RICHARD WAGNER. 



16 i 



spearean drama. Chorus, musical sound, band, 

 song, all the voices of universal Nature environ- 

 ing man — appalling, consoling, inspiring him — 

 have vanished. A new inner world, unknown to 

 the Greeks, has taken their place, and man is 

 absorbed with himself. Yet without that uni- 

 versal voice which he can make his own, how he 

 shrinks, dwarfed by his narrow individuality; no 

 longer a part of the great whole and soul of 

 things; Nature no longer his mother, the winds 

 no more his friends, the sea no more his com- 

 forter ! The ideal atmosphere of the Greek cho- 

 rus is missed ; the power of music, however ru- 

 dimentary, is absent. Shakespeare seems to have 

 felt it ; it passes over his sublime creations as an 

 invocation to Music in "Twelfth Night" or in 

 Ophelia's plaintive song. And this is the point 

 of contact between the old drama of iEschylus 

 and the new drama of Shakespeare : the two 

 stand forever for the opposite poles of dramatic 

 art— the universal type, the individual life — and 

 both are necessary. The individual is naturally 

 evolved from the universal, but, once evolved and 

 developed, it must be restored to the universal, 

 and be glorified by it. 



At this crisis, in his quest after a perfect art- 

 form, Wagner found himself confronted with 

 Beethoven's music. He did not believe that 

 drama could be carried further than iEschylus, 

 Sophocles, and Shakespeare, or music any further 

 than Beethoven ; but he did conceive the project 

 of leading the whole stream of the Beethovenian 

 music into the channels of Shakespearean drama. 

 The Greek chorus might have been adequate to 

 the simple types of Greek tragedy, but modern 

 life, with its self-conscious spirituality, its ques- 

 tions, its doubts, its hopes, and its immense as- 

 pirations — this seemed to require quite a new 

 clement of expression. The voice of this inner 

 life had been preparing for four hundred years; 

 when it was ready it turned out to be no inflexible 

 misk, through which a human voice might speak, 

 not even a mobile chorus, but a splendid and 

 complex organ of expression, fitted so closely 

 about the soul of man as to become the very 

 7Eolian harp upon which the breath of his life 

 could freely play. 



In the great world-laboratory of art Wagner 

 found already all that he required. There was, 

 as he remarked, nothing left for him to invent : 

 the arts of poetry, music, painting, and panto- 

 mime, had been explored separately and perfect- 

 ed ; nay, one step more had been made — the arts 

 had actually been combined at different times in 

 ditferent ways. Music with pantomime and poem 



' by the Greeks ; music with pantomime, drama, 

 painting, and every conceivable effect of stage 

 scenery and costume, as in modern opera ; music 

 and words, as in oratorio or the cantata. But in 

 Greece music was wholly undeveloped as an art ; 

 acting had never sounded the depths of individual 

 life and expression. The Shakespearean drama 

 left out music. The cantata and oratorio omitted 

 pantomime and painting, while modern opera 

 presented a meretricious and maimed combina- 

 tion of the arts resulting from a radically defec- 

 tive form. 



With a surprising vigor of intellect Wagner 

 has analyzed the situation, and explained exactly 

 why he is dissatisfied with the best operatic ef- 

 forts of the past, and why he seeks to supersede 

 opera with the " musical drama." 



I think his critical results may be briefly 

 summed up thus : In the musical drama, poetry, 

 music, scenery, and acting, are to be so blended 

 as that each shall have its own appropriate share, 

 and no more, as a medium of expression. The 

 acting must not be cramped by the music, as in 

 common opera, where a man has to stand on one 

 toe till he has done his roulade, or pauses in the 

 dead of night to shout out a song about "Hush ! 

 we shall be discovered ! " when there is not a 

 moment to spare. The music must not be spoiled 

 for the acting, as in ballet and pantomime, where 

 acting is overstrained to express what the sister 

 arts of poetry and music are better fitted to con- 

 vey. And poetry, which after all supplies the 

 definite basis and answers the inevitable " why ? " 

 must not be sacrificed, as in our opera lihretti, to 

 the demands of singers for aria and scena, while 

 the scenery must only attempt effects and situa- 

 tions which can be made to look real. The ob- 

 ject of the grand musical drama is, in fact, to 

 present a true picture of human feeling with the 

 utmost fullness and intensity, freed from every 

 conventional expression by the happy union of 

 all the arts, giving to each only what it is able to 

 deal with, but thus dealing with everything, leav- 

 ing nothing to the imagination. The Wagnerian 

 drama completely exhausts the situation. 



Filled with this magnificent conception, Wag- 

 ner looked out upon the world of modern opera 

 — and what did he see ? 



First, he noticed that the opera had made a 

 false start. It sprang, not from the earnest feel- 

 ing of the miracle-plays, but from the indolent 

 desire of the luxurious Italian nobles to listen to 

 the delicious popular melodies in a refined form. 

 The spontaneous street-action (which may to this 

 day be admired in Naples or Florence) was ex- 



