the stage, Schumann's 'Genoveva' withdrawn after three performances; Spohr, safe in his fastness at Cassel, tried a few ingenious experiments, but they came to nothing; for a time it looked as though true art would abandon the opera-house and leave it to the rhetoric of Meyerbeer and the tinkle of Donizetti's guitar. Once more the musicians were 'treating as an end what should only be treated as a means,' and in so doing were displacing the artistic balance. The only hope of restoring it lay in the advent of a man who should be primarily a dramatist, but to whom music should be a natural means of expression; who should approach the problem from the dramatic side, yet with such mastery of music as should make it subservient to his purpose.

Wagner's autobiography tells us at first hand how this hope was fulfilled. It is not altogether a pleasant book; there are many details of private life which do not concern us, and would have been better omitted; but, as an account of his artistic career, the work is one of absorbing interest. Some of it has been anticipated in his earlier writings, † but in none of them is the story told with such wealth of incident or such candour of self-revelation - the schoolboy who played truant to write a great Shakespearean tragedy, and justified himself on the ground that he had been placed in a class below his merits; the university student with a drawer full of immature compositions and an overwhelming passion for Beethoven; the theatrical experience at Magdeburg and Riga; the struggling, starving days at Paris; the brief period of official dignity at Dresden; then revolution and exile full of stormy treatises and projects of new work; and so the story closes when King Louis of Bavaria sends his equerry with that offer of freedom and competence to which we owe Bayreuth and all that it has brought us. One point of interest emerges from the volumes with special clearness-the extent to which Wagner, when he had once determined the nature of his message, foresaw the successive stages in which it was to be delivered. It is well known that 'Die Meistersinger' was sketched,

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* See Oper und Drama,' Introduction.

+ Notably in Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde.'

twenty-two years before the completion of the work, at the time that he was making the arrangements for the production of Tannhäuser.' It is not so well known that the idea of Parsifal' was conceived at the same time, and that the scenario was written during the intervals of 'Siegfried.'

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This is the more noticeable because Wagner's dramatic work traces back the history of the art almost continuously from the point at which he received it. We have seen the music-drama begin with religion, change to the conflict of motives and the presentation of human tragedy, develope for a short time into folk-legend, and finally lose itself in the sands of dramatic convention. Wagner reversed this order. He began by adopting the current conventions. In 'Rienzi,' for example, Adriano's song is not better than Bellini; 'Santo Spirito Cavalieri' is not much better than Meyerbeer; the whole substance of the music is like amateur's work, filling with immense enthusiasm and vitality the accepted formulas of its time. Then came the period of folk-legend, with 'The Flying Dutchman' for initiative and Tannhäuser' and 'Lohengrin' for completion. Wagner has told us in full detail how he hesitated between Tannhäuser' and 'Manfred,' and for what reason he abandoned the 'historical grand opera in five acts' which he had already sketched, and took in its place that very essence of the folk-poem' which had been brought to his notice in a popular ballad. No doubt he treated these national subjects in his own manner, and his own manner was not that of Weber; but none the less he was feeling his way through nationalism to the most intimate and central emotions of mankind. It is not for nothing that, in the oration which celebrated the transference of Weber's body to Dresden, he spoke of the composer of Der Freischütz' as the most German of musicians.'

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Then the stage widens for the larger tragedies of mankind; the immortal passion of Tristan,' the fundamental problems of right and justice in The Ring.' Then follows Die Meistersinger,' the greatest of musical comedies, a triumphant vindication of love and art which is as well illustrated by the conflict of Beckmesser and Walther as Aristophanes' patriotism is illustrated by the conflict of Eschylus and Euripides. So the course winds

upwards from 'frivolity' and spectacular display to national legend, from national legend to the great epic mythology in which human life is symbolised, and to the service of art by which it is ennobled, until at last the summit is attained in the Eucharistic feast of 'Parsifal.' Throughout the whole of his work the animating force is love. I cannot think of music except as love,' he says -love which is born amid the beauty and goodness of earth and soars flight above flight to the mystic contemplation of eternal beauty and eternal goodness.

With such an inspiration it is little wonder that he has moved the hearts of men. We may grant much that has been said against him-occasional roughness of style, occasional poverty of technique, the faults that follow from a hasty education and an imperfect equipment. His verse can no more stand beside Goethe's than his tunes beside those of Schubert; he is 'not great as they are, point by point'; the work of his early manhood sometimes falls into commonplace; that of his maturity is sometimes heavy and slow of movement. Yet even here the advocatus diaboli cannot pass unanswered. Where Wagner's technique is strong it is irresistible. No man before his time ever showed such supreme mastery of orchestral colour. No man except Beethoven has ever compressed his thoughts into such clear, incisive musical phrase. If the stanza-tunes are sometimes illrhymed, they are more than compensated by that wonderful diffused melody which overflows the stanza and is the more beautiful for its lack of restriction. If the verse is often unmemorable, at any rate we do not forget the characters that speak it or the scenes in which it is uttered. And, further, it may be urged that to try Wagner by these analytic tests is to judge him on a false issue; the limitations may be real, but they are irrelevant. The sole ground on which Wagner's work can be rightly appraised is its effect in the theatre; and on this ground the verdict of posterity is assured. As the great dramas unroll before us, we have no thought of criticism or analysis; we let ourselves be carried away by the swelling

* 'My path led first to utter frivolity in my views of art,' says Wagner in 'Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde,' which, it will be remembered, was written to serve as a preface to 'The Flying Dutchman,' 'Tannhäuser,' and 'Lohengrin,' and to explain their place in his general scheme.

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and limitless billows, by the 'unfathomable speech which leads us to the edge of the Infinite and lets us for moments gaze into that.'

Before we proceed to discuss the extent of Wagner's influence on the subsequent history of the stage it may be well to consider a form which, at most, fell but indirectly within its range. During the mid-century romantic opera was running an undistinguished course, often deft and picturesque, but of very little importance. To compare Goethe's 'Faust' with Gounod's is to understand why music is sometimes treated disrespectfully by men of letters. But a seed of Weber's sowing was wafted to remote lands, and in course of time grew up and bore fruit. The older Russian composers were passionate adherents of Weber; the younger learned from him the lesson of a folk-opera, based on national legend, and saturated with national melody. Such an opera is Boris Godunov,' by that great and wayward genius, Moussorgsky. In the first act an entire scene is built from a peasants' hymn;* and almost every subsequent melody is either gathered from the folk-songs or a close imitation of their manner. Borodin's 'Prince Igor,' too, is saturated with national idiom, employed on a weaker theme than Moussorgsky's, but with greater musical ability. In more recent times Bruneau has used folk-songs for his charming opera 'Le Rêve' with special appropriateness to a simple story of French country life. But the finest example of all is Georges Bizet, whose 'Carmen,' produced in 1875, shows to what splendid purpose a romantic play can be adorned with national colour and national rhythm. It does not rival the Wagnerian dramas, though many critics, Nietzsche included, have declared that it surpasses them; but it holds an honourable place by the side of 'Der Freischütz.'

Wagner's influence may be traced back at least as early as Boito's Mefistofele' (1868), which in its turn profoundly affected the later works of his friend and collaborator, Verdi. As might be expected, the musician

Praise to thee, O God, in the heavens.' It is this tune which Beethoven used in the second Rasumovsky quartet. Moussorgsky employs it for a chorus of welcome to the Tsar.

preponderates; but in 'Aïda' the change of ideal is evident, and in Otello' and Falstaff' it is almost complete. There is some interest in observing that among the followers of the 'new music' Italy led the way. How Wagner seems to have stricken these Italians,' complains Meredith's Victor Radnor; and he adds, with the sigh of all musical conservatism, I held out against Wagner as long as I could.'

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But among all who carried on the Wagnerian tradition by far the most momentous is Richard Strauss. His 'Guntram' first revealed the dramatist on whom the mantle of Wagner has fallen; his two light comedies carry it off with something of a rakish air, as though they had studied their pose from Don Juan; in 'Salome' and 'Elektra' he sets himself to carry to their furthest conclusion those principles of unflinching dramatic expression' which Oper und Drama' had upheld.

In discussing Salome' we must begin by conceding the assumption that the subject of a drama may be taken, and even rehandled, from Holy Writ, an assumption which is difficult to traverse in face of such names as Racine and Alfieri. If this be granted, the next point to consider is whether the treatment is worthy of the theme; whether it convinces us as we are convinced by 'Saul' and Athalie.' The plot is undeniably dramatic. An Eastern princess is fascinated-half shudder, half desire-by one of her father's captives. She approaches him, is repulsed, turns to hatred, and demands his life as a penalty. Her father, who regards his prisoner with an uneasy superstitious awe, is forced to a reluctant assent, sees her gloating over her victim in horrible triumph, and at breaking-point of revulsion orders his guards to crush her under their shields.

It is a subject for a great tragedy; but to make the tragedy great two things would seem to be requisite. It must be swift of movement, since it passes over places on which it is not good to dwell; it must never mar its tragic intensity by commonness of phrase, still less by risking that fatal step which lies beyond the confines of the sublime. In neither of these respects does Strauss' 'Salome' rise to the height of its purpose. It is sometimes trivial; it is almost always slow in action. The love-scene is unduly prolonged by an indefensible attempt