully treated in Wagner's _Beethoven_.]
+
+Applying what has been said to the drama let us select one incident of
+our work, the tearing down of the torch by Isolde in the second act.
+The words have told us that the torch is a signal of danger, and now
+the sounds of the hunt having died away, its removal informs Tristan
+that the way is clear for him to approach. More than this the poet
+could scarcely do in the words. To have expatiated upon the awful
+consequences which the lovers know full well must inevitably follow,
+on the conflict of hope, awe, heroic resolution, defiance of the
+certain death before them--to have told all this in words would have
+necessitated a long speech, most unnatural and undramatic at such a
+moment of tension, and could scarcely have avoided degenerating into
+bombast. By a few simple transitions, a few devices of instrumentation,
+the orchestra relates all this and much more, while Isolde's
+flute-motive, so exquisitely graceful and tender in the preceding scene,
+has now become a shriek of resolution bewildered but undaunted in the
+supreme crisis, above the savage call of the trumpets to death. So far
+the music; we _see_ in the torch hurled from its shining post and left
+expiring on the ground, a symbol of the drama that is concentrated
+in the act; of Tristan's glory extinguished in the realm of night. All
+this in the scenic representation forms one issue, the different elements
+coalescing in the hearer's mind into a single dramatic incident.
+
+Wagner's view of the relation of music to words has been the subject
+of much controversy, often unhappily very heated. Before Wagner the
+common notion was that music in combination with words had only to
+enforce them and to accentuate their declamation. Such was the view of
+Gluck. As regards lyric productions, the setting of songs to music,
+this principle may be sufficient, but the case is different when both
+words and music are controlled by a dramatic action.
+
+Another view places music in a class altogether by itself, apart from
+the other arts, and unable to unite with them except in so far as to
+employ them as its vehicle. Wherever music appears in company with
+poetry, music must take the lead, must be governed by its own laws,
+retain its own forms, while poetry, its compliant servant, must avoid
+all higher expression and accommodate itself as best it can to the
+music. So the highest form of music will be instrumental, where it is
+unfettered by the ties of poetry.
+
+A little work published in the fifties by the Vienna critic, Dr. E.
+Hanslick, entitled _Vom musikalisch-Schönen_, discusses this
+question very fully. It attained great celebrity at the time of its
+publication and is still read. It is the best attempt that I have seen
+to state theoretically the case against Wagner in sober and reasoned
+language, and though it contains a few misunderstandings it is free
+from offensive personalities and well worthy of attention. The author
+is a disciple of that school of German aestheticians of which F. Th.
+Vischer is the foremost representative.
+
+According to Dr. Hanslick, music, being an art isolated from objective
+nature, can never be anything but music. Whatever it expresses can
+only be stated in terms of music; it can never present a definite
+human "feeling." The essence of music is movement, and it can
+represent certain dynamic ideas. Thus, although it can never express
+love, hope, longing, etc., since those feelings involve a perception
+(_Vorstellung_) or a concept (_Begriff_), things foreign to
+its nature, it can represent given ideas as strong, weak, increasing,
+diminishing, etc.--or as anything which is a function of time,
+movement, and proportion. It can also _by analogy_ suggest in the
+hearer the ideas of pleasing, soft, violent, elegant, and the like.
+Whatever is beyond this is symbolical. Movement and symbolism are the
+only means by which music can express anything. The notion that music
+can express a definite feeling was, the author declares, universally
+held by aestheticians at that time, and amongst those who held it he
+seems to include Wagner. By way of exposing its fallacy he quotes the
+air from Gluck's _Orpheus_:
+
+[Music: J'ai per - du mon Eu - ri - di - ce-- rien n'é - ga - le mon
+mal - heur.]
+
+It would be possible, he says, to substitute words of an exactly
+opposite meaning--
+
+  J'ai trouvé mon Euridice,
+  Rien n'égale mon bonheur--
+
+without the music being affected in any way. This being so, he
+continues, music can never unite with words to express any notion at
+all, and the only form artistically admissible is absolute or
+instrumental music. The pleasure which it imparts is the same as that
+which we derive from a kaleidoscope, except in so far as it is
+ennobled by the fact of its emanating from a human mind instead of
+from a machine. The union of music with words is a morganatic
+marriage, in which the words must suffer violence. With this the
+author believes himself to have demolished Wagner's canon that in the
+musical drama the music is only a means, the end being the drama.
+
+Undoubtedly there is much truth in these observations. If for the
+moment we confine our attention to instrumental music it is undeniable
+that a musical melody in itself can never be anything but music.
+Wagner himself has insisted that music attains all the fulness of
+which it is capable as absolute or instrumental music, and as this
+truth has been too often forgotten by composers, we have nothing but
+gratitude for an author who once more strives to bring it into notice.
+But it is only a one-sided truth, and insufficient. By the same rigid
+reasoning it might be contended that a human face, being nothing but
+modelling and colour, can never express anything but functions of
+lines and forms, and colours. Everything in nature as well as in art
+has for those who look below the surface a significance beyond its
+external features. Nor does it follow that music will always remain
+content with its own glorious isolation, that it will never seek for
+union with other arts, sacrificing indeed its pristine purity, but
+gaining mightily in warm human expression. Even in the heyday of
+absolute music, in the instrumental compositions of Sebastian Bach, we
+may notice this tendency, though here it is rather the dance than
+poetry with which it strives to ally itself; while in Beethoven's
+symphonies the yearning for human community and human fellowship is
+noticeable from the first, and in the final work it breaks its bonds
+and dissolves into song.
+
+The primary error in Dr. Hanslick's argument is that it begins at the
+wrong end, and tacitly assumes that art can be controlled by
+theoretical speculations. An _a priori_ development of the theory
+of art out of supposed first principles must in the end lead to
+contradictions and absurdities, and every one must feel his conclusion
+that the union of music and words is illegitimate--a view which, among
+other things, would deprive us of Schubert's songs--to be an
+absurdity. Had the inquiry commenced with familiar instances from
+existing works of art in which music is felt to possess a very vivid
+power of expression and then been carried backwards to find what it
+can express and what not, and what are the conditions of its
+expression, the results might have been valuable and we should have
+been spared a dissertation resting wholly upon confusion of the
+meaning of words. Here a definite meaning has been attached to the
+word "feeling" (_Gefühl_); it is understood as including such
+feelings as "hope," "love," "fear," etc. These, of course, music
+cannot express. Wagner himself insists that music can never express a
+_definite_ feeling, and even censures it as a "misunderstanding"
+on the part of Beethoven that in his later works he attempted to do
+so.[32] The best word to denote what music can express is that used by
+Helmholtz--_Gemüthstimmung_--untranslatable into English, but for
+which we may use the term "emotional mood" as denoting something
+similar. It is a _tuning_ or a _tone_ of the mind, a _mood_ that music
+expresses, and from a word of such vague meaning there is no risk
+of false deductions being drawn.
+
+[Footnote 32: Wagner, _Ges. Schr_., iii. 341; iv. 387.]
+
+All our musical sense revolts against the dictum that music cannot
+under any circumstances express a general feeling. Take, for example,
+Agatha's outburst on seeing the approach of her lover Max in the
+second act of _Der Freischütz_:
+
+[Music: All' mei - ne Pul - se schla-gen, und das Herz wallt un - ge -
+stüm, Süss ent - - zückt ent - ge - - - gen ihm,.... etc.]
+
+Would it be possible to hear this passage and not feel the melody as
+a direct and most vivid expression of joy?--joy, that is, in the
+abstract, but not a definite joy at some given event--that is told by
+the words and scenery? Whatever share words and gesture may contribute
+is as nothing compared with that exultant and rapturous outburst of
+melody. Wherever there is any character-drawing in Italian opera,
+it is in the music, not in the words, as, for example, in the more
+dramatic portions of Elvira's music in _Don Giovanni_. The frequent
+movement in octaves imparts a nobility and dignity to her expression
+which are altogether absent in the words.
+
+The paraphrase of the words of the air from Gluck's _Orphée_ is
+amusing enough as a _jeu d' esprit_, but surely cannot be taken
+seriously. Hanslick seems to have misapprehended the music; it does
+not express grief, and is not intended to. The _words_ express
+the desolation of Orpheus at the loss of his beloved, but the
+_Stimmung_ of the melody is one of calm resignation. It is the
+serene self-restraint with which Gluck loves to imbue his classic
+heroes and heroines, and which is equally appropriate to joy and
+grief. Grillparzer, whose authority both as a dramatist and as a
+sensitive lover of music is rightly esteemed very highly, has declared
+that it would be possible to take any one of Mozart's _arias_,
+and set words of quite different meaning to them. This may be true of
+many of Mozart's _arias_, which were often composed more with
+regard to the organ of a particular singer than to the text before
+him, but is assuredly not true of his great dramatic scenes and
+finales.
+
+Whatever value such speculations may possess vanishes before the
+unconscious instinct of the creating artist. It is well known that
+German dramatists and poets have from the beginning felt keenly the
+need of musical expression. If the need was less felt by English
+dramatists of our great period the reason is that it required the
+development of music in the hands of the great German masters before
+its power could be fully known. Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Hoffmann,
+Richter, and a host of others all sighed for the aid of music.[33]
+Kleist declared music to be the root of all the other arts. Their
+dream could not be realized until the right form of the drama which
+could unite with music had been found. It was at last found by Wagner
+after repeated trial and failure. He determined the form as that in
+which the characters act out of their own inner impulses. The
+historical drama shows men as torn hither and thither by external
+political considerations. The action is impelled by wheels within
+wheels of intrigue and complex psychological mechanism. For such
+subjects the romance, with its almost unlimited powers of expatiation,
+is the proper vehicle, but they are unfitted for music; they
+necessitate wearisome explanations of complicated motives altogether
+foreign to the direct emotional character of musical drama. The
+musical character is the one who is entirely himself, and whose
+motives are therefore clear from the first; such subjects are to be
+found above all in the mythologies of imaginative and poetically
+gifted peoples. That does not of course mean that other subjects are
+excluded, for there is no domain of life which may not offer the same
+conditions, provided only that the characters have a strong and
+well-marked individuality. When once this principle was discovered the
+musical drama became a reality. Wagner uses for this form of drama the
+term _reinmenschlich_--purely human--an expression which was in
+keeping with the humanitarian views prevalent at the time when he
+wrote, but not free from objection and apt to be misunderstood in our
+day.
+
+[Footnote 33: Many utterances of German poets to this effect will be
+found reproduced in Chamberlain's _Richard Wagner_.]
+
+If the drama longed for the means of expressing its own inmost nature,
+no less did music seek for a nearer approach to objectivity and to the
+conditions of human existence. If it is true that music is the root of
+all the arts, then it must also be the root of human life, and must
+seek to reveal itself in life and in the drama which is the mirror of
+life. The desire for human expression is already, as we have seen,
+very clearly discernible in the symphonies and sonatas of Beethoven,
+but it is since his time that the most remarkable development has
+taken place. The programme music of Berlioz, Liszt, and other
+composers has rightly been condemned by many critics, but the mistake
+was in the manner of the composition rather than in the intention,
+which was natural, indeed inevitable. Wagner's assertion that with
+Beethoven "the last symphony has been written"--rationally understood,
+of course, as meaning that nothing beyond is possible on instrumental
+lines--is quite true. There was nothing left but for music to take
+form in things of human interest. Only the composers, perhaps as much
+from want of an adequate dramatic form as from want of skill, failed
+to attain their end. While evidently striving to follow out
+Beethoven's hint, _mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei_,
+their powers failed, and they produced more _Malerei_ than
+_Empfindung_. The reader may consider by the light of these
+remarks the passage in Liszt's _Faust_ symphony in the slow
+movement, where Gretchen is represented as plucking a daisy,
+repeating, "He loves me, he loves me not," etc. The composer has
+depicted the scene with wonderful skill and exquisite poetic feeling,
+but the essence of Goethe's scene, which lies entirely in its
+unconscious innocence, is gone in this highly wrought artificial
+presentation. It is the difference between nature and art, between the
+naïve, pure-minded maiden and the actress painted and decorated for
+the stage.
+
+There are few persons, I believe, who on hearing an instrumental
+composition do not feel a desire to form a mental picture of its
+contents, so to speak, to objectivate it in their minds. Aestheticians
+tell us that we are wrong, and we are apt to laugh at each other's
+pictures, but we all do it. Beethoven, as we know from his friend
+Schindler and his pupil Ries, often, if not always, had some object
+before him when composing his instrumental works. The fact that the
+same music suggests different interpretations to different minds will
+not disturb us if we remember that music does not and never can
+_depict_ or _describe_ its object: for that we have the arts
+of poetry and painting. What music can give is the emotional mood
+which it calls forth, and which may be common to many objects very
+different in their external character. A "stormy" movement may be
+referred to a storm of winds and waves, or to a storm of human
+passions, and so might suggest a battle, a shipwreck, a revolution, a
+violent emotion of love or hatred, or a play of Shakespeare. But the
+aversion which we naturally feel to the labelling of sonatas and
+symphonies with titles is in my opinion justifiable,[34] because here
+we recognize an attempt to stereotype one particular interpretation,
+instead of leaving the mind of each hearer free to form his own.
+
+[Footnote 34: The latest and most atrocious outrage on good taste in
+this respect is the labelling of Beethoven's great B flat sonata as
+"_the Hammerklavier_." All musicians of finer feeling should
+unite to kill this absurd name.]
+
+A musical composition is a vessel into which many wines can be poured.
+It cannot in itself express either any material object or any definite
+feeling which involves such an object. No music can alone, without a
+suggestion from elsewhere, express a person, a place, or love or fear
+or a battle or "a calm sea and prosperous voyage," or any similar
+thing. But it has a marvellous power of receiving suggestions which
+are offered to it, by words or otherwise, of carrying them on and, by
+means of its own forces of movement and proportion, intensifying their
+expression to, a degree inconceivable without its aid. Mathematics
+present an exact analogy to music, and are to science what music is to
+art. Both are ideal forms which in one sense only attain complete
+individuality when they are pure, but in another sense have no meaning
+until they are applied to some object of nature. A mathematical
+formula is only true so long as it remains an ideal in the mind; but
+its existence has no other purpose than to state a law for material
+phenomena, when it at once loses its essential qualities as a
+mathematical formula, certainty and accuracy. In this way we may
+understand simultaneously the supremacy of absolute music and the
+truth for which Wagner contends, that music can never be anything but
+expression.
+
+Dr. Hanslick's dictum that music has no other means for its expression
+than movement and symbolism cannot be admitted. It can express through
+association. All the senses have in some degree the faculty of
+recalling in the mind impressions with which they have once been
+associated. Who has never had the memory of his home or of some place
+familiar to his childhood recalled by the scent of a flower or a
+plant? No sense possesses this power in anything like the same degree
+as that of hearing, especially when the connection has been
+established through a musical strain. It is on this principle that
+Wagner mainly relies in his dramatic musical motives. In itself the
+connection is in the first instance artificial. A musical strain of a
+striking individual character is brought into connection with some
+idea of the drama, it may be a person or a scene or an incident, in
+short, anything which may serve as a dramatic motive, and
+thenceforward whenever the musical strain is heard, the idea with
+which it has been associated will be called up in the mind of the
+hearer. All the resources of modern music are then at the disposal of
+the composer for exhibiting his motive in the most varied lights,
+intensifying, varying, contrasting, or combining with other motives,
+as the dramatic situation requires.
+
+It often happens that the musical strain is heard before its
+association with an idea of the drama has been established, as, for
+example, in the instrumental prelude. The idea then seems to hover in
+the music as a vague _presentiment_ (_Ahnung_) of something
+that is to come. A superb example of this occurs at the end of _Die
+Walküre_. Wotan has laid his daughter to rest, and surrounded her
+with a barrier of fire. "Let none cross this fire who dreads my
+spear," he cries, and at once the threat is answered by a defiant
+blast from the trombones uttering a strain which has not yet taken
+definite form, but which we learn from the sequel is the theme proper
+to Siegfried the hero, who is destined to bring to an end the power of
+the god.
+
+Or the motive may reappear after it has served its purpose on the
+stage; it is then a _reminiscence_ of past events. No finer
+example of this could be found than in the music of Isolde's
+swan-song, the so-called _Liebestod_, which is built up out of
+the motives of the life into a symphonic structure of almost
+unparalleled force and truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOME REMARKS ON THE MUSICAL DICTION OF _TRISTAN UND ISOLDE_
+
+
+Before beginning the detailed consideration of our work, I wish to say
+a few words on some features of the music. As I am writing for the
+general reader and not for the musician, I shall endeavour to express
+myself in generally understood terms, and avoid technical details.
+
+Each of Wagner's works presents a distinct and strongly defined
+musical physiognomy marking it off from all the others. The music of
+each is cast in its own mould and is at once recognizable from that of
+the rest. The most characteristic features of the music of _Tristan
+und Isolde_ are its concentrated _intensity_ and the ineffable
+_sweetness_ of its melody. The number of musical-dramatic motives
+employed is very small, but they are insisted upon and emphasized by a
+musical working out unparalleled in the other works. In
+_Rheingold_, for example, some twelve or fifteen motives--if we
+count only those of well-marked contours, and which are used in
+definite dramatic association--can be distinguished; whereas in the
+whole of _Tristan_ there are of such _Leitmotive_ in the
+narrowest sense not more than three or four. The treatment is also
+very different. The _Ring_ is not entirely innocent of what has
+been wittily called the "visiting-card" employment of motives, while
+in _Tristan_ the musical motive does not repeat, but rather
+supplements, the words, indicating what these have left untold, thus
+entering as truly into the substance of the drama as it does into that
+of the music.
+
+The most important motive of all, the one which pervades the drama
+from beginning to end, is the love-motive. Its fundamental form is
+that in which it appears in the second bar of the Prelude in the oboe
+(No. 1).[35] Variants of it occur without the characteristic semitone
+suspension (1_a_) or with a falling seventh (1_b_). The
+cello motive of the opening phrase of the Prelude may also be
+considered as derived from the same by contrary movement (1_c_).
+
+[Footnote 35: See the musical examples at the end.]
+
+Of equal importance, though occurring less frequently, and only at
+important and decisive moments, is the death-motive (2). This motive
+is less varied than the last, recurring generally in the same key--A
+flat passing into C minor--and with similar instrumentation, the brass
+and drums entering _pp_ on the second chord.
+
+The second act opens with a strongly marked phrase which is the
+musical counterpart of the great metaphor so conspicuous throughout
+the act, of the day as destructive of love. The working out of this
+motive whilst the lovers are together is a marvel of musical
+composition, and it always returns in the same connection.
+
+Perhaps we may also include among these fundamental musical-dramatical
+motives one occurring in the middle of the second act at the words
+"_Sehnen hin zur heilgen Nacht_" (No. 4). It is akin to the
+death-motive proper, but the solemn harmonies are here torn asunder
+into a strain so discordant that without the dramatic context it would
+scarcely be bearable. It is the rending of the bond with this life and
+with the day. The music here reminds us that, however heroically the
+lovers accept their inevitable end, they feel that it means a rough
+and painful severance from that life which was once so dear and
+beautiful.
+
+Other motives are reminiscences more or less of a purely musical
+nature or connected only in a general way with scenes or incidents of
+the drama. They call back indistinctly scenes of bygone times, and
+will be spoken of as they occur in the work.
+
+The best preliminary study for Wagner's use of motives is that of
+Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies. _Macmillan's Magazine_ for
+July, 1876, contains a valuable article by the late Mr. Dannreuther
+which will be useful as an introduction, and ought to be familiar to
+all who are interested in modern developments of music. Mr.
+Dannreuther there treats of the type of variation peculiar to
+Beethoven, which he compares to the metamorphosis of insects or of the
+organs of plants: "It is not so much the alteration of a given
+thought, a change of dress or of decoration, it is an actual creation
+of something new and distinct from out of a given germ." He then
+proceeds to trace the principle in some of Beethoven's later works,
+and shows how for example the great B flat sonata (Op. 106) is built
+upon a scheme of rising tenths and falling thirds; the A flat sonata
+(Op. 110) upon two simple melodies. Wagner's procedure is similar; he
+takes a musical motive which has already been used and brings forth
+out of it something totally new, scarcely resembling its parent in
+external features, and yet recognizable as the same.
+
+The problem before Wagner was how to render this new acquisition
+available for the drama, and we shall best understand him if we look
+upon him as all his life seeking its solution, each work representing
+an experimental stage rather than a perfectly finished model. In the
+earlier part of the _Ring_ he began with a purely conventional
+conjunction of a musical strain with a tangible and visible object--a
+ring, a giant, a goddess, etc. This is wrong method, and, although
+generally his instinctive sense of dramatic propriety kept him from
+going very far astray, the effects of his wrong procedure are
+occasionally visible. Why, for example, should a given melody in
+thirds on two bassoons denote a ring? and why should it bear a
+thematic kinship to another melody denoting Walhall? The association
+is purely conventional and serves no purpose, for the material object,
+a ring, is fully expressed in the word; there is nothing more to be
+said about it than that it is just a ring, and we do not want the
+bassoons to repeat or confirm what is quite intelligible without them.
+In _Tristan_ this pitfall is mostly avoided, but it is in _Die
+Meistersinger_ and _Parsifal_ that we find the motives most
+skilfully employed.
+
+A critical analysis of the harmonic structure of our work does not
+fall within the scope of this treatise. It will be found in text-books
+specially devoted to the subject. I can here only offer a few general
+remarks.
+
+Modern harmonies are made theoretically much more difficult than they
+need be by our system of notation, which grew up in the Middle Ages.
+The old modes knew no modulation in our sense, and in the seventeenth
+century, when the tempered system came into vogue, making every kind
+of modulation possible, the old notation was retained. How unsuited it
+is for modern music appears from the drastic contradictions which it
+involves. It is quite a common thing to see the same note
+simultaneously written as F sharp in one part and as G flat in
+another. This is what makes modern harmony seem so much more difficult
+than it really is, for when the music comes to be _heard_, these
+formidable-looking intervals resolve themselves into something quite
+natural and generally not difficult of apprehension by a musical ear.
+Unfortunately we are compelled to learn music through the medium of a
+keyed instrument, generally through the most unmusical of instruments,
+the piano, and we learn theory largely through the eye and the reason
+instead of through the ear. The problems of harmony will seem much
+simpler if we remember that its basis is the _interval_--music
+does not know "notes" as such, but only intervals--that the number of
+possible intervals is very small and their relations quite simple, and
+that everything which is not reducible to a very simple vulgar
+fraction is heard, not as a harmony, but as a passing note, an
+inflection of a note of a chord. In fact the advance made in chord
+combinations since the introduction of the tempered system is not very
+great. All, or nearly all, the chords used by Wagner are to be found
+in the works of Bach. The suggestion to explain Wagner's harmonies by
+assuming a "chromatic scale" rests upon a misapprehension of the
+nature of a scale. Every scale implies a tonality, i.e. a tonic note,
+to which all the other notes bear some definite numerical relation.
+There cannot be a chromatic scale in the scientific sense in music;
+what we call by that name in a keyed instrument is merely a diatonic
+scale with the intervals filled in; it always belongs to a definite
+key, and the accidentals are only passing notes. It is in passing
+notes that we must seek the key to Wagner's harmonies. With Wagner
+more than with any other composer since Bach the parts must be read
+horizontally as well as vertically. As long as we look upon harmonic
+progressions as vertical columns of chords following one upon the
+other we may indeed explain, but we shall never understand them. Each
+chord must be viewed as the result of the confluence of all the
+separate voices moving harmoniously together. This, too, will help us
+to grasp the character of "altered" chords, so lavishly employed by
+Wagner, and of "inflection," by which term I mean to denote all kinds
+of passing notes, appoggiaturas, suspensions, changing notes, and the
+like. All are phenomena of harmonic notes striving melodically
+onwards, either upwards or downwards.
+
+Although little has been done in the invention of new combinations,
+the character of the harmonic structure has changed considerably since
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is evident at
+first glance on comparing a score of Haydn or Mozart with one of
+Wagner or Liszt. There, although chromatic harmonies are not
+unfrequent, they occur only sporadically, the general structure being
+diatonic, whereas with the later masters the whole tissue is
+chromatic; the score fairly bristles with accidentals, and a simple
+major or minor triad is the exception. Very different too is the
+periodic structure. The phrases no longer fall naturally into
+eight-bar periods interpunctuated with cadences, but are determined by
+the text, and although the eight-bar scheme is generally
+maintained--much disguised, it is true, but still recognizable--it is
+determined not by half-closes at the sections, but by the eight beats
+of the two-line metre, while the periods follow each other in even
+flow without any indication of cadence. In other words the musical
+form is governed by the declamation.
+
+Theory of harmony is one thing, living music quite another. The
+musical hearer of a work like _Tristan und Isolde_ will
+understand its harmonic structure, though he know nothing of the
+theoretical progression of the chords, provided the performance be
+good, i.e. correct, just as a man ignorant of grammar will understand
+a sentence which is clearly enunciated. The composer needs no theory
+of harmony; his ear is his only guide, as the eye of the artist is a
+sufficient guide for his colouring without any theory of colour. There
+is only one thing which the composer must keep before him and which
+the hearer must consciously be able to recognize--the Tonality. The
+problem of harmony therefore in practice reduces itself to that of
+modulation. To recognize the tonality quickly and certainly, look for
+the cadences. They are as it were landmarks, placed along the melodic
+road, indicating from time to time where we are.
+
+I cannot dismiss the subject of harmony without mentioning the chord
+which from its employment at decisive moments and its extraordinary
+mystic expressiveness has been called the soul of the _Tristan_
+music. Its direct form is
+
+[Music]
+
+as it occurs in the beginning of the Prelude.
+
+The instrumentation of _Tristan_ does not present any special
+features different from that of Wagner's other works. It is less
+heavily scored than the _Ring_, and at the same time the
+instrumentation is more concentrated. Wagner usually employs his wind
+in groups of at least three in each colour--e.g. three flutes, two
+oboi and one English horn, two clarinets and a bass clarinet,
+etc.--and so is able to keep his colours pure. It is partly to this
+that the extraordinary purity of his tone in the tutti is due, partly
+also to the sonority imparted to the brass by means of the bass tuba,
+and still more to the consummate skill of the composer in the
+distribution of his parts.
+
+There is an interesting note at the beginning of the score in which
+the composer seems to be trying to excuse himself for using valve
+instruments in the horns. While admitting the degradation of tone and
+loss of the power of soft binding resulting from the use of valves, he
+thinks that the innovation (which I need scarcely observe is not his)
+is justified by the advantage gained in greater freedom of movement.
+In such matters one must be allowed to form one's own judgment, and
+though it may seem like trying to teach a fish to swim, a humble
+amateur may be permitted to wish that Wagner had here resisted the
+tide of progress. It is not only that the tone and power of binding
+are injured, but the whole character of horns and trumpets is altered
+when they are expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin and
+the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring
+it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of
+the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near
+the beginning of the overture to _Der Freischütz_, and it is the
+contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn
+which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are
+capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as their
+individuality is even more strongly marked. How entirely that
+character is conditioned by the mechanism of the instrument may be
+illustrated by an example. The third movement of Beethoven's seventh
+symphony contains an interlude _molto meno mosso_. The choral
+theme is accompanied by a continuous A, sustained in octave in the
+violins, which in the intervals between the verses descends to G sharp
+and returns
+
+[Music]
+
+The repeat at the end enters _ff._ after a strong crescendo, and
+at this point the sustained A is taken over from the violins by the
+trumpets and given forth with piercing distinctness above the tutti of
+the orchestra, the effect being one of extraordinary brilliancy. Now
+comes the point with which we are concerned. In the intervals the
+trumpet cannot descend to G sharp, because it has not got the note in
+its natural scale, and is therefore obliged to repeat
+
+[Music]
+
+Indisputably the composer would have written G sharp had the trumpet
+been able to play it; it was only the defective scale of the
+instrument which led him to write A, but the effect of hearing A when
+we expect G sharp is electrifying; the unbending rigidity of the
+trumpet is here expressed with a vividness and force which nothing
+else could have given.
+
+Many more examples might be brought from the works of the great
+composers to show how the horns and trumpets have lost in expressive
+power by having adopted the chromatic scale of other instruments.
+Wagner's use of the brass generally is most skilful; he is especially
+happy in avoiding the blatancy and coarseness which soils the scores
+of some composers. Neither trumpets nor drums are much used
+continuously in the score of _Tristan_. The former are often
+employed in the lower part of their scale and only for particular
+effects. Trombones generally utter single chords, or slow successions
+of chords, adding solemnity to the sound, and crowning a climax. A
+favourite instrument with Wagner is the harp, and he uses it freely in
+_Tristan_. The effect is, as it were, to place the orchestra upon
+springs, adding lightness and elasticity to the tone, as may be
+noticed in the accompaniment to the duet at the end of the first act.
+
+We often hear Wagner's melody described as if it were not melody in
+the ordinary meaning of the word, but a kind of "recitative" or
+"declamation." The great French singer, Madame Viardot Garcia, was
+asked on one occasion in a private circle to sing the part of Isolde.
+She took the score and sang it _a prima vista_ to Klindworth's
+accompaniment. On being told that in Germany singers could not be
+found to undertake the part, alleging that it was too difficult and
+unmelodious, she naïvely asked whether German singers were not
+musical! Assuredly any person to whom Wagner's music, especially that
+of _Tristan_, appears unmelodious is unmusical, or at least
+defective in the sense for melody. Wagner's music is easy to sing;
+much easier, for example, than that of Mozart. This, however, is only
+true for singers who are highly musical. The great majority have not
+had any real musical education, and it is to these that the common
+notion that Wagner's music is unsingable, that it ruins the voice, is
+due. The notion that recitative and melody are things opposed to one
+another is itself a misunderstanding. The characteristic mark of
+recitative in the narrow sense is that it is not bound by rhythmic
+forms, and therefore has a somewhat dry, matter-of-fact character,
+which would become tedious if it continued unrelieved--as life would
+be dull without any sweets. Wagner says: "My melody is declamation,
+and my declamation melody." There is no line of demarcation; they are
+as inseparably united as emotion and intellect. But although the
+stream of emotion in human life is continuous, it is not continually
+at the same tension. Moments of high exaltation alternate with more
+subdued intervals, and a very large part of the mechanical routine of
+life is emotionally almost quiescent. In the drama the emotional
+element alternates with the narrative, and according as the one or the
+other predominates, the weight of the expression is in the music or
+the words; each therefore rises and falls in alternation. Even in
+Shakespeare's spoken drama traces of this ebb and flow may be noticed,
+the language becoming more musical under the stress of higher emotion.
+In the opera the intervals between the lyric _arias_, etc., had
+to be filled in with dry explanation or narrative, and there arose the
+_recitative secco_, a rapid recitation in which the melody is
+reduced to a mere shadow. The German language was unfitted for dry
+recitative of this type, and these filling-in parts had therefore to
+be spoken--a device which proved intolerable, since it destroyed the
+illusion of the music. Wagner, as we saw, got over the difficulty by
+choosing a form of drama in which the emotional element was supreme,
+and the narrative filling in reduced to a minimum. We further saw how
+in _Tristan und Isolde_ the principle is driven to such an
+exaggerated extreme as sometimes to render the action almost
+unintelligible. Nowhere is the music unmelodious or uninteresting, but
+it is elastic and pliable and changes its character with the emotional
+intensity of the dramatic situation, being more subdued in parts of
+the first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness, or
+other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great love-duet,
+culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest ecstasy
+in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the portions
+between. Hearers who are not accustomed to the dramatic expression of
+music attend only to those moments of intense lyric expression, just
+as in the opera they attend only to the _arias_; all else appears
+to them uninteresting and unmelodious. This is to miss the essential
+thing in Wagner's works--the drama itself; but it is precisely what is
+done by those hearers who are incapable of the effort of following
+attentively the dramatic development.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC
+
+
+It remains for us now to examine the work itself, scene by scene, that
+we may see how the principles of art which we have been considering in
+the preceding chapters are illustrated. The following notes are
+written with a practical end; they are intended to assist those who
+are unacquainted with the work and are about to hear it for the first
+time to follow the composer's intentions. They do not profess to give
+a full commentary or explanation, but only to start the reader on the
+right path that he may find the way for himself. Those who read German
+should begin by thoroughly mastering the text. Tristan is not like a
+modern problem play to be understood at once from the stage, without
+any effort. There are many, I regret to say, who spare themselves even
+this trouble, but it is indispensable, for even if singers always
+enunciated their words more distinctly than they do, it would be quite
+impossible to follow the difficult text on first hearing. Beyond this,
+however, very little preparation is necessary; especially the study of
+lists of _Leitmotive_ should be avoided, since they give a
+totally wrong conception of the music. We cannot study an edifice by
+looking at the bricks of which it is built. Lectures with musical
+illustrations, provided they are really well done, by a competent
+pianist, are valuable, and it is also of use to study selected scenes
+at the piano with text and music, the scene on the stage being always
+kept before the mind, and the voice part being sung as far as
+possible. For those who are quick of musical apprehension such studies
+are not necessary, but the careful reading of the text is
+indispensable for all. In all studies at the piano the arrangement of
+Hans von Bülow should be used, even by those who are unable to master
+all its difficulties, since the simplified arrangements are very
+imperfect. As a help to those who study the text at home, I have
+recounted the general course of the action and dialogue just in
+sufficient outline to enable the reader to follow what is going on,
+adding here and there a literal translation, where it seemed
+desirable, especially where the meaning of the original is difficult
+to grasp.
+
+Some introductory matter must first be told. Marke, King of Cornwall,
+has lately been involved in a war with the King of Ireland, whose
+general, Morold, has invaded the country to compel tribute. Tristan,
+King Marke's nephew, has defeated the army and killed Morold, but
+himself been wounded in the fight. His wound refusing to heal, he has
+sought the advice of the renowned Irish princess and medicine-woman,
+Isolde. She had been the betrothed bride of Morold, and in his head,
+sent back to Ireland in derision, as "tribute," by the conqueror, she
+has found a splinter from the sword which slew him, and has kept it.
+While Tristan is lying sick under her care she notices a gap in his
+sword, into which the splinter fits, and she knows that he is the
+slayer of her lover. She approaches him with sword upraised to slay
+him; he looks up at her; their eyes meet; she lets the sword fall, and
+bids him begone and trouble her no more. Tristan returns to Cornwall
+cured. His uncle is childless, and wishes to leave the kingdom to
+Tristan when he dies. But there are cabals in the state; a party has
+been formed, under Tristan's friend Melot, to induce King Marke to
+marry and beget a direct heir to the throne. Tristan joins them, and
+with great difficulty persuades his uncle to despatch him to Ireland
+to bring the Princess Isolde to be Markers wife. The curtain rises
+when they are on board the ship on the voyage to Cornwall, just
+approaching the land.
+
+The Prelude is a condensed picture of the entire drama. As an
+instrumental piece it is unable to render the definite actions, but it
+can give with great distinctness a tone or an atmosphere out of which
+these acts will shape themselves in the sequel, a presentiment of what
+is to be. The subject of our work is Love trying to raise itself out
+of the contamination of human life into a higher and purer sphere, but
+failing so long as it is clogged with the conditions of bodily
+existence. The text of the Prelude may be taken from the words of
+Tristan in the third act:
+
+  Sehnen! Sehnen!
+  Im Sterben mich zu sehnen,
+  Vor Sehnsucht nicht zu sterben.
+
+This theme is enunciated with almost realistic eloquence in the very
+first phrase, in the two contrasting strains, the love-motive striving
+upwards in the oboe, and its variant fading downwards in the 'cello.
+The union of the two produces a harmony of extraordinary
+expressiveness, which I have already referred to in the last chapter
+as the "soul of the _Tristan_ music." Every hearer must be struck
+with its mysterious beauty, and it has been the subject of many
+theoretical discussions. It is best understood as the chord on the
+second degree of the scale of A minor, with inflections:
+
+[Music]
+
+G sharp being a suspension or appoggiatura resolved upwards on to A
+while the D sharp (more properly E flat) is explained by the melody of
+the violoncelli, which, instead of moving at once to D, pass through a
+step of a semitone. There is, however, one thing to be noticed in this
+melody. The dissonant D sharp (or E flat) is not resolved in its own
+instrument, the violoncelli, but is taken up by the English horn, and
+by it resolved in the next bar. This instrument therefore has a
+distinct melody of its own, consisting only of two notes, but still
+heard as a kind of sigh, and quite different from the merely
+filling-in part of the clarinets and bassoons. There are really three
+melodies combined:
+
+[Music: Oboi. V' celli. Eng. Horn]
+
+It will not be necessary for us to anatomize any more chords in this
+way. I did so in this case in order to show the intimate connection
+between the harmony and the melody, and how the explanation of the
+harmonies must be sought through the melodies by which they are
+brought about.
+
+The entire Prelude is made up of various forms of the love-motive. The
+key is A minor, to which it pretty closely adheres, the transient
+modulations into a'+, c'+, etc., only serving to enforce the
+feeling of tonality. The reason for this close adherence to one key is
+not far to seek. Wagner never modulates without a reason; the Prelude
+presents one simple feeling, and there is no cause for or possibility
+of modulation.[36] At the 78th bar the music begins to modulate, and
+seems tending to the distant key of E flat minor, the love-motive is
+taken up _forte_ and _più forte_ by the trumpets, but in bar
+84 the modulation abruptly comes to an end, the soaring violins fall
+to the earth, and the piece ends as it began, with a reminiscence of
+the first part in A minor. An expressive recitative of the violoncelli
+and basses then leads to C minor, the key of the first scene.
+
+[Footnote 36: See the remarks on modulation at the end of his essay
+_Ueber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama, Ges. Schr._ x. pp.
+248 seq., where he gives the advice to young students of composition:
+"Never leave a key so long as you can say what you have to say in
+it."]
+
+ACT I., SCENE I.--The scene opens in a pavilion on the deck of the
+ship. Isolde is reclining on a couch, her face buried in the pillows.
+Brangäne's listless attitude as she gazes across the water, the young
+sailor's ditty to his Irish girl as he keeps watch on the mast,
+reflect the calmness of the sea as the ship glides before the westerly
+breeze, and contrast with the tempest raging in Isolde's breast.
+Suddenly she starts up in alarm, but Brangäne tries to soothe her, and
+tells her, to the soft undulating accompaniment of two bassoons in
+thirds, how she already sees the loom of the land, and that they will
+reach it by the evening. At present Brangäne has no suspicion of
+anything disturbing her mistress, whose feelings are indicated by an
+agitated passage in the strings (No. 6). She starts from her reverie.
+"What land?" she asks. "Cornwall? Never." Then follows a terrific
+outburst:
+
+  _Is_. Degenerate race, unworthy of your fathers!
+  Whither, oh mother, hast thou bestowed the might
+  over the sea and the storm? Oh, tame art of the
+  sorceress, brewing balsam-drinks only! Awake once
+  more, bold power! arise from the bosom in which thou
+  hast hidden thyself! Hear my will, ye doubting
+  winds: Hither to battle and din of the tempest, to
+  the raging whirl of the roaring storm! Drive the
+  sleep from this dreaming sea; awake angry greed
+  from its depths; show it the prey which I offer; let
+  it shatter this haughty ship, gorge itself upon the
+  shivered fragments! What lives thereon, the breathing
+  life, I give to you winds as your guerdon.
+
+Both the words and the music of this wonderful invocation are worthy
+of attention. Especially the words of the original German with their
+drastic alliteration may be commended to those who still doubt
+Wagner's powers as a poet. The music is mostly taken from the sailor's
+song (No. 5), but quite changed in character; the rapid staccato
+movement with the strongly marked figure of the bass have transformed
+the peaceful ditty into a dance of furies. The entry of the trombones
+at the words _Heran zu Kampfe_ is characteristic of Wagner's
+employment of the brass throughout the work. Their slow swelling
+chords add volume and solemnity to the orchestral tone. They continue
+for a few bars only, and the voice distantly hints at the love-motive
+(_zu tobender Stürme wüthendem Wirbel_), but for a moment only;
+it goes no further.
+
+The terrified Brangäne tries to calm her, and at the same time to
+learn what is the cause of her anger. She recalls Isolde's strange and
+cold behaviour on parting from her parents in Ireland, and on the
+voyage; why is she thus? A peculiar imploring tenderness is imparted
+to her appeal at the end by the falling sevenths, an interval which we
+have already met with in the Prelude and which is characteristic of
+this act.
+
+Her efforts are vain; Isolde starts up hastily crying "Air! air! throw
+open the curtains!"
+
+SCENE II.--The curtain thrown back discloses the deck of the ship with
+the crew grouped around Tristan, who is steering,[37] his man Kurwenal
+reclining near him. The refrain of the sailors' song is again heard.
+Isolde's eyes are fixed upon Tristan as she begins to the strain of
+the love-motive accompanied by muted strings:
+
+  Chosen for me!--lost to me!
+  .       .        .     .         .
+  Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!
+
+enunciating with these words the death-motive (No. 2).
+
+[Footnote 37: A curious mistake in the stage-management may be
+noticed. The scene is obviously laid in the forecastle; one glance at
+the stage is enough to show this, and the sails are set that way. Nor
+can it be altered, for it would never do to have them looking among
+the audience for the land ahead. So that Tristan's ship has her rudder
+in the bow! Rarely is Wagner at fault in trifles of this kind; in all
+other respects the deck-scene is admirably truthful. The sailors
+hauling, the song in the rigging, the obvious time of day--in the
+"dogwatches"--are little touches of realism which will be appreciated
+by all who know board-ship life.]
+
+She turns to Brangäne, and with a look of the utmost scorn, indicating
+Tristan, she asks:
+
+What thinkst thou of the slave? ... Him there who shirks my gaze, and
+looks on the ground in shame and fear?
+
+Isolde here strikes the tone which she maintains throughout the act
+until all is changed by the philtre. Never has such blighting sarcasm
+before been represented in the drama as that which Isolde pours out
+upon Tristan. She is by far the stronger character of the two. Her
+rage is volcanic, and uses here its most effective weapon. Tristan
+writhes under her taunts, but cannot escape. The music unites
+inseparably with the words; even the rime adds its point as in mockery
+she continues Brangäne's praise of the hero:
+
+  _Br_. Dost thou ask of Tristan, beloved lady? the
+  wonder of all lands, the much-belauded man, the hero
+  without rival, the guard and ban of glory?
+
+  _Is._ (_interrupting and repeating the phrase in mockery_).
+  Who shrinking from the battle takes refuge where he
+  can, because he has gained a corpse as bride for his master!
+
+She commands Brangäne to go to Tristan and deliver a message; she is
+to remind him that he has not yet attended upon her as his duty
+requires.
+
+  _Br_. Shall I request him to wait upon you?
+
+  _Is. [Tell him that] I, Isolde, _command_ [my] presumptuous
+  [servant] fear for his _mistress_.
+
+While Brangäne is making her way through the sailors to where Tristan
+is standing at the helm, an interlude made of the sailors' song phrase
+is played on four horns and two bassoons over a pedal bass, the
+strings coming in in strongly marked rhythm on the last beat of each
+bar, marking the hauling of the ropes to clear the anchor. Tristan is
+in a reverie, scarcely conscious of what is going on around him; the
+love-motive once in the oboe shows how his thoughts are occupied. He
+starts at the word Isolde, but collects himself, and tries to conceal
+his evident distress under a manner of supercilious indifference.
+Brangäne becomes more urgent; he pleads his inability to come now
+because he cannot leave the helm. Then Brangäne delivers Isolde's
+message in the same peremptory words in which she has received it.
+
+Kurwenal suddenly starts up and, with or without permission, sends
+_his_ answer to Isolde. Tristan, he says, is no servant of hers,
+for he is giving her the crown of Cornwall and the heritage of
+England. "Let her mark that, though it anger a thousand Mistress
+Isoldes." Brangäne hurriedly withdraws to the pavilion; he sings an
+insulting song after her in derision of Morold and his expedition for
+tribute:
+
+  "His head now hangs in Ireland,
+   As tribute sent from England!"
+
+As she closes the curtains the sailors are heard outside singing the
+refrain of his song, which is a masterpiece of popular music. One can
+imagine it to be the national song of the Cornish-men after the
+expedition. With regard to its very remarkable instrumentation, I
+cannot do better than quote the remarks of that admirable musician,
+Heinrich Porges: "The augmented chord at the words _auf ödem
+Meere_, the humorous middle part of the horns, the unison of the
+trombones which, with the sharp entry of the violas, effect the
+modulation from B flat to D major, impart the most living colour to
+each moment."
+
+SCENE III.--(_The interior of the pavilion, the curtains
+closed._) Isolde has heard the interview, and makes Brangäne repeat
+everything as it happened. Inexpressibly pathetic is the turn which
+she gives to the words of the song as she repeats the phrase of
+Brangäne:
+
+  _Is_. (_bitterly_). "How should he safely steer the ship
+  to King Marke's land...." (_with sudden emphasis,
+  quickly_) to hand him the _tribute_ which he brings from
+  Ireland!
+
+--the last sentence being to the refrain of the song.
+
+Upward scale passages of the violins are suggestive of a sudden
+impulse, and there now begins (K.A. 25'1) a movement of great musical
+interest in which Isolde tells Brangäne of Tristan's previous visit to
+her as "Tantris," recounting how she discovered him by the splinter of
+the sword, the words: "_Er sah mir in die Augen,_" bringing the
+characteristic form of the love-motive with the falling seventh
+(1_b_). Brangäne cries out in astonishment at her own blindness.
+Isolde continues to relate "how a hero keeps his oaths": _Tantris_
+returned as _Tristan_ to carry her off "for Cornwall's weary king"
+(K.A. 29'5):
+
+  _Is_. When Morold lived, who would have dared to
+  offer us such an insult?... Woe, woe to me! Unwitting
+  I brought all this shame on myself. Instead of
+  wielding the avenging sword, helpless I let it fall, and
+  now I serve my vassal!
+
+Again rage overcomes her at the thought of Tristan's treachery. Her
+inflamed imagination conjures up his report of her to King Marke:
+
+  _Is_. "That were a prize indeed, my lord and uncle!
+  how seems she to thee as a bride? The dainty Irish
+  maid I'll bring. I know the ways and paths. One
+  sign from thee to Ireland I'll fly; Isolde, she is yours!
+  The adventure delights me!" Curse on the infamous
+  villain! Curse on thy head! Vengeance! Death!
+  Death to us both!
+
+She subsides exhausted amidst a stormy tutti of the orchestra with the
+trombones _ff_.
+
+  _Br_. (_with impetuous tenderness_). Oh, sweet, dear,
+  beloved, gracious, golden mistress! darling Isolde!
+  hear me! come, rest thee here (_she gently draws her to
+  the couch_).
+
+The music presents no special difficulties in this scene. It is so
+complete in itself that, as has been truly remarked, it might well be
+performed as an instrumental piece without the voice. It would be
+impossible to follow here the endless subtleties of the working out,
+nor is it necessary, since they will reveal themselves to every
+musical hearer who is familiar with the methods of Beethoven. The
+whole movement is in E minor, and is built on a motive which has grown
+out of the love-motive by contrary movement, with a characteristic
+triplet accompaniment. Throughout it follows the expression of the
+words closely, using the previous motives, and is a model of Wagner's
+musical style in the more lyric portions. Wagner has remarked in one
+of his essays how Beethoven will sometimes break up his motives and,
+taking one fragment, often consisting of not more than two notes,
+develop it into something entirely new. The following scene is built
+on motives developed out of the last two notes of the love-motive,
+either with or without the falling seventh:
+
+[Music]
+
+It must here be noted how entirely Brangäne misunderstands the
+situation. Wagner has intentionally represented her as a complete
+contrast to Isolde, as one of those soft, pliable natures who are
+capable of the most tender self-sacrificing devotion, but are utterly
+wanting in judgment. Woman-like, she thinks that it is only a passing
+storm which she can lull with caressing words. Her scarcely veiled
+suggestion that, though Isolde may marry King Marke, she need not
+cease to love Tristan, shows the enormous gulf which separates her
+from her terrible mistress. She suggests administering the philtre
+which her mother has prepared for Marke to Tristan. The music, in
+which, so long as Brangäne is speaking, gaiety and tenderness are
+mingled, is permeated with the love-motive. Isolde thinks of her
+mother's spells with very different feelings; the music becomes more
+gloomy, and with the words, "Vengeance for treachery--rest for my
+heart in its need," the death-motive, with its solemn trombone-chords,
+betrays the thought in her mind. She orders Brangäne to bring the
+casket. Brangäne obeys, and innocently recounts all the wonderful
+remedies which it contains:
+
+  _Br_. For woe and wounds is balsam; for evil poisons
+  antidotes. The best of all I hold it here (_holding up
+  the love-potion_).
+
+  _Is_. Thou errst. I know it better (_seizing the black
+  bottle containing the death-drink and holding it aloft_).
+  _This_ is the drink I need!
+
+A motive already heard in the Prelude (bar 29, bassoons and bass
+clarinet) now becomes very prominent in the brass:
+
+[Music]
+
+The falling seventh here carries an air of profound gloom appropriate
+to the deadly purpose of Isolde.
+
+At this moment a diversion occurs outside. The ship is nearing the
+port, and the crew are heard taking in the sails preparatory to
+anchoring. Kurwenal enters abruptly.
+
+SCENE IV.--I have already remarked how happily Wagner has contrived to
+hit off the character of the board-ship life. Here it is the clatter
+and bustle of coming into port that is represented; people hurrying
+about the deck, the young sailors' motive joyously ringing from the
+violins and wood, sailors hauling, and the colours fluttering in the
+breeze (semiquaver motives in clarinets and bassoons), all are
+preparing for the shore. Kurwenal enters and roughly orders the
+"women" to get themselves ready to land. Isolde is to prepare herself
+at once to appear before King Marke escorted by Tristan. Isolde,
+startled at first by Kurwenal's insolence, collects herself and
+replies with dignity:
+
+Take my greetings to Sir Tristan and deliver him my message. If I am
+to go at his side to stand before King Marke, I cannot do so with
+propriety unless I first receive expiation for guilt yet unatoned.
+Therefore, let him seek my grace. (_On Kurwenal making an impatient
+gesture, she continues with more emphasis._) Mark me well and
+deliver it rightly: I will not prepare to land with him; I will not
+walk at his side to stand before King Marke unless he first ask of me
+in due form to forgive and forget his yet unatoned guilt. This grace I
+offer him.
+
+Kurwenal, completely subdued, promises to deliver her message and
+retires.
+
+The orchestral accompaniment during Isolde's speech has a very solemn
+character imparted to it by slow chords of the trombones,
+_piano_, with somewhat feverish semiquaver triplets on the
+strings, snatches of the love-motive and other motives being heard in
+the wood-wind; while in the pauses, runs on the violins mark
+Kurwenal's impatience. The death-motive will be noted at the words
+"_für ungesühnte Schuld_."
+
+SCENE V.--This is a scene of great pathos. Like Elektra[38] when she
+recognizes Orestes, so Isolde, when left alone with the only friend
+who is true to her, throws aside all her haughty manner, forgets her
+wild thirst for revenge, and for a moment gives way to all the
+tenderness which is hidden under that fierce exterior. Death is just
+before her; she throws herself into Brangäne's arms, and delivers her
+last messages to the world. The unhappy girl, still quite in the dark
+as to her mistress's intentions, only vaguely feeling the presage of
+some impending calamity, is told to bring the casket and take out the
+death-potion, Isolde significantly repeating the words in the previous
+scene. Brangäne, almost out of her senses, obeys instinctively, and in
+the midst of her entreaties Kurwenal throws back the curtain and
+announces Sir Tristan.
+
+[Footnote 38: Soph., _Elektra_, 1205 seq.]
+
+SCENE VI.--My purpose in these notes is to explain what may at first
+seem difficult; it is no part of my plan to expound the obvious. The
+following scene, where for the first time the two principal personages
+stand face to face, though the most important that we have met with so
+far, is perfectly clear, both in the music and the words. No one could
+mistake the force of the blasts of the wind instruments with which it
+opens (No. 8). The device of repeating a motive in rising thirds was
+adopted by Wagner from Liszt, and is very common in _Tristan_. We
+first met with it in the opening bars of the Prelude, where the
+love-motive is so repeated.
+
+The first part of the scene is a trial of wits between Isolde and
+Tristan, in which the latter is helpless as a bird in the claws of a
+cat. The dialogue as such is a masterpiece, unrivalled in the works of
+any dramatic poet except Shakespeare. At last, crushed by her taunts,
+Tristan hands her his sword, asking her to pierce him through, only to
+be answered with scorn still more scathing than before. "No," she
+says. "What would King Marke say were I to slay _his best
+servant_?" There is not a trace of love in the scene; nothing but
+anger and contempt. In other parts of the act there are indications of
+smouldering fire which threatens to break out upon occasion, but there
+is nothing of the kind when they are together. If once, when he lay
+helpless and in her power, she was touched with pity for so noble a
+hero, that has long ago been overcome, or only remains as a distant
+memory of something long past and gone. It has been truly observed
+that Tristan and Isolde are not like Romeo and Juliet, two children
+scarcely conscious of what they are doing. Both are in the full
+maturity of life and in the vigour of their intellectual powers.
+
+In keeping with the dialectic, argumentative character of the
+dialogue, the music is generally dry and formal, but broken through
+occasionally with rending cries of agony, and interpolated with
+moments of tender emotional beauty. The orchestra generally gives the
+tone to the situation, only occasionally departing from that rôle to
+enter at critical moments to support and enforce specific words or
+actions. The leading motive throughout is the one which I have quoted:
+"vengeance for Morold."
+
+After some preliminary _persiflage_, in which she laughs to scorn
+the excuse which he offers for having kept away from her from a sense
+of propriety, she at once comes to the point:
+
+  _Is_. There is blood-feud between us!
+
+  _Tr_. That was expiated.
+
+  _Is_. Not between us!
+
+  _Tr_. In open field before all the host a solemn peace
+  was sworn.
+
+  _Is_. Not there it was that I concealed Tantris, that
+  Tristan fell before me. There he stood noble and
+  strong; but I swore not what he swore; I had
+  learned to be silent. When he lay sick in the silent
+  room speechless I stood before him with the sword.
+  My lips were silent, my hand I restrained, but the vow
+  passed by my hand and my lips, I silently swore to
+  keep. Now I will perform my oath.
+
+  _Tr_. What didst thou vow, oh woman?
+
+  _Is_. Vengeance for Morold.
+
+  _Tr_. Is that what is troubling you?
+
+Once, and once only, does the victim turn to retort upon her with her
+own weapon of irony. The attempt is disastrous. At once changing her
+tone she assumes the air of an injured woman. Tristan has taken her
+lover from her, and does he now dare to mock her? As her thoughts
+wander back to past days of happiness she continues in strains of
+surpassing tenderness, mingled with hints of warlike music in the
+trumpets:
+
+  _Is_. Betrothed he was to me, the proud Irish hero;
+  his arms I had hallowed; for me he went to battle.
+  When he fell, my honour fell. In the heaviness of my
+  heart I swore that if no man would avenge the murder,
+  I, a maiden, would take it upon me. Sick and weary
+  in my power, why did I not then smite thee?
+
+She states the reason why she did not slay him when he was in her
+power in language so strange that I can only give a literal
+translation:
+
+  I nursed the wounded man that, when restored
+  to health, the man who won him from Isolde should
+  smite him in vengeance.
+
+Such is the German; what it means I must confess myself unable to
+explain, and can only suspect some corruption in the text.
+
+There is a solemn pause in the music; the love-motive is uttered by
+the bass clarinet. Nothing is left for the vanquished and humbled hero
+but to offer her what atonement he can. He hands her his sword,
+bidding her this time wield it surely and not let it fall from her
+hand. But she has not yet finished with him:
+
+  _Is_. How badly I should serve thy lord! What
+  would King Marke say if I were to slay his best
+  servant who has preserved for him crown and realm?
+  ... Keep thy sword! I swung it once when vengeance
+  was rife in my bosom, while thy measuring
+  glance was stealing my image to know whether I
+  should be a fit bride for King Marke. I let the sword
+  fall. Now let us drink atonement.
+
+The motive of the drink of death is here heard in trombones and tuba.
+It recurs constantly in the following portion.
+
+She then signs to Brangäne to bring the drink. The noise of the
+sailors furling the sails outside becomes louder.
+
+  _Tr_. (_starting from a reverie_). Where are we?
+
+  _Is_. CLOSE TO THE PORT! (_death-motive_). Tristan,
+  shall I have atonement? What hast thou to answer?
+
+  _Tr_. (_darkly_). The mistress of silence commands me
+  silence. I grasp what she conceals, and am silent
+  upon what she cannot grasp.
+
+Another dark saying, of which, however, we fortunately have the
+explanation from Wagner himself. "What she conceals" is her love for
+Tristan; "what she cannot grasp" is that his honour forbids him from
+declaring his love for her.[39]
+
+[Footnote 39: Glasenapp's Biography, v. 241 (footnote).]
+
+Even now, on the brink of dissolution, while actually holding the cup
+which is to launch them both into eternity, Isolde cannot bridle her
+sarcasm:
+
+  _Is_. We have reached the goal; soon we shall
+  stand ... (_with light scorn_) before King Marke! (_death-motive_).
+
+With dreadful irony she repeats the words with which she supposes
+Tristan will introduce her:
+
+  "My lord and uncle! look now at her! A softer
+  wife thou ne'er could'st find. I slew her lover and sent
+  her his head; my wound the kindly maid has healed.
+  My life was in her power, but the gentle maiden gave
+  it to me; her country's shame and dishonour--that
+  she gave as well; all that she might become thy
+  wedded bride. Such thanks for kindly deeds I earned
+  by a sweet draught of atonement offered to me by
+  her favour in expiation of my guilt."
+
+  _Sailors_ (_outside_). Stand by the cable! Let go the
+  anchor!
+
+  _Tr_. (_starting wildly_). Let go the anchor! Veer her
+  round to the tide! (_he tears the cup from Isolde's hand_).
+  Well know I Ireland's queen, and the wondrous might
+  of her arts. I took the balsam she once gave to me;
+  now I take the cup that quite I may recover. Mark
+  well the oath of peace in which I say my thanks:
+
+    To Tristan's honour--highest faith!
+    To Tristan's woe--bold defiance![40]
+
+  Delusion of the heart; dream of presage; sole
+  comfort of eternal sorrow; kind drink of forgetfulness
+  I drink thee without flinching (_he puts the
+  cup to his lips and drinks_).
+
+  _Is_. (_tearing the cup from him_). Treachery again.
+  Half is mine! Traitor, I drink to thee! (_she drinks
+  and dashes the cup to the earth_).
+
+  [Footnote 40: "Ehre" and "Elend" are dative.]
+
+Instead of falling dead, the lovers stand transfixed gazing at each
+other. Brangäne has changed the drinks, and they have drunk the
+draught of love for that of death. Wagner sometimes expects his
+artists to possess powers beyond those which are allotted to man. The
+actors have here to express by gesture the change of feeling which
+gradually comes over them. They start, tremble, the love-motive steals
+into and at last dominates the orchestra, and they fly into one
+another's arms.
+
+The increasing commotion outside and the cheers of the men indicate
+that King Marke has put out from the shore and is nearing the ship. An
+aside of Brangäne at this moment is not without significance. She has
+been sitting apart in suspense and confusion; now, as she begins to
+realize the consequences of what she has done, she gives way to
+despair. How much better would a short death have been than the
+prospect of the life that is now before them! The fact of her courage
+giving way so soon shows that she was only acting under a momentary
+impulse.
+
+Little more need be said of the rest of the scene. The lovers raise
+their voices in a jubilant duet. Almost unconscious of their
+surroundings they are dragged apart. The royal garments are hastily
+laid over them, and the curtain falls to the joyful shouts of the
+people as King Marke steps on board.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC CONTINUED
+
+
+  Tu sentiras alors que toi-même tu environnes tout ce que
+  tu connais des choses qui existent, et que les existantes que tu
+  connais existent en quelque sorte dans toi-même.--_Avicebron_
+  (MUNK).
+
+ACT II.--If the essence of the drama lies in contrast and surprises,
+then _Tristan und Isolde_ may be called the most dramatic of
+Wagner's works. In the first act we had the picture of a woman of
+volcanic temperament goaded to fury by cruelty and insult; in the
+second we have the same woman gentle, light-hearted, caressing, with
+nothing left of her past self except the irresistible force of her
+will. Isolde is not restrained by any scruples about honour, nor need
+she have any; in full possession of the man she loves, she can abandon
+herself to the moment. The music almost shows the flush upon her
+cheek, and she seems twenty years younger. She is quite conscious of
+the inevitable end, and quite prepared to meet it, but that is as
+nothing in the fulness of the present moment. Her words and her
+actions are characterized by a playful recklessness, an _abandon_
+which finds admirable expression in a characteristic motive (No. 9).
+Thematically related to this is another motive which we shall meet
+with very frequently in the sequel (No. 10). It is not directly
+connected with any definite dramatic event except generally with the
+first scene. The halting fourth quaver in each half-bar imparts a
+nervous restless character which at the meeting of the lovers becomes
+a delirium of joy.
+
+The events of the second act seem to take place on the evening of the
+day after the landing, or at least very soon after--exact chronology
+is not necessary. The lovers have arranged a meeting in the palace
+garden in front of Isolde's quarters after the night has set in. A
+burning torch is fixed to the door; its lowering is to be the signal
+to Tristan to approach. King Marke and the court are out on a hunt,
+and the signal cannot be given until they are out of the way.
+
+The Prelude opens with an emphatic announcement of the principal
+motive of the act (the "daylight"--No. 3) in the full orchestra
+without brass. A cantabile strain in the bass wood-wind continued in
+the violoncelli with a broken triplet accompaniment in the strings
+seems to tell of the expected meeting. The new motive (No. 9) is heard
+in its proper instrument, the flute, but gives way to No. 10, which is
+worked in conjunction with the love-motive, settling again in B flat
+as the curtain rises. It is a clear summer night; the horns of the
+hunting-party grow fainter in the distance. Brangäne, with anxiety in
+her expression, is listening attentively and waiting for them to cease
+when Isolde enters.
+
+A word must be said about the music of the hunting motive. The key
+is, as has already been said, B flat major. In the bass a pedal F is
+sustained by two deep horns or by the violoncelli, while six horns (or
+more) on the stage play a fanfare on the chord of C minor alternating
+with that of F major. A very peculiar colouring is imparted to the
+first chord, partly by the very dissonant G (afterwards G flat),
+partly by the minor third of the chord. This is a completely new
+effect obtained from the valve horn, fanfares on horns and trumpets
+having before always been in the major, since the natural scale
+contains no minor chord. Brangäne and Isolde listen intently: Isolde
+thinks the horns are gone, and what they hear is only the murmuring of
+the stream and the rustling of the leaves. The fanfare is taken up by
+wood-wind (K.A. 85'2(1)), and at last melts into a new sound, with
+clarinets in 6-8 time against muted violins and violas in 8-8,
+beautifully suggestive of the rustling of leaves. Then the horns are
+heard no more. Brangäne, who has been on the alert, suspects a trap
+behind this hunting-party, which has been arranged by Tristan's friend
+Melot, but she doubts his good faith. Isolde gaily laughs at her
+cares; her heart is bursting and she recks of nothing but the approach
+of Tristan. The music is almost entirely made up of her joyful motive,
+and there begins a first indication of that wonderful lyric outpouring
+which continues until it culminates in the Nocturne, and which has
+placed the second act of _Tristan_ on an eminence of its own,
+apart and unapproached. She throws open the flood-gates of her heart
+as in words recalling Lucretius:
+
+  Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
+  Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
+  Summittit floras, tibi rident sequora ponti.
+
+She tells of the all-ruling, all-subduing might of "_Frau
+Minne._" The ode is full of lyric inspiration, and is generally
+recalled in the sequel by the motive No. 11, which consists of two
+parts, the melody in the first and second violins, and that in the
+bass--strictly a horn passage, but here in the lower strings. The
+accompaniment of the ode is throughout in keeping with the rhapsodical
+character of the words and melody: note the long, persistent A of the
+first and second violins in octaves at the words "_des kühnsten
+Muthes Königin, des Weltenwerdens Waltering_," followed by their
+joyous upward flight; the broken chords of the harp; the swelling
+upward semitones of flute, oboe, and clarinet bringing forth the germ
+of No. 11_b._; the trombone chords at the words "_Leben und Tod
+sind unterthan ihr_"; the arpeggio accompaniment of the violas, and
+the wonderfully poetic climax at the end, "_des Todes Werk ... Frau
+Minne hat es meiner Macht entwandt._" Brangäne's entreaties are
+vain; again she cannot feel what Isolde feels--notice the difference
+between her melody and the soaring freedom of Isolde's. A little later
+(K.A. 99'4 seq.) Isolde's immovable resolution is admirably expressed
+by her persistence on one note. At last she seizes the torch and hurls
+it to the ground to a terrific downward rush of the strings and the
+yell of the death-motive in the trumpets, the entire orchestra with
+drums being heard together for the first time.
+
+SCENE II.--Isolde signals to her lover with her white scarf to music
+redolent of Weber's _Oberon_, and of the transition to the final
+movement of Beethoven's sonata _Les Adieux_. From the moment when
+he enters, neither words nor music come to full articulation; all is
+swept away in the whirlwind of the dominant rhythm
+
+[Music]
+
+a variant of the motive No. 10, in still more rapid tempo. For a great
+part of the time the entire orchestra is occupied, and until far into
+the scene the voices are quite unable to pierce the volume of sound
+from the orchestra.[41]
+
+[Footnote 41: I convinced myself in 1906 that this is not the case in
+Bayreuth theatre, the acoustic qualities of which are unique.]
+
+We take up the scene again when the storm has in some measure subsided
+at the words "_wie lange fern, wie fern so lang_" on p. 109 of
+the piano score. To make anything like a detailed analysis of the
+elaborate working out of the daylight motive with other subsidiary
+motives which now follows would be impossible here, and would only be
+of use to the student of composition. The music wanders through many
+keys, but C major is generally discernible as the centre round which
+the tonality oscillates. The words demand closer attention, and I must
+invite those of my readers who have been driven back by the
+difficulties of the road to accompany me along the dull path of
+literal translation and comment.
+
+The keynote of the dialogue is the opposition of day and night,
+typifying delusion and reality, avidyâ and Atman. In the words of
+Aeschylos:
+
+  [Greek: eudousa gap phraen ommasin lamprunetai.
+  e'n haemera de moir aproskopos broto¯n.]
+
+The dialogue cannot be understood by the light of the rationalist
+theory that love and marriage are things to be contracted for the sake
+of the benefits which they bring to both parties. Those who approach
+it from this standpoint must be content with the explanation sometimes
+heard that "lovers are to be excused if they behave like lunatics,
+since it is part of their condition." This is not quite the poet's
+intention. With Wagner love is a _sacrifice_--or for those who so
+prefer it, a _sacrament_. Hence the deep mystery of the kinship
+of love, the vivifying principle, with death, typified in the Hindu
+emblem of the _ling_. In the present scene it is often difficult
+to tell whether the strains denote the languishing of love or the
+fading away of life. The best preparation would be to read the opening
+portion of the seventh book of Plato's _Republic_. It is
+difficult to think that this passage was not in Wagner's mind when he
+composed the scene; although the imagery is rather different, the
+thought is similar. Plato is speaking of the roots of knowledge;
+Wagner conceives of Love as Plato does of knowledge, and in the minds
+of both love and knowledge are the same, as are also music and
+philosophy. The idea comes at once to the front in Isolde's
+enigmatical
+
+  Im Dunkel du, im Lichte ich.
+
+We remember that according to Plato there are two kinds of blindness:
+one is from living in the dark, the blindness of ignorance; the other
+from having gazed too steadfastly at the sun when the eyes were not
+strong enough to bear it. Tristan was dazzled with the light of the
+sun, and therefore unable to see the truth. For with Wagner the sun is
+not, as with Plato, the source of all light and truth, but rather the
+enemy of love and truth. To put it more shortly, the meaning of the
+line which I have quoted is: "You were blinded by ambition; I saw more
+clearly." Tristan understands her as meaning the light of the torch
+for the extinction of which he was so long waiting. Then follows a
+discussion in which she urges that it was through her act, in pulling
+down the torch, that he was led from the light of day to the darkness
+of love. Porges here makes the true remark that the mainspring of
+Tristan's life is ambition; that love is naturally foreign to him, but
+that he is at last drawn to it by Isolde.
+
+We resume at p. 114 of the piano arrangement. The German construction
+is exceedingly difficult and confusing. I translate literally:
+
+  _Tr._ The day, the day that glossed thee o'er, that
+  carried Isolde away from me thither where she resembled
+  the sun in the gleam and light of highest
+  glory. What so enchanted my eye depressed my heart
+  deep down to the ground. How could Isolde be
+  mine in the bright light of day?
+
+  _Is_. Was she not thine who chose thee? What did
+  the wicked day lie to thee that thou shouldst betray
+  thy beloved who was destined for thee?
+
+  _Tr_. That which glossed thee o'er with transcendent
+  splendour, the radiance of honour, the force of glory,
+  the dream of hanging my heart upon these held me
+  in bonds. The day-sun of worldly honours, which,
+  with the clear refulgence of its shimmer, shone bright
+  upon my head with the vain delight of its rays, penetrated
+  through my head into the deepest recess of
+  my heart. That which there watched darkly sealed
+  in the chaste night, that which unconscious I received
+  there as it dawned, an image which my eyes did not
+  trust themselves to look at, when touched by the
+  light of day, lay open gleaming before me.
+
+In these mysterious words Tristan indicates the impression which
+Isolde had made upon him at their first meeting. He regarded her
+through the spectacles of his political ambition, with its vain
+delight of personal glory, which had penetrated from his head to his
+heart. It illumined the image of Isolde slumbering yet unconscious
+(_ohne Wiss' und Wahn_) in his breast, and revealed it to the
+day--namely, as a prize in the political game which he was playing:
+
+  That which seemed to me so glorious and so noble,
+  I glorified before the whole assembly; before all
+  people I loudly extolled the most lovely royal bride
+  of the earth. The envy which the day had awakened
+  against me, the jealousy which became alarmed at
+  my good fortune, the misfavour which began to
+  weigh down my honour and my glory, I defied them
+  all, and faithfully determined, in order to uphold my
+  honour and my glory, to go to Ireland.
+
+  _Is_. Oh vain slave of the day.
+
+Here (K.A. 119'3 at the words "_Getäuscht von ihm...._") there
+begins a new development of the same motive which has occupied us
+hitherto (No. 3) with the first indications of the syncopated
+accompaniment which forms so prominent a feature of the following
+part. Explanations are now finished. The words begin to find wings.
+For moments it seems as if all consciousness of earthly things were
+lost and the lovers were dissolved into dreamland:
+
+  Wo des Trugs geahnter Wahn zerrinne.
+
+K.A. 122. The modulation into the key of the death-motive, A flat, is
+effected through the chord of the augmented sixth. The violins keep up
+a broken triplet accompaniment, trombones entering on the A major
+chord, oboe lightly breathing the principal motive (No. 3), while the
+voice follows its independent melody, to us a simile of Wagner's like
+a boat designed to move exactly upon that sea, and under those
+conditions. The whole passage is a vision of the death which they are
+awaiting, but without its bitterness, only as the portal of eternity.
+
+On p. 123 the voice brings the intervals of the chord which throws an
+atmosphere over the whole of the rest of the scene, and which has
+already been mentioned as "the soul of the Tristan music." The
+intervals are enharmonically the same as those of the chord in the
+first bar of Prelude--F, A flat, C flat, E flat,=F, G sharp, B, D
+sharp--but the treatment and surroundings are very different.
+
+A reference to the draught occasions a joyful outburst on the part of
+Tristan, which is of importance as explaining its real significance:
+
+  _Tr_. Oh hail to the drink.... Through the door
+  of death whence it flowed it divulged to me wide and
+  open the joyful kingdom of night, wherein before I
+  had only dreamed as one awake.
+
+The words are accompanied by a violin figure in very rapid tempo,
+which was already prominent in the early part of the scene at the
+meeting. The exultant episode soon ends, the stormy tempo continuing,
+and by degrees all subsides into the discordant motive which I have
+quoted as the fourth of the fundamental dramatic-musical motives, and
+seeming to indicate the agony of death (No. 4).
+
+Already there have been indications of a characteristic accompanying
+rhythmic figure consisting of one note repeated in triplets, and now
+as the lovers sink on a bank of flowers in half-conscious embrace, its
+nervous character is enhanced by a complex syncopation. The passage
+beginning 131'4 is in the mystic mood of Beethoven's last sonatas
+and quartets. The triplet movement seems inspired by the similar
+movement in the sonata Op. 110 from the beginning of the slow movement
+_Adagio ma non troppo_ to the end. In both the feverish pulsation
+indicates a morbid condition, leading in Beethoven to a calmly
+triumphant end. The second movement of the quartet Op. 127, _Adagio
+ma non troppo_, with which Porges compares the scene, gives a
+different side, from which the morbid element is absent. The rhythm
+which dominates this scene is a development of the preceding triplet
+rhythm and must be taken quite strictly--3-4 time, the first two
+crotchets being divided into triplet quavers, the last into two. The
+syncopated chords are on the four strings, all muted, and each divided
+into two parts. In the tenth bar (counting from the double bar
+_mässig langsam_ 3-4) the woodwind (Cl. Hr. Fag.) enter,
+sustaining the chord "_sehr weich_," the first clarinet having
+the upper note, quite soft, like a sigh, forming a cadence after each
+phrase of the voice part. The extreme nervous tensity is emphasized
+almost beyond endurance by the incessant syncopated triplets of the
+strings. The lovers are raised entirely away from the external world;
+it is the sleep of approaching death into which they sink; rather
+dissolution into eternity. The words begin to lose coherence and
+meaning, and are often purely interjectional.
+
+One passage may be noted for its interesting modulations, the
+alternating duet with the words "_Barg im Busen uns sich die
+Sonne_." It is in phrases of three bars in rising semitones, A
+flat--A natural--A natural--B flat, ending in the beautiful strain No.
+13 as they fall asleep in one another's arms.
+
+We have now in Brangäne's watch-song, and the instrumental nocturne
+that accompanies it, reached the highest point of the musical
+expression, not of the Tristan drama alone, but of all music since
+Palestrina. Before such music silence is the only thing possible. It
+scoffs at our words; it is not of this earth. Many will now prefer to
+draw the veil, to pass over the little that I have to say, and resign
+themselves to the aesthetic impression. For those who feel curiosity
+to know the mechanism by which its wondrous effect is brought about, I
+will analyse the instrumentation. The thematic material employed is
+very slight; only here and there a motive from the preceding is
+indicated as if in a dream.
+
+The syncopated pulsations are resumed in one-half the full number of
+strings muted, and continue to the end, as do the broken chords of the
+harp. The wood-wind generally sustain soft chords, clarinet, oboe,
+flute, and horn succeeding each other with the sighs from No. 12.
+
+[Music]
+
+Brangäne's voice on the watch-tower behind the scene enters at once in
+3-2 rhythm against 3-4 in the orchestra. At bar 11 (counting from
+first entry of the harp) four pairs of unmuted violins detach
+themselves from the body of the strings, and play a quartet
+independently, with free polyphonic imitation, afterwards joined by
+soli violin, viola, and 'cello, in such close score and intercrossing
+as to make the whole resemble a very closely woven pattern of
+exquisite beauty, but of which the single threads are hardly
+distinguishable.[42] Half the violas, joined later by half the
+'cellos, maintain an accompaniment of broken chords. They are the
+voices of the night through which are heard the long-sustained notes
+of Brangäne's watch-song, wood instruments here and there uttering
+motives like passing dreams from the lovers' melodies:
+
+  Realms where the air we breathe is love,
+  Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
+  Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
+
+[Footnote 42: For the independent string parts, see the Appendix.]
+
+At the end three trombones enter, sustaining slow chords. The whole
+body of the strings, now united, soar once more and subside to rest.
+
+The dialogue which follows is the most difficult in the whole work. It
+will be necessary to take it sentence by sentence. Tristan, as the
+cooler and more self-possessed of the two, sees more clearly than
+Isolde whither they are tending. He has sunk into a state of almost
+complete oblivion, from which Isolde wishes to rouse him. He replies
+(139'1(6)): "Let me die, never to awake." Isolde, scarcely yet
+realizing that this is indeed the only possible ending, asks
+(139'4): "Must then daylight and death together end our love?" He
+replies: "Our love? How can death ever destroy that? Were mighty death
+standing before me threatening body and life--that life which so
+gladly I resign to my love--how could its stroke reach our love? Were
+I to die for that [love] for which I gladly would die, yet that love
+itself is immortal and cannot end with me. So Tristan is himself
+immortal through his love." Now (141'3(8)) she grasps his meaning:
+"Our love is the love of _both_--Tristan _and_ Isolde." Then
+there follows a little conceit on the virtue of the word "and," i.e.
+the bond which unites them both together. The notion is according to
+Kufferath taken from a couplet of Gottfried von Strassburg:
+
+  Zwei vil kleinin Wortelin, Min und Din,
+  Diu briuwent michel Wunder uf der Erde.
+
+Tristan continues: "What would die in death (namely, this bodily and
+worldly life) is only that which comes between us and prevents us from
+loving and living." Isolde returns to her play with the word "and."
+"What is true for you is also true for me. Tristan can only die
+through Isolde's death." The final conclusion is reached in the great
+duet beginning p. 143'1, "We die but to be united for ever in a more
+perfect love." with the motive No. 14.
+
+The duet ends with a reminiscence of the nocturne, Brangäne's voice
+entering with beautiful effect warning the lovers in the midst of
+their rhapsody. I resume at 146'1. The previous dialogue began with
+Isolde's rousing of Tristan with the words "_Lausch' geliebter_."
+Now _he_ turns to her smiling and asks: "_Soll ich lauschen_?" and
+_she_ replies: "_Lass mich sterben_." She has now attained full insight,
+and when he finally and seriously puts the question to her: "Shall I
+return once more to the day?" she replies with enthusiasm
+("_begeistert_"), "Let the day yield to death," and the piercing
+harmonies of No. 4 indicate the wrench of the parting. Her mind is now
+quite resolved. To another decisive question she replies: "Eternal be
+our night!" It is this that Tristan has been waiting for; until he knew
+that Isolde was ready to accompany him he could not form his own resolve.
+Herein we have the key of the whole of this complex and difficult
+scene. Wagner's aim was not, as might appear on a superficial view,
+to prolong a rhapsodical love-scene, but a dramatic one, to bring the
+two characters, each being such as he had conceived it, to a full
+understanding of each other before they could be united in death.
+
+An introductory passage made of the love-motive simultaneously in
+direct and contrary movement--the union of opposites--leads to a duet
+which opens with the harmonies of No. 4 (K.A. 117). Its character
+throughout is triumphant joy, well supported by a running violin
+accompaniment which continues to the end. In the course of it there
+appears another important motive (No. 15), first in the clarinet. All
+ends in a crash of the entire orchestra; Kurwenal rushes in crying,
+"Save yourself, Tristan," and in the next moment Marke and his court
+enter conducted by Melot. "The wretched day for the last time."
+
+SCENE III.--Words and music of the next scene need little comment. It
+may be noted that a great part of Marke's address is in strophic form,
+with four lines of two accents followed by one of three accents.
+Tristan stands before Isolde screening her as well as he can, crushed
+to earth by Marke's calm dispassionate reproaches, with short
+interludes on the bass clarinet. The music is of great beauty, but, as
+I have observed in an earlier chapter, the explanatory parts are too
+much extended. The King calls upon Tristan to say what is the deep,
+mysterious cause of such a falling off in his honour. Tristan cannot
+answer, but the love-motive in its most complete form, as in the
+opening of the Prelude, replies more clearly than words.
+
+Tristan now turns full round to Isolde, and in impressive words asks
+her whether she is prepared to follow him to the land to which he is
+now going; it is the land where no sun shines, the dark land of night.
+The voice takes up the melody No. 12 from an earlier part of the act.
+Her reply is if possible even more sublime. When Tristan carried her
+to a stranger's country, she had to follow. Now he calls her to his
+own, to show her his possession and heritage; how should she refuse?
+"Let Tristan lead the way; Isolde will follow."
+
+He then calls upon Melot to fight with him, but first lets fall a
+significant remark:
+
+  My friend he [Melot] was ... it was he who urged
+  me on to wed thee to the King. Thy glance, Isolde,
+  has dazzled him too; out of jealousy he betrayed me
+  to the King, whom I betrayed.
+
+From these enigmatical words Wagner leaves us to conjecture what we
+can. They fight; at the first pass Tristan lets the sword drop from
+his hand and falls wounded to the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXT AND MUSIC CONTINUED
+
+
+ACT III.--Wagner has described the slow introduction to Beethoven's C
+sharp minor quartet as the saddest music ever written. If there is
+anything sadder, it is the instrumental introduction to the third act
+of _Tristan und Isolde_. Tristan, after being wounded by Melot,
+has been carried off by Kurwenal to his own home, Kareol in Brittany,
+where he is discovered lying asleep on his couch in the castle garden,
+Kurwenal by his side. Nothing could exceed the desolation of the
+scene, nor the utter woe expressed in the music which begins with a
+new transformation of the love-motive (1_a_). Isolde alone can
+cure the sick man, and word has been sent to her to come from
+Cornwall. Her ship is just expected, and the shepherd who is on the
+watch outside plays a sad strain so long as the ship is not seen, to
+be changed to a joyful one when she appears in sight. The plaintive
+strain is played on the English horn, an instrument which in the hands
+of a skilful player is capable of very great expression, and, unlike
+most of the wood, has a considerable range of soft and loud, a quality
+of which Wagner has made very happy use.
+
+The melody itself seems to have caused some heartburning to many
+excellent critics. Even Heinrich Porges describes it as a sequence of
+tones apparently without rule,[43] and has not a word to say about its
+enthralling melodic beauty. Really what difficulty there is, is only
+for the eye, and only in one note, the constantly recurring G flat,
+which is easily accounted for. In a later part of the scene (p. 200),
+it will be found fully harmonized.
+
+[Footnote 43: _"Eine scheinbar regellose Tonfolge."_]
+
+SCENE I.--In the first scene of the third act, Kurwenal attains an
+importance far beyond what he had in the first and second acts. He,
+too, is changed; he is no longer the rough, unmannerly servant, the
+events which have passed and the responsibility now resting upon his
+shoulders, have brought out the finer qualities of his nature. There
+is noticeable in his melody all through the act an air of freedom and
+lofty devotion quite different from his former self. He is, as it
+were, transfigured, and there is a refinement in his tenderness which
+may surprise those who have never observed what delicacy and
+sensitiveness are often hidden beneath a rough exterior among the
+lower classes.
+
+After a short conversation between Kurwenal and the shepherd, who
+looks over the wall to ask how the patient is progressing, Tristan
+awakes, asking with feeble voice where he is. Kurwenal relates how he
+has brought him to his own home in Kareol, where he is soon to recover
+from wounds and death. It is some time before Tristan fully
+understands, and as memory begins to awaken, he tells of where he has
+been, speaking as one inspired:
+
+  I was there where I have ever been, whither for
+  ever I go, in the wide realm of the world-night, where
+  there is but one knowledge--divine utter oblivion,
+
+i.e. in that Brahm, that eternal negation, in which all physical life
+has its existence. The words are accompanied by _pianissimo_
+chords of trombones with tuba. It is the first time that the heavy
+brass has been heard in this act, and the effect is excessively
+solemn. He continues:
+
+  How has this foretaste (of eternal night) departed
+  from me? Shall I call thee a yearning memory that
+  has driven me once more to the light of day?
+
+The music of this and the following part is very interesting, but the
+modulations are too subtle and too evanescent for analysis. The
+motive, which has throughout been associated with the metaphor of
+daylight, is united with the languishing love-motive and with No. 4,
+of which three motives the following part is chiefly made up. The
+combination is expressed in Tristan's word, _"Todeswonne-Grauen,"_
+"the awful joy of death." The culminating point is reached at the
+strongly alliterative words, _"Weh' nun wächst bleich und bang mir
+des Tages wilder Drang,"_ when for the moment there is quite a
+maze of real parts in wood-wind and strings. Immediately following
+is a very curious passage, nothing else than a succession of
+augmented chords in an upward chromatic scale, seemingly
+illustrating the words _"grell und täuschend sein Gestirn weckt zu
+Trug und Wahn mein Hirn."_ For a moment Kurwenal seems overawed
+by the words and sufferings of his beloved master. His free bounding
+spirits are gone, and he speaks like a broken man. But he soon
+recovers his former mood as he tells of Isolde's expected arrival. The
+news, scarcely comprehended at first, is the signal for an outburst of
+joy on the part of Tristan expressed in a new motive, No. 17, p.
+193'4. His joy is so violent that it brings on a return of delirious
+raving. He seems to see the ship, the sails filling to the wind, the
+colours flying, but at that moment the sad strains of the shepherd's
+song tell him that the ship has not yet appeared. He knows the tune,
+which once bewailed his father's death and his mother's fate when she
+brought him forth and died. And now it tells of his own lot:
+
+  to long--and die; to die--and to long. No! Not
+  so! rather to long and long, dying to long, and _not_
+  to die of longing.
+
+He cannot find the death for which he longs.
+
+In the following soliloquy the plaintive melody is woven into the
+orchestral accompaniment and taken by various instruments in turn. I
+resume at the words _"Der Trank, der Trunk, der furchtbare
+Trank"_ (p. 207'1), where the full orchestra accompanies with
+brass and drums, the tempo being still rather slow.
+
+  The draught! the draught! the terrible draught!
+  How it raged from my heart to my head.... Nowhere,
+  nowhere may I rest. The night casts me back
+  on the day for ever to feed the sun's rays on my suffering....
+  The fearful draught which has consigned me
+  to this torment, I, I myself brewed it! Out of [my]
+  father's woe and [my] mother's anguish, out of tears
+  of love ever and aye, out of laughing and weeping,
+  joys and wounds, I have gathered its poisons. Thou
+  draught which I brewed, which flowed for me, which I
+  joyfully quaffed, accursed be thou, accursed he who
+  brewed thee.
+
+He sinks once more into unconsciousness. This drink, this fearful
+draught which has brought him into his present state, is the work of
+his whole life, the outcome of all his former deeds. The despair which
+he feels now as his end approaches is expressed in the motive No. 18,
+in unison in the wood-wind. Both music and words of this soliloquy
+offer great difficulties and need close study, with special attention
+to the tempo.[44] It ends with the F sharp minor chord in the 6-4
+position with full brass and drums; then sudden silence in the
+orchestra as the voice sings the words _"furchtbarer Trank."_
+
+[Footnote 44: This is the passage which perplexed the greatest of all
+Wagner singers, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, so much that it hindered him
+from taking the part of Tristan until light came to him from Wagner
+himself. See the interesting account in Wagner's _Reminiscences of
+Schnorr von Carolsfeld_ in his collected works, viii. 221.]
+
+As he lies in a swoon the wood-wind in turns continue the malediction.
+The tone then changes as Kurwenal stands beside him, uncertain whether
+he is alive or dead. The wood softly sound the chord which we have so
+often heard before, No. 12, in syncopated triplets, as in the great
+duet in the second act (pp. 131 seq.). Above there floats a melody of
+exquisite tenderness, first in the oboe, then in the clarinet,
+continued later in a solo violin. A horn quartet then begins the soft
+theme No. 13, Tristan's failing voice telling how he sees the vision
+of Isolde floating towards him over the sea. It is as if the strains
+of the garden scene were hovering in his dreams and calming his
+troubled thoughts. As he reads in Kurwenal's looks that she is not yet
+in sight, he once more threatens to become violent, when suddenly the
+joyful tune, the signal of Isolde's approach, is heard.
+
+SCENE II.--The catastrophe which now follows is one of the most
+terrible ever conceived by a dramatist. Directly Kurwenal is away,
+Tristan begins to toss in his bed; he seems almost to rise from the
+dead. Strange, restless orchestration and 7-4 time seem to show that
+something is pending. Several motives are hinted at, and at last there
+breaks out in the lower strings and wood the motive No. 13 from the
+second act, but now how changed! The tender, dreamy melody, now in
+distorted 5-4 rhythm, appears like a dance of death, first in C major.
+A short climax brings it in A major and again in C major with the
+utmost fury and the force of the entire orchestra. It is as if the
+very gates of hell had burst and every fiend were dancing around him,
+shouting: "Live! live! and be for ever damned! false knight! perjured
+lover!" He springs from his couch, tears the bandages from his body;
+the blood streams from his wound; he staggers to the middle of the
+stage as he hears Isolde's voice and sinks into her arms as she
+enters. The love-motive is heard in the wood-wind like a long dying
+breath as, breathing the word "Isolde," he expires. The orchestra dies
+away; one chord is heard alone on the harp, and the violoncello
+continues the love-motive as he breathes away his life.
+
+Isolde is left alone with Kurwenal, who has followed her. The
+soliloquy in which she laments the cruel destruction of the plan for
+saving Tristan is profoundly touching, both in the words and in the
+melody:
+
+  Art thou dead? Tarry but for one hour, one only
+  hour. Such anxious days longing she watched, to
+  watch but one more hour with thee. Will Tristan
+  beguile Isolde of the one last ever-short world-happiness
+  (No. 4). The wound? where? Let me heal
+  it, that, joyful and serene, we may share the night
+  together. Not of the wound--die not of the wound!
+  Let us both united close our eyes to the light of
+  heaven....
+
+Sounds are heard without. Another ship has arrived, and with it Marke
+in pursuit of the fugitive princess. Hastily the gates of the castle
+are barricaded. Brangäne's voice is heard imploring them not to
+resist. It is vain; Kurwenal leaves no time for parley, but rushes
+upon them and is at once pierced through. He is just able to reach his
+master's body and die at his side; when Marke has forced an entry he
+finds nothing but death. Brangäne notices that Isolde is still living,
+and they now explain. The secret of the love-potion has been told to
+King Marke, and he has hurried up to renounce his intention of wedding
+Isolde and to unite her to Tristan.[45]
+
+[Footnote 45: Another proof, if any were needed, that he is not united
+to her by any indissoluble tie.]
+
+It needed but a few minutes' delay for all to have ended happily. Why
+did not the poet take the opportunity offered and spare us the
+harrowing scenes at the end? Why could he not have lowered the curtain
+on the lovers united with Marke's full approval? Dramatically there
+was no reason why he should not have done so, but poetically it was
+impossible. The whole of the story is brought about by Tristan's guilt
+which had to be expiated; it is not diminished by Marke's generosity.
+
+Isolde now rises to bid the world her last farewell before she departs
+with Tristan. The words of her swan-song have been described by an
+English writer as "no more poetry than an auctioneer's catalogue."[46]
+Of that I must leave my readers to form their own judgment; they must,
+of course, be read with their context in the drama. She is speaking in
+a trance, with ecstatic visions before her eyes. The voice melody is
+mostly built upon the song of union in death in the second act (No.
+14), passing into the exultant motive which occurs in the great
+love-duet (No. 15). The orchestral accompaniment, beginning quietly,
+gradually swells into a torrent of music quite unrivalled among
+Wagner's great finales. The end of _Götterdämmerung_ is
+impressive because of the wonderful gathering together of the musical
+motives of Siegfried's life, but as a musical composition it cannot
+compare with the end of Tristan. As it approaches the end the
+love-motive absorbs the whole orchestra, passing into No. 10 from the
+prelude of the second act, rising higher and higher. The wonderful
+euphony of tone, the harmony and peacefulness which pervade the
+surging mass of instruments are due to the consummate art of the
+instrumentation, and at last as the music seems to leave this earth in
+its heavenward flight we feel borne away upon its wings. Isolde does
+not die; she is carried upwards on the pinions of love, dissolved in
+the ocean of endless melody.
+
+[Footnote 46: A comparison which, by the way, seems a little severe
+against auctioneers, if, as I presume, the objection is to the want of
+clearness of the language!]
+
+Her finish has given occasion to the witticism that the most beautiful
+thing in the work is the last note. To this I see no reason to demur;
+it contains nothing more entrancing than the rise to the fifth of the
+chord at her final cadence
+
+[Music: höch - - - ste Lust.]
+
+Once more the love-motive is softly breathed in the oboi and the whole
+closes on the chord of B major three times repeated by the orchestra.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Wagner always looked upon himself as one who had broken a new path in
+art and done some of the first rough work, not as having completed the
+road. Those who seek to continue his work must have the same goal
+before their eyes as he had. It is the fate of a great man who more
+than others longs for human fellowship and love, to live alone and,
+after death, to overwhelm his contemporaries and successors; he
+occupies a space which leaves no room for others. In the thirty years
+which have elapsed since Wagner died, many great composers have come
+to the front, all of whom without exception show in their external
+physiognomy the impress of his personality. How many have inherited
+his spirit? How many have been actuated by his sincerity, his fearless
+resolve to follow his inspiration from on high at every cost,
+regardless of all personal advantage? Future ages alone can answer
+this question. The German nation is at the present day passing through
+a severe trial of its inner strength. The true _Sturm und Drang_
+began for Germany in 1871, and is now at its height. Her mission is
+indeed a noble one; it is to maintain the principles of law, good
+government, and pure religion; her genius lies in sober conservatism
+and high-minded monarchy; her heroes are Dürer, Luther, Frederic the
+Great, vom Stein, Richard Wagner. It is scarcely surprising if, in
+view of the history of Germany during the last hundred years, some of
+her sons have become intoxicated and in their zeal for German ideals
+threaten to destroy the very principles by which she has risen; if
+while affecting to despise the southern nations for libertinism they
+should themselves have cast off the bonds of self-restraint. All
+Europe is infected with the taint of unbridled licence and
+shamelessness, in every department of life, intellectual and
+political. On the stage the public revels in cruelty for its own sake,
+not in the service of justice; it prefers bombast to bravery, lechery
+to love; "the basest metal makes the loudest din"; while those to whom
+we look as our leaders for direction only pander to the common
+vulgarity and grow rich thereon.
+
+There is one ingredient of art mentioned by Aristotle, although it has
+been little noticed by critics; his word for it is [Greek: aedusma],
+"sweetening." The poet should never forget that art, however serious,
+is intended for our pleasure; the hard edge of fate needs to be
+tempered by a recognition of the reality and beauty of positive life.
+The aim of the true poet is not to harrow the feelings with the mere
+picture of suffering or wickedness. We have enough of these in actual
+life without going to the theatre; the poet has to show them as
+subservient to a higher order of beauty and righteousness, and will
+try to mitigate the pain which they inflict. In the tragedies of the
+greatest dramatists the sweetness is so conspicuous a feature that it
+might almost be ranked as a third essential of tragedy, along with the
+awaking of pity and terror. The purpose of art is to show the unity of
+truth and beauty, and thus to enhance the power of both, not to
+sacrifice either in favour of the other. It teaches the divine lesson
+of nature--perfect fitness united with perfect loveliness.
+
+One more word and I have finished. It is easy to hear too much of
+Wagner, and I think there can be no question that his works are made
+far too common in Germany. Wagner's characters are not those of
+everyday life; they are on a higher and more ideal moral level than
+ordinary men and women; they are semi-divine. Nor are his works for
+everyday hearing, but only for high festivals when we can enjoy them
+at our leisure with our minds prepared. For our daily bread we have
+other composers as great as he, and more nutritious and wholesome for
+continued diet--Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and how many more of
+the highest rank! Caviare and champagne are excellent things at a
+feast, but we do not wish to live upon them.
+
+Every cultured person should hold it a duty to visit the Bayreuth
+festival at least once in his life. He need not have any musical
+training; nothing more is needed than "a warm heart and open senses,"
+and, let me add, sincerity of purpose. Those who go expecting perfect
+performances and ideal surroundings will be disappointed. Immense care
+is bestowed on the preparation of the performances, and the site and
+building present incalculable advantages. On the whole the
+performances are better than elsewhere, but, excepting in the
+orchestra, there are many shortcomings, and the fashionable audience
+from Paris, and other capitals of Europe and America, is far indeed
+from what was contemplated by Wagner. All honour is due to Madame
+Cosima Wagner, who has worked unflinchingly against immense
+difficulties to maintain the honour of her husband's heritage. She is
+not to blame if she has not fully achieved the impossible; If the tree
+has partly withered, the fault is not with the gardener; it was too
+vigorous, too noble, to flourish in the soil of human society.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WAGNER'S TRISTAN UND ISOLDE ***
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