under extraordinary circumstances, when all the means required for an undertaking on such a scale could be ensured. This was the now much talked of Tetralogy, under the title of Der Ring des Nibelungen,' which, as everyone knows, is to be given at Baireuth in the autumn of this year, and in which, as is immediately evident, Herr Wagner has in his mind the revival in a modern form of the great dramatic festivals of Greece, which had always hovered before him as an ideal, in times past, of a national artistic entertainment. The composition of such a work of course spread over some years; and it was whilst still engaged in it that he was induced, partly by hearing of the growing acceptance of his earlier works on the part of the public, to pause from his task for the composition of a smaller opera which would give him the chance of at once hearing something of his own written in accordance with his latest feelings and views on the art. The work written in accordance with this impulse is Tristan und Isolde,' which is in fact later in order of composition than most of the Tetralogy, and which represents more completely than any other of his works the artistic result of the theory of opera which he has evolved and to which he may be said to have pledged himself. In this work the subordination of the music to the drama, or, as its composer would probably prefer to say, the interpenetration of the two, is complete. Not a vestige of lyrical form is left (saving a rough song by the men on Tristan's vessel in praise of his exploits); the operatic chorus has utterly disappeared, and the entire extent of the music is, as it were, presented in the tissue of words and verses-that is to say, 'that the musical melody is already contained in the poem.' The step from Tannhäuser' to Tristan' is accordingly, as the composer himself observes, much longer than that from 'Rienzi' to Tannhäuser.' We may readily concede that a much more intimate amalgamation between the poem and the music is attained by this method of procedure, and find no difficulty in believing that this prefiguration of the musical form in the poem may have proved rather a help and stimulus than a hindrance in composing the latter. There remains the question, whether by this procedure the musical form of melody ' is not prejudiced by being deprived of its freedom of movement as well as development'? That is indeed the point upon which, as we are disposed to think, Wagnerian opera must ultimately stand or fall. The composer's answer to it we have already inferred in our résumé of his views as to tune and rhythm: we will now endeavour to frame our own. Of Herr Wagner's theoretic basis for the position he assumes : we must say at once that it appears to us to be equally contradicted by nature and by art-history. We can hardly be expected to waste space in collecting formal evidence that the love of rhythmical accent is something inherent in human nature, and not dependent on accidents of time, place, and habit we may just allude to the fact, certainly not insignificant, that even the very physical basis of music is rhythm, since the distinction between what we recognise as musical sounds and those which are not so consists in the isochronous character of the vibrations in the former. The statement of the case on historical grounds, methodical as it appears in Herr Wagner's way of putting it, is based upon a complete petitio principii. Granting that we had data sufficient to enable us to say positively that Greek music consisted in rhythmical tunes used only as an accompaniment to the dance, why is the dance to be the cause and the music the effect? Surely it were at least as reasonable to regard both as springing from the same innate tendency to rhythmical expression; or even to go further and regard the dance as arising out of the music, and impossible without it. The tune can be invented and played without the dance; the latter cannot be danced without the tune. Admitting, however, the dance-form of pre-historic music to be established, Wagner points to the noble school of unrhythmical polyphonous music of which Palestrina was the great name, and asks who, after hearing his Stabat Mater,' and contrasting it with the mere tune-writing of the modern Italian opera, could suppose the latter to be the legitimate daughter of that wondrous mother?' Fully sympathising with the main tendency of the feeling implied by the question, we reply, that even supposing the historical connexion between the two schools cannot be traced (as we think it can), the deduction as to the inherent supremacy of music unfettered by rhythm is no fair one from the premisses. In the first place, it must be remembered that the early Italian church school, however grand and elevated in style, is very restricted in its range, and is in fact only the somewhat monotonous though solemn and impressive rendering of a special phase of religious feeling; while it would be most unfair to deny to the modern Italian school the creation of melodies, some of which have stirred all hearts, and whose charm, such as it is, seems to be imperishable. But the light genre of the modern Italian school generally-the 'poverty of harmonic basis' which Wagner satirises-is no intrinsic characteristic of rhythmical music. The German school also reverted' (if we are so to speak) to the rhythmical or dance-tune' form of melody, and treated it polyphonally in a grand series of works the greatness of which Wagner does not venture to deny; and the fair comparison would be between this and the early Italian school -between polyphonous melody plus rhythm and polyphonous melody minus rhythm. We will not insult the critical faculty of our readers by asking them whether or not they consider the choral works of Handel and Bach, or the school of instrumental music which culminated in Beethoven, an extension of the boundaries of the art as practised by Palestrina and his compeers. The educated world, with the exception of a few ecclesiological enthusiasts, has fully made up its mind on that point. A somewhat similar logical fallacy is apparent in Wagner's assertion, repeated still more authoritatively by his literary satellites, that so far from melody being cramped or interfered with by his system, it is greatly extended, and that his operas are, in fact, one succession and blending of melody from beginning to end. It is obvious that this is a mere arbitrary playing with language. We all know what we mean by 'melody; and if its essence be more easily felt than defined, we at least know that it is dependent on measured accent in time as well as on measured intervals in pitch, for that symmetrical proportion which gives it an individual and recognisable form. Wagner may plead that his music presents opportunity for higher expression than can be attained through melodic form, but it is absurd to pretend that he is offering the world the quality which it understands by the term 'melody.' It is open to a dramatic poet to maintain, if he please, that prose is a more suitable or even a nobler means of expression for his art than verse, but he would be justly derided if he were to urge that it was in fact the highest and most complete development of verse. Passing by for the moment the question, whether the principle of musical composition advocated by Wagner is absolutely a higher development of the art, is it so relatively to the objects and theory of the musical drama? Is it the best and most consistent theory of the union of music and poetry? Admitting at once that such a form of art must in the end be judged by its results--by its power over the listener's feelings (which is the sole defence that can be set up for the form of most works now occupying the lyric stage), and that we have hitherto had scant opportunity for forming such a judgment, we can nevertheless hardly fail to see that the consistency of Wagner's method is sorely menaced when subjected to an impartial examination. We noticed above the differentiation between the methods of poetry and music respectively; the power of concentration in the former, the almost absolute need of extension and repetition in the latter. This has been well brought out by Mr. Matthew Arnold in his thoughtful little essay in verse, rather than poem, An Epilogue on Lessing's 'Laocoon,' where he discriminates the province of music, in relation to words, by instancing the depth and extension which the musician imparts to the feeling expressed in such a concentrated phrase as Miserere Domine 'Beethoven takes those two Poor bounded words, and makes them new; Page after page of music turn And still they glow and still they burn, "Miserere Domine." So Handel, when he would tell us how the children of Israel sighed, by reason of the burdens,' does so by the repetition, the persistence with which the grief and sighing are drawn out until the impression has sunk into our hearts. So, to glance at instrumental music, when Beethoven invented that deeply pathetic allegretto in his Seventh Symphony, it is not by the mere enunciation of the theme that he touches us; it is not till the leading proposition, so to speak, has been drawn out, repeated, amplified, contrasted, heard now in this form now in that, till its last broken accents die on our ears, that we realise the feeling which he meant to awaken in our souls. But the compositions referred to are not dramatic in their form. True: but do not such examples, and innumerable others, practically testify to the truth of the theory as stated by Mr. Arnold, and does it not follow that in a system which implies the detailed interpenetration of the music and the poem, precisely the reverse of the old error has been committed that the music has been sacrificed to the poem? And yet further inconsistencies seem to arise as we look more closely at the conditions of the combination. Whatever his contempt for rhythm, the composer is obliged to employ the division into bars' which originated with rhythm-the very possibility of getting his music executed depends upon it; and so we find him not only in his latest work, but even in many parts of Lohengrin' in a continual strife between the rhythmical accent implied by the barring, and the effort to conceal and escape from it by devices of syncopation and other means of breaking up and nullifying the recurring bar accent. This is a matter of form comparatively; a still stranger inconsistency is that rhythm should be retained in its most marked and recurrent form in the versification, and yet that the consistency of the music with the poem is to be obtained by obliterating the rhythm of the latter. There seems to us to be an absolute perversity of reasoning implied in such a method. Then, again, though the poem and the dramatic action are to be the basis of the whole, without which the music can have no locus standi whatever, yet the actors, who are to sing the words, are in the musical construction completely secondary, and in absolute bondage to the orchestra, in the fetters of whose intricate movement they are entangled. This is a singular result of a theory which professes to regard 'the human word' as the primal cause and motive of music. Surely the theory of what we have called lyrical drama (as distinct from musical drama), in which music in its extended forms of construction is used to amplify and intensify the emotional expression at the great crises of the poem, is as consistent as this. Wagner himself admits the power and beauty attained by some of the great composers in this genre of opera -admits also that in their finest scenes they have entirely surmounted what is (no doubt) the weak point in it, the juxta'position of absolute recitative and absolute aria, so detrimental 'to a perfect style,' and that the recitative has received already with them, in such cases, a melodic and rhythmic significance, 'and unites itself insensibly with the broader structure of 'melody proper. Yet, in his pursuit of that ignis fatuus, a perfectly logical theory, the modern composer, instead of working up to its further capabilities a system which he admits to have produced such great effects, cuts the knot by discarding altogether what he here truly defines as the broader 'structure of melody proper,' and adopting the imperfect recitative form, as the sole means of expression for the deeper emotions as well as for the lesser incidents of his drama. A greater unity of form, a more close connexion between words and music, may be thus obtained; but it is at the cost of forbidding to music all her old freedom of flight, of clipping her wings and putting her in a strait-jacket. Such a conviction, however, by no means implies a denial of the real power to be found in such a work as Tristan' (to which we still refer as representing the Wagner theory in its purest form), whether existent in accordance with or in spite of the method employed; or of the real interest attaching to such an attempt at a new basis for the combination of music and drama. Though it is beyond our scope here to go into detailed criticism of Wagner's music, which indeed could hardly be made intelligible or interesting without extensive |