66 Professor G. Hiihert H. Parry [Feb. 28, 



the three groups of stringed, wood wind, and brass instruments, 

 orchestral music progressed from the homogeneity in which all the 

 functions of the different instruments were jumbled up together, to 

 that elaborate heterogeneity of Wagner ; in which every instrument, 

 from piccolo to double bassoon, has its own place in the scheme, and 

 its own function to perform. And, indeed, one of the things which 

 is looked upon as a test point in good writing for an orchestra is that 

 no player shall waste his breath or his muscular efforts in vain ; and 

 a composer who now writes a part for an instrument which does not 

 " tell " is not a full master of his craft. This high development of 

 orchestration is indeed the furthest point of subtlety to which modern 

 musical development has progressed ; and it has grown with a surpris- 

 ing degree of development in the public for appreciating rapid varieties 

 of tone effect, and a certain dangerous susceptibility to the exciting 

 effects of colour, which always has a tendency to deaden the faculty 

 for appreciating beauty of artistic design. And in this direction we 

 already see possibilities of decadence ; as many works which take 

 great hold of musical natures show a decided falling-off from the 

 perfect design of the great masters, towards that hazy indefiniteness 

 and intangible vagueness of progression and structure which clearly 

 portends relapse into homogeneity in one respect. But it must be 

 said, by way of caution against too hastily taking a pessimistic view 

 of the situation, that in artistic works of real value there is always 

 an element which defies pure intellectual analysis: and it may be 

 that the principles of form we so admire in the works of our greatest 

 musicians are undergoing some subtle change to which we are not at 

 present capable of giving a definition. 



The later evolution of the great forms of opera and oratorio does 

 not demand very lengthy consideration. No branch of art affords so 

 many examples of the non-survival of the imperfect as the opera. 

 The stage offers so many opportunities of obtaining strong im- 

 pressions by vapid means that the vast majority of people who write 

 for it seem to get bewildered, and either deliberately aj^peal to the 

 public by cheap claptrap, or lose their capacity of judging what is 

 worthy of art and what is not ; and the peculiar attitude of the 

 operatic public has always been against thoroughness in any respect ; 

 and the result is that the composer who writes for popular success 

 does nothing for art, and the composer who feels his art deeply gets 

 no thanks or encouragement from the public. The opera of the type 

 written by Handel, Hasse, John Christian Bach, Galuppi, and 

 hundreds more, was once the joy of the world ; but no branch of art 

 is more utterly dead, or more incapable of revival on any terms what- 

 ever. Gluck's reforms came practically too soon, and beautiful as 

 much of his work is, it is almost incapable of revival except in frag- 

 ments. But he did give an impulse to the evolution of operatic art, 

 and set men's instincts to work again to clear out dead matter and 

 help the sluggish evolution to go on again. The stiffs grouping of 

 arias and recitatives was diversified by trios, quartettes, and such 



