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Since that day when, a quarter of a century ago, Richard Wagner ceasedto be a dynamic figure in the life of the world, the history ofoperatic art has been, save for a few conspicuous exceptions, a barrenand unprofitable page; and it has been so, in a considerable degree,because of him. When Mr. William F. Apthorp, in his admirable historyof the opera—a book written with unflagging gusto and-4-vividness—observed that Wagner's style has been, since his death,little imitated, he made an astonishing assertion. "If by Wagner'sinfluence," he went on, "is meant the influence of his individuality,it may fairly be said to have been null. In this respect Wagner hashad no more followers than Mozart or Beethoven; he has founded noschool." Again one must exclaim: An astonishing affirmation! and it isnot the first time that it has been made, nor will it be the last. Yethow it can have seemed a reasonable thing to say is one of theinsoluble mysteries. The influence-5- of Wagner—the influence of hisindividuality as well as of his principles—upon the musical art ofthe past twenty-five years has been simply incalculable. It hastinged, when it has not dyed and saturated, every phase and form ofcreative music, from the opera to the sonata and string quartet.

It is not easy to understand how anyone who is at all familiar withthe products of musical art in Europe and America since the death ofthe tyrant of Bayreuth can be disposed to question the fact. Nocomposer who ever lived influenced so deeply the music that cameafter-6- him as did Wagner. It is an influence that is, of course,waning; and to the definite good of creative art, for it has been in alarge degree pernicious and oppressive in its effect. The shadow ofthe most pervasive of modern masters has laid a sinister andparalysing magic upon almost all of his successors. They have soughtto exert his spells, they have muttered what they imagined were hisincantations; yet the thing which they had hoped to raise up in gloryand in strength has stubbornly refused to breathe with any save anartificial and feeble life. None has escaped the contagion of-7- hisgenius, though some, whom we shall later discuss, have opposed againstit a genius and a creative passion of their own. Yet in the domain ofthe opera, wherewith we are here especially concerned, it is anexceedingly curious and interesting fact that out of the soil which heenriched with his own genius have sprung, paradoxically, the onlyliving and independent forces in the lyrico-dramatic art of our time.

Let us consider, first, those aspects of the operatic situation which,by reason of the paucity of creative vitality that they con-8-note, are,to-day, most striking; and here we shall be obliged to turn at once toGermany. The more one hears of the new music that is being put forthby Teutonic composers, the stronger grows one's conviction of thelack, with a single exception, of any genuine creative impulse in thatcountry to-day. It is doubtless a little unreasonable to expect to beable to agree in this matter with the amiable lady who told MatthewArnold that she liked to think that æsthetic excellence was "commonand abundant." As the sagacious Arnold pointed out, it is not in thenature of æsthetic ex-9-cellence that it should be "common andabundant"; on the contrary, he observed, excellence dwells among rockshardly accessible, and a man must almost wear out his heart before hecan reach her. All of this is quite unanswerable; yet, so far asmusical Germany is concerned, is not the situation rather singular?Germany—the Germany which yielded the royal line founded by Bach andcontinued by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, andBrahms—can show us to-day, save for that exception which we shalllater discuss, only a strenuous flock of Lilliputians-10- (whom it wouldbe fatuous to discuss with particularity), each one of whom isconfidently aware that the majestic mantle of the author of "Tristan"has descended upon himself. They write music in which one grows wearyof finding the same delinquency—the invariable fault of emptiness, ofpoverty of idea, allied with an extreme elaboration in the manner ofpresentation. And it is most deliberate and determined in address. Onewould think that the message about to be delivered were of the utmostconsequence, the deepest moment: the pose and the manner of the bearerof great tid-11-ings are admirably simulated. Yet the actual deliveranceis futile and dull, pathetically meagre, causing us to wonder howoften we must remind ourselves that it is as impossible to achievesalient or distinguished or noble music without salient,distinguished, and noble ideas as it is to create fire without flame.

In France there are—again with an exception to which we shall lateradvert—Saint-Saëns, d'Indy, Massenet, Charpentier, and—les autres.

Now Saint-Saëns is very far from being a Wagnerian. He is, indeed,nothing very definite and determin-12-able. He is M. Saint-Saëns, anabstraction, a brain without a personality. It is almost forty yearssince Hector Berlioz called him "one of the greatest musicians of ourepoch," and since then the lustre of his fame has waxed steadily,until to-day one must recognise him as one of the three or four mostdistinguished living composers. Venerable and urbane, M. Saint-Saëns,at the New York opening of the American tour which he made in hisseventy-second year, sat at the piano before the audience whom he hadtravelled three thousand miles to meet, and played a virtuoso piece-13-with orchestral accompaniment, and two shorter pieces for piano andorchestra: a valse-caprice called "Wedding Cake," and an "AllegroAppassionato." That is to say, M. Camille Saint-Saëns, the bearer ofan internationally famous and most dignified name, braved the tragicperils of the deep to exhibit himself before a representative Americanaudience as the composer of the "Wedding Cake" valse-caprice, anentertaining fantasy on exotic folk-themes, and ajeu d'esprit witha pleasant tune and some pretty orchestral embroidery.

No one could have it in his heart-14- to chide M. Saint-Saëns for thesethings, for he is very venerable and very famous. Yet is not theoccurrence indicative, in a way, of M. Saint-Saëns's own attitudetoward his art?—that facile, brilliant, admirably competent,chameleon-like art of his, so adroit in its external fashioning, yetso thin and worn in its inner substance! One wonders if, in the entirehistory of music, there is the record of a composer more completelyaccomplished in his art, so exquisite a master of the difficult trickof spinning a musical web, so superb a mechanician, who has less tosay to the world: whose-15- discourse is so meagre and so negligible. Oneremembers that unfortunate encomium of Gounod's, which has been sooften turned into a justified reproach: "Saint-Saëns," said thecomposer of "Faust," "will write at will a work in the style ofRossini, of Verdi, of Schumann, of Wagner." The pity of his case isthat, when he writes pure Saint-Saëns, one does not greatly care tolisten. He has spoken no musical thought, in all his long andscintillant career, that the world will long remember. His dozenoperas, his symphonic poems, his symphonies, his concertos, the bestof his-16- chamber works—is there in them an accent which one cansoberly call either eloquent or deeply beautiful? Do they not excelsolely by reason of their symmetry and solidity of structure, theirdeft and ingenious delivery of ideas which at their worst are banaland at their best mediocre or derivative? "A name always to beremembered with respect!" cries one of his most sane and justadmirers: since "in the face of practical difficulties,discouragements, misunderstandings, sneers, he has worked constantlyto the best of his unusual ability for musical righteousness in itspure form."-17- "A name to be remembered with respect," beyond dispute:with the respect that is due the man of supereminent intelligence, thefastidious artisan, the tireless and honourable workman—with respect,yes; but scarcely with enthusiasm. He never, as has been truly said,bores one; it is just as true that he never stimulates, moves,transports, or delights one, in the deeper sense of the term. At itsbest, it is a hard and dry light that shines out of his music: aradiance without magic and without warmth. His work is an impressivemonument to the futility of art without-18- impulse: to the immeasurabledistance that separates the most exquisite talent from the merestgenius. For all its brilliancy of investiture, his thought, as themost liberal of his appreciators has said, "can never wander througheternity"—a truth which scarcely needed the invocation of theMiltonic line to enforce. It may be true, as Mr. Philip Hale hasasserted, that "the success of d'Indy, Fauré, Debussy, was madepossible by the labor and the talent of Saint-Saëns"; yet it is one ofthe pities of his case that when Saint-Saëns's name shall have becomefaint and-19- fugitive in the corridors of time, the chief glories ofFrench art in our day will be held to be, one may venture, thelegacies of the composers of "Pelléas et Mélisande" and the "Jourd'été à la montagne," rather than of the author of "Samson et Dalila"and "Le Rouet d'Omphale." Which brings one to M. Vincent d'Indy.

Now M. d'Indy offers a curious spectacle to the inquisitive observer,in that he is, in one regard, the very symbol of independence, ofartistic emancipation, whereas, in another phase of his activity, heis a mere echo and simulacrum. As a writer-20- for the concert room, as acomposer of imaginative orchestral works and of chamber music, he isone of the most inflexibly original and self-guided composers known tothe contemporary world of music. With his aloofness and astringency ofstyle, his persistent austerity of temper, his invincible hatred ofthe sensuous, his detestation of the kind of "felicity" which is agoal for lesser men, this remarkable musician—who, far moredeservingly than the incontinent Chopin, deserves the title of "theproudest poetic spirit of our time"—this remarkable musician, onemust-21- repeat, is the sort of creative artist who is writing, not forhis day, but for a surprised and apprehending futurity. He is at oncea man of singularly devout and simple nature, and an entire mystic.For him the spectacle of the living earth, in lovely or forbiddingguise, evokes reverend and exalted moods. His approach to its wondersis Wordsworthian in its deep and awe-struck reverence and itsfundamental sincerity. He does not, like his younger artistic kinsman,Debussy, see in it all manner of fantastic and mist-enwrapped visions;it is not for him a-22- pageant of delicate and shining dreams.Mallarmé's lazy and indulgent Faun in amorous woodland reverie wouldnot have suggested to him, as to Debussy, music whose sensuousness isas exquisitely concealed as it is marvellously transfigured. Themysticism of d'Indy is pre-eminently religious; it has no tinge ofsensuousness; it is large and benign rather than intimate and intense.

He is absolutely himself, absolutely characteristic, for example, inhis tripartite tone-poem, "Jour d'été à la montagne." This music is ahymn the grave ecstasy and the-23- utter sincerity of which are asevident as they are impressive. In its art it is remarkable—not somonumental in plan, so astoundingly complex in detail, as his superbB-minor symphony, yet a work that is full of his peculiar traits.

Now it would seem as if so fastidious and individual a musician asthis might do something of very uncommon quality if he once turned hishand to opera-making. Yet in his "L'Étranger," completed only a yearbefore he began work on his astonishing B-minor symphony, and in his"Fervaal" (1889-95),-24- we have the melancholy spectacle of M. d'Indyconcealing his own admirable and expressive countenance behind anill-fitting mask modelled imperfectly after the lineaments of RichardWagner. In these operas (d'Indy calls them, by the way, anactiondramatique and anaction musicale: evident derivations from the"Tristan"-esqueHandlung)—in these operas, the speech, from firstto last, is the speech of Wagner. The themes, the harmonic structure,the use of the voice, the plots (d'Indy, like Wagner, is his ownlibrettist)—all is uncommuted Wagnerism,-25- with some of the Teutoniccumbrousness deleted and some of the Gallic balance and measureinfused. These scores have occasional beauty, but it is seldom thebeauty that is peculiar to d'Indy's own genius: it is an imported andalien beauty, a beauty that has in it an element of betrayal.

We find ourselves confronting a situation that is equally dispiritingto the seeker after valuable achievements in contemporary French operawhen we view the performances of such minor personages as Massenet,Bruneau, Reyer, Erlanger, and Charpentier. They are all-26- tarred, in agreat or small degree, with the Wagnerian stick. When they speak outof their own hearts and understandings they are far from commanding:they are vulgarly sentimental or prettily lascivious, like the amiableMassenet, or pretentious and banal, like Bruneau, or incredibly dull,like Reyer, or picturesquely superficial, like Charpentier—though theauthor of "Louise" disports himself with a beguiling grace and vervewhich almost causes one to forgive his essential emptiness.

Modern Italy discloses a single dominant and vivid figure. In-27- none ofhis compatriots is there any distinction of speech, of character. Inthat country the memory of Wagner is less imperious in its control;yet not one of its living music-makers, with the exception that I havemade, has that atmosphere and quality of his own which there is nomistaking.

I have referred by implication and reservation to three personalitiesin the art of the modern lyric-drama who stand out as salient figuresfrom the confused and amorphous background against which they are tobe observed: who-28- seem to me to represent the only significant andimportant manifestations of the creative spirit which have thus farcome to the surface in the post-Wagnerian music-drama. They are, itneed scarcely be said, Puccini in Italy, Richard Strauss in Germany,and Debussy in France. Yet these men built upon the foundations laidby Wagner; they took many leaves from his vast book of instructions,in some cases stopping short of the full reach of his plans asimagined by himself, in other cases carrying his schemes to a point ofdevelopment far-29- beyond any result of which he dreamed. But they havenot attempted to say the things which they had to say in the way thathe would have said them. They have been content with their owneloquence; and it has not betrayed them. No one is writing music forthe stage which has the profile, the saliency, the vitality, thepersonal flavour, which distinguish the productions of these men. Sofar as it is possible to discern from the present vantage-ground, thefuture—at least the immediate future—of the lyric stage is theirs.In no other quarters may-30- one observe any manifestations that are noteither negligible by reason of their own quality, or mere dilutions,with or without adulterous admixtures, of the Wagnerian brew.

A VIEW OF PUCCINI

A plain-spoken and not too reverent observer of contemporary musicalmanners, discussing the melodic style of the Young Italianopera-makers, has observed that it is fortunate in that it "gives thesingers opportunity to pour out their voices in that lavish volume andintensity which provoke applause as infallibly as horseradish provokestears." The comment has a good deal of what Sir Willoughby Patternewould have called "rough-34- truth." It is fairly obvious that there isnothing in the entire range of opera so inevitably calculated toproduce an instant effect as a certain kind of frank and sweepinglyricism allied with swiftness of dramatic emotion; and it is becausethe young lions of modern Italy—Puccini and his lesser brethren—haveprofoundly appreciated this elemental truth, that they address theirgeneration with so immediate an effect.

In those days when the impetus of a pristine enthusiasm drove the moreintelligent order of opera-goers to performances of Wagner,-35- it was alabour of love to learn to know and understand the texts of hisobscure and laboured dramas; and even the guide-books, which were asleaves in Vallombrosa, were prayerfully studied. But to-day there areno Wagnerites. We are no longer impelled by an apostolic fervour todelve curiously into the complex genealogy and elaborate ethics of the"Ring," and it is no longer quite clear to many slothful intelligencesjust what Tristan and Isolde are talking about in the dusk of KingMark's garden. There will always be a small group of the faithful who,through invincible-36- and loving study, will have learned by heart everysecret of these dramas. But for the casual opera-goer, granting himall possible intelligence and intellectual curiosity, they cannot butseem the reverse of crystal-clear, logical, and compact. A score ofyears ago those who cared at all for the dramatic element in opera,and the measure of whose delight was not filled up by the vocalpyrotechny which was the mainstay of the operas of the olderrépertoire, found in these music-dramas their chief solace andsatisfaction. Wagner reigned then virtually alone over his kingdom.-37-The dignity, the imaginative power, and the impressive emotional sweepof his dramas, as dramas, offset their obscurity and their inordinatebulk; and always their splendid investiture of music exerted, in andof itself, an enthralling fascination. And that condition of affairsmight have continued for much longer had not certain impetuous youngmen of modern Italy demonstrated the possibility of writing operaswhich were both engrossing on their purely dramatic side and, in theirmusic, eloquent with the eloquence that had come to be expected of themodern opera-maker.-38- Moreover, these music-dramas had the incalculablemerit, for our time and environment, of being both swift in movementand unimpeachably obvious in meaning. Thereupon began the reign ofyoung Italy in contemporary opera. It was inaugurated with the"Cavalleria Rusticana" of Mascagni and the "I Pagliacci" ofLeoncavallo; and it is continued to-day, with immense vigour andpersistence, by Puccini with all his later works. The sway of thecomposer of "Tosca," "Bohème," and "Madame Butterfly" is triumphantand wellnigh absolute; and the-39- reasons for it are not elusive. He hasselected for musical treatment dramas that are terse and rapid inaction and intelligible in detail, and he has underscored them withmusic that is impassioned, incisive, highly spiced, rhetorical,sometimes poetic and ingenious, and pervadingly sentimental. Moreover,he possesses, as his most prosperous attribute, that facility inwriting fervid and often banal melodies to the immediate and unfailingeffect of which, in the words of Mr. Henry T. Finck, I have alluded.As a sensitive English critic, Mr. Vernon Blackburn, once veryhappily-40- observed, Puccini is "essentially a man of his own generation... the one who has caught up the spirit of his time, and has made hiscompact with that time, in order that he should not lose anythingwhich a contemporary generation might give him."

It is a curious and striking truth that the chief trouble with therepresentative musical dramatists who have built, from the standpointof system, upon the foundational stones that Wagner laid, is not, asthe enemies and opponents of Bayreuth used to charge, an excess ofdrama at the expense of the-41- music, but—as was the case with Wagnerhimself (a fact which I have elsewhere in this volume attempted todemonstrate)—an excess of music at the expense of the drama: inshort, the precise defect against which reformers of the opera haveinveighed since the days of Gluck. With Richard Strauss this musicalexcess is orchestral; with the modern Italians it implicates thevoice-parts, and is manifested in a lingering devotion to full-blownmelodic expression achieved at the expense of dramatic truth, logic,and consistency. In this, Puccini has simply, in the-42- candid phrase ofMr. Blackburn, "caught up the spirit of his time, and made his compactwith that time." That is to say, he has, with undoubted artisticsincerity, played upon the insatiable desire of the modern ear for anardent and elemental kind of melodic effect, and upon the acquireddesire of the modern intelligence for a terse and dynamic substratumof drama. His fault, from what I hold to be the ideal standpoint inthese matters, is that he has not perfectly fused his music and hisdrama. There is a sufficiently concrete example of what-43- I mean—anexample which points both his strength and his weakness—in the secondact of "Tosca," where he halts the cumulative movement of the scenebetweenScarpia andTosca, which he has up to that point developedwith superb dramatic logic, in order to placate those who may notover-long be debarred from their lyrical sweetmeats; but also—for itwould be absurd to charge him with insincerity or time-serving in thismatter—in order that he may satisfy his own ineluctable tendencytoward a periodical effusion of lyric energy,-44- which he must yield toeven when dramatic consistency and logic go by the board in theprocess; when, in short, lyrical expression is supererogatory andimpertinent. So he writes the sentimental and facilely patheticprayer, "Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore,"dolcissimo con grandesentimento: a perfectly superfluous, not to say intrusive, thingdramatically, and a piece of arrant musical vulgarity; after which thecurrent of the drama is resumed. We have here, in fact, nothing morenor less respectable than the old-fashioned Italian aria of unsavouryfame: it is-45- merely couched in more modern terms.

The offence is aggravated by the fact that Puccini, in common with therest of the Neo-Italians, is at his best in the expression of dramaticemotion and movement, and at his worst in his voicing of purely lyricemotion, meditative or passionate. In its lyric portions his music isalmost invariably banal, without distinction, without beauty orrestraint—when the modern Italian music-maker dons his singing-robeshe becomes clothed with commonness and vulgarity. Thus in its scenesof amorous exaltation the-46- music of "Tosca," of "Madame Butterfly"(recall, in the latter work, the flamboyant commonness of the exultantduet which closes the first act), is blatant and rhetorical, ratherthan searching and poignant. Puccini's strength lies in the trulyimpressive manner in which he is able to intensify and underscore themore dramatic moments in the action. At such times his music possessesan uncommon sureness, swiftness, and incisiveness; especially inpassages of tragic foreboding, of mounting excitement, it is grippingand intense in a quite irresistible degree. Often, at such-47- moments,it has an electric quality of vigour, a curious nervous strength. Thatis its cardinal merit: its spare, lithe, closely-knit, clean-cut,immensely energetic orchestral enforcement of those portions of thedrama where the action is swift, tense, cumulative, rather than ofsentimental or amorous connotation. Puccini has, indeed, an almostunparalleled capacity for a kind of orchestral commentary which isboth forceful and succinct. He wastes no words, he makes nosuperfluous gestures: he is masterfully direct, pregnant, expeditious,compact. Could anything be more-48- admirable, in what it attempts andbrilliantly contrives to do, than almost the entire second act of"Tosca," with the exception of the sentimental and obstructive Prayer?How closely, with what unswerving fidelity, the music clings to thecontours of the play; and with what an economy of effort its effectsare made! Puccini is thus, at his best, a Wagnerian in the truestsense—a far more consistent Wagnerian than was Wagner himself.

It is in "Tosca" that he should be studied. He is not elsewhere sosincere, direct, pungent, telling.-49- And it is in "Tosca," also, thathis melodic vein, which is generally broad and copious rather thanfine and deep, yields some of the true and individual beauty which isits occasional, its very rare, possession—for example, to name it atits best, the poetic and exceedingly personal music which accompaniesthe advancing of dawn over the house-tops of Rome, at the beginning ofthe last act: a passage the melancholy beauty and sincere emotion ofwhich it would be difficult to overpraise.

In Puccini's later and much more elaborate and meticulous "Ma-50-dameButterfly," there is less that one can unreservedly delight in ordefinitely deplore, so far as the music itself is concerned. It isfrom a somewhat different angle that one is moved to consider thework.

In choosing the subject for this music-drama, Puccini set himself atask to which even his extraordinary competency as a lyric-dramatisthas not quite been equal. As every one knows, the story for whichPuccini has here sought a lyrico-dramatic expression is that of anAmerican naval officer who marries little "Madame Butterfly" in-51-Japan, deserts her, and cheerfully calls upon her three years laterwith the "real" wife whom he has married in America. The name of thisamiable gentleman is Pinkerton—B.F. Pinkerton—or, in full, BenjaminFranklin Pinkerton. Now it would scarcely seem to require elaborateargument to demonstrate that the presence in a highly emotionallyric-drama of a gentleman named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton—agentleman who is, moreover, the hero of the piece—is, to put itbriefly, a little inharmonious. The matter is not helped by the factthat the action is-52- of to-day, and that one bears away from theperformance the recollection of Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton asking hisfriend, the United States consul at Nagasaki, if he will have somewhiskys-and-soda. There lingers also a vaguer memory of the consuldeclaring, in a more or less lyrical phrase, that he "is not a studentof ornithology."

Let no one find in these remarks a disposition to cast a doubt uponthe seriousness with which Puccini has completed his work, or toignore those features of "Madame Butterfly" which compel sin-53-cereadmiration. But recognition and acknowledgment of these things must beconditioned by an insistence upon the fact that such a task as Puccinihas attempted here, and as others have attempted, is foredoomed to agreater or less degree of artistic futility. One refers, of course, tothe attempt to transfer bodily to the lyric stage, for purposes ofserious expression, a contemporary subject, with all its inevitabledross of prosaic and trivially familiar detail. To put it concretely,the sense of humour and the emotional sympathies will tolerate thespec-54-tacle of aTristan or aTannhäuser or aDon Giovanni or aPelléas or aFaust uttering his longings and his woes in opera;but they will not tolerate the spectacle of aBenjamin FranklinPinkerton of our own time and day telling us, in song, that he is nota student of ornithology. The thing simply cannot be done—Wagnerhimself could not impress us in such circumstances. The chief glory ofWagner's texts—no matter what one may think of them as viable andeffective dramas—is their ideal suitability for musical translation.Take, for example,-55- the text of "Tristan und Isolde": there is not asentence, scarcely a word, in it, which is not fit for musicalutterance—nothing that is incongruous, pedestrian, inept. All that isforeign to the essential emotions of the play has been eliminated. Sounsparingly has it been subjected to the alembic of thepoet-dramatist's imagination that it has been wholly purged of allthat is superfluous and distracting, all that cannot be gratefullyassimilated by the music. That is the especial excellence of histexts. Opera, though it rests, like the other-56- arts, heavily uponconvention, yet offers at bottom a reasonable and defensible vehiclefor the communication of human experience and emotion. But it is not aconvincing form, and no genius, living or potential, can make it aconvincing form, save when it deals with matters removed from ourquotidian life and environment: save when it presents a heightened andalembicated image of human experience. Thus we accept, with sympathyand approval, "Siegfried," "Lohengrin," "Die Meistersinger," "DonGiovanni"—even, at a pinch, "Tosca"; but we-57- cannot, if we allow ourunderstanding and our sense of humour free play, accept "MadameButterfly," with its naval lieutenant of to-day, its American consulin his tan-coloured "spats," and its whiskys-and-soda.

This, then, was the prime disadvantage under which Puccini laboured.He was, as a necessary incident of his task, confronted with theproblem of setting to music a great deal of prosaic and altogetherunlovely dialogue, essential to the unfolding of the action, no doubt,but quite fatal to lyric inspiration. Under these circum-58-stances, themusic is often surprisingly successful; but it is significant that themost poetic and moving passages in the score are those which enforceemotions and occasions which have no necessary connection with time orplace; which are, from their nature, fit subjects for musicaltreatment,—for example, such a passage as that at the end of thesecond act, whereMadame Butterfly and her child wait through thelong night for the coming of the faithlessPinkerton; for here themoment and the mood to be expressed have a dignity and a pathos-59-entirely outside of date or circumstance.

The score, as a whole, compares unfavourably with that of "Tosca,"which still, as it seems to me, represents Puccini at his mosteffective and sincere. In "Madame Butterfly" one misses the salientcharacterisation, the gripping intensity, the sharpness and boldnessof outline that make "Tosca" so notable an accomplishment. "Tosca,"for all its occasional commonness, its melodic banality, is a work ofimmense vigour and unquestionable individuality. In it Puccini hassaturated almost every page of the-60- music with his own extremely vividpersonality: a personality that is exceedingly impressive in its crudestrength and directness; he has, in this score, exploded the strangecritical legend that his style is little more than a blended echo ofthe later Verdi, Ponchielli, and Massenet. The music of "Tosca" is notoften distinguished, but it is singularly striking, potent, andoriginal; no one save Puccini could possibly have written it. Butsince then this composer has, artistically speaking, visited Paris. Hehas appreciated the value of certain harmonic ex-61-periments which suchadventurous Frenchmen as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and others,are making; he has appreciated them so sincerely that certain pages in"Madame Butterfly," as, for instance, the lovely interlude between thesecond and third acts, sound almost as if they had been contrived byDebussy himself—a Latinised Debussy, of course. Puccini, in short,has become intellectually sophisticated, and he has learned gentlerartistic manners, in the interval between the composition of "Tosca"and of "Madame Butterfly." The music of the latter-62- work is far moredelicately structured and subtle than anything he had previously givenus, and it has moments of conquering beauty, of great tenderness, ofsuperlative sweetness. It is, beyond question, a charming andbrilliant score, exceedingly adroit in workmanship and almostinvariably effective. Yet, after such excellences have been gladlyacknowledged, one is disturbingly conscious that the real, theessential, Puccini has, for the most part, evaporated. There are othervoices speaking through this music, voices that, for all their charmand distinction of accent,-63- seem alien and a little insincere. Has thevital, if crude, imagination which gave issue to the music of "Tosca"acquired finesse and delicacy at a cost of independent impulse?

STRAUSS’ “SALOME”: ITS
ART AND ITS MORALS

That Richard Strauss the opera-maker is, for the present, summed up inRichard Strauss the composer of "Salome," would scarcely, I think, bedisputed by any one who is sympathetically cognisant of hisachievements in that rôle. Neither in "Guntram" nor in the later andfar more characteristic "Feuersnot" is his essential quality as amusical dramatist so fully and clearly re-68-vealed as in his setting ofthe play of Wilde to which he has given a fugacious immortality. Yetin discussing this astonishing work, I prefer to consider it in andfor itself rather than as a touchstone whereby to form a generalestimate of Strauss the dramatical tone-poet; for I believe that, ifhe lives and produces for another decade, it will be seen that"Salome" does not furnish a just or adequate measure of Strauss'indisputable genius as a writer of music for the stage. I believe thathe has not given us here a valid or com-69-pletely representative accountof himself in that capacity. So remarkable, though, is the work initself, so assertive in its challenge to contemporary criticism, thatit imperatively compels some attempt at appraisement in any deliberatesurvey of modern operatic art.

For any one who is not convinced that those ancient thoughoccasionally reconciled adversaries, Art and Ethics, are necessarilyantipodal, such a task, it must be confessed, is not one to beapproached in a jaunty or easeful spirit, for it means that one mustbe willing, apparently, to enter-70- the lists ranged with thehypocrites, the prudes, the short-sighted and the unwise; withfrenzied and myopic champions of respectability; with all those whoare as inflexible in their allegiance to the moralities as they areresourceful and tireless in their pursuit of impudicity in art. Yetthat there are two standpoints from which this extraordinary work mustbe regarded by any candid observer I do not think is open to question:it has its purely æsthetic aspect, and its—I shall not say moral, butsocial—aspect. To separate them in any conscientious discussion isimpossible.-71-

Let us, to begin with, consider, in and by itself, the quality of themusic which the incomparable Strauss—Strauss, the most conqueringmusical personality since Wagner—has conceived as a fit embodiment intones of the tragic and maleficent and haunting tale of the DancingDaughter of Herodias and her part in the career of the prophet John,as recounted—with non-Scriptural variations—by Oscar Wilde. We mayconsider, first, whether or not it achieves the prime requisite ofmusic in its organic relation to a dramatic subject: an enforcementand heightening of the-72- effect of the play; setting aside, for thepresent, those other aspects of it which have so absorbed criticalattention, and of which we have heard overmuch: its remorselesscomplexity, its unflagging ingenuity, its superb and miraculousorchestration. These are matters of importance, but of secondaryimportance. The point at issue is, has Strauss, through his music,intensified and italicised the moods and situations of the drama; and,secondly, has he achieved this end through music which is in itselfnotable and important?

Never was music so avid in its-73- search for the eloquent word as is themusic of Strauss in this work. We are amazed at the audacity, theresourcefulness, of the expressional apparatus that is cumulativelyreared in this unprecedented score. The alphabet of music is ransackedfor new and undreamt-of combinations of tone: never were effects soelaborate, so cunning, so fertilely contrived, offered to the ears ofmen since the voice of music was heard in its pristine estate. Thisscore challenges the music of the days that shall follow after it.

For the most part, the atmosphere of horror, of ominous suspense, of-74-oppressive and bodeful gloom, in which the tragedy of Wilde isenwrapped, is wonderfully rendered in the music. There are beyondquestion overmastering pages in the score—music which has the kind ofsuperb audacity and power of effect that Dr. Johnson discerned in thestyle of Sir Thomas Browne: "forcible expressions which he would neverhave used but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety; andflights which would never have been reached but by one who had verylittle fear of the shame of falling." Of such quality is the passagewhich portrays-75- the agonised suspense ofSalome during the beheadingofJohn; the passage, titanic in its expression of malignly exultanttriumph, which accentuates the delivery of the head to the insensateprincess; the few measures beforeHerod's patibulary order at theclose: these things are products of genius, of the same order ofgenius which impelled the music of "Don Quixote," of "EinHeldenleben," of "Zarathustra"; they are true and vital inimagination, marvellous in intensity of vision, of great and subduingpotency as dramatic enforcement and as sheer music.-76-

But when one has said that much, one comes face to face with the chiefweakness of the score—its failure in the expression of the governingmotive of the play: the consuming and inappeasable lust ofSalomefor the white body and scarlet lips ofJohn.

That is the note which is sounded-77- from beginning to end of theplay—that is its focal emotion. And Strauss has not made it sound, asit should sound, in his music. When it should be wildly, barbarically,ungovernably erotic, as for the enforcement ofSalome's fervidsupplications in her first interview withJohn, the music is merelyconventional in its sensuousness. It should here be febrile,vertiginous. But what, actually, do we get? We get a scene built upona phrase in which is crystallised the desire ofSalome for the lipsof the Prophet; and this theme is saccharinely ardent and sentimental,rather than-78- feverish and unbridled; a phrase which might have been aproduct of the amiably voluptuous inspiration of the composer of"Faust." The "Tannhäuser" Bacchanale, even in its original form, ismore truly expressive of venereous abandon than is this strangelysentimentalised music. It has, no doubt, a certain effectiveness, acertain expressiveness; but the effect that is produced, and theemotion that is expressed, are far removed from the field of sensationinhabited by Wilde's remarkable Princess. Yet it would seem to be apoint needing but the lightest emphasis that if the-79- passion ofSalome is not fitly and eloquently rendered by the music, thecardinal impulse, the very heart of Wilde's drama, is leftunexpressed.

So it is in the music of the final scene,Salome's mad apostrophe tothe severed head. Here we get, not the note of lustful abandonmentwhich would alone removeSalome's horrible appetite from the regionof the perverted and the incredible, but a kind of musical utterancewhich simulates the noble rapture of Wagner's dyingIsolde. Thediscrepancy of the music in this regard has been recognised by thosewho praise most warmly Strauss' score.-80- It has been said inextenuation, on the one hand, that music is incapable of expressingwhat are called "base" emotions, and, on the other hand, that Strausswished to exalt, to idealise and transfigure, this scene. To the firstobjection it may be said simply that it is based upon an argument thatis at least open to serious question. It is by no means an evident orsettled truth that music is incapable of uttering anything but worthyemotions, ideas, concepts. There is music by Berlioz, by Liszt, byWagner, by Rimsky-Korsakoff, by Strauss himself, which is, in itsemotional-81- substance, sinister, demonic, even pornographic insuggestion; and not simply by reason of a key furnished by text,motto, or dramatic subject, but in itself—in its quality andcharacter as music. But the claim need not be elaborated, or evendemonstrated, since it is beside the point. One quarrels with themusic of the final scene of "Salome" on the broad ground of itsinappropriateness: because the emotional note which it strikes andsustains is one of nobility, whereas the plain requirement of thescene, of the psychological moment, demands music that should beanything but-82- noble. And here we encounter the objections of those whohold thatSalome herself, at the moment of her apostrophe to thedead head, becomes transfigured, uplifted through the power of a greatand purifying love. But to argue in this manner is to indulge in aparticularly egregious kind of fatuity. To conceive Wilde's lubriciousprincess as a kind of OrientalIsolde is grotesquely to distort thevivid and wholly consistent woman of his imagining; and it is torenounce at once all possibility of justifying her culminatingactions. For the only ground upon which it-83- might be remotely possibleto account forSalome's remarkable behaviour, except by regardingher as a necrophilistic maniac, is that supplied by the conditions andthe environment of a lustful, decadent, and bloodshot age. Only whenone conceives her as frankly and spontaneously a barbarian, nourishedon blood and lechery, does she become at all comprehensible to othersthan pathologists, even if she does not cease to impress us asnoisome, monstrous, and horrible.

The music of "Salome," then, judging it in its entirety, is deficientas an exposition, as a translation-84- into tone, of the drama upon whichit is based; for it is inadequate in its expression of the play'scentral and informing emotion. One listens to this music, it must begranted, with the nerves in an excessive state of tension—it isenormously exciting; but so is, under certain conditions, a determinedbeating upon a drum. An assault upon the nerve-centres is a vastlydifferent thing from an emotional persuasion; yet there are many who,in listening to "Salome," will need to be convinced of it.

It would be absurd to deny, of course, that "Salome" is in many-85- waysa noteworthy and brilliant—and, for the curious student of musicalevolution—a fascinating work. Its musicianship—the sheer technicalartistry which contrived it—is stupefying in its enormous andinerrant mastery. The quality of its inspiration and its success as amusico-dramatic commentary, which have been the prime considerationsin this discussion, have been measured, of course, by the mostexacting standards—by the standards set in other and greater works ofStrauss, in comparison with which it is lamentably inferior invitality, sincerity, and importance.-86- In at least one respect,however, it compels the most unreserved praise; and that is in thecase of its superlative orchestration. Strauss has written here for ahuge and complicated body of instruments, and he has set them anappalling task. Never in the history of music has such instrumentationfound its way onto the printed page. Yet, though he requires hisperformers to do impossible things, they never fail to contribute tothe effect of the music as a whole; for the dominant and wonderfuldistinction of the scoring lies precisely in the splendour of itstotal effect, and the-87- almost uncanny art with which it isaccomplished. One finds upon every page not only new and superlativeachievements in colouring, unimagined sonorities, but a keenly poeticfeeling for the timbre which will most intensify the dramatic moment.The instrumentation, from beginning to end, is a gorgeous fabric ofstrange and novel and obsessing colours—for in such orchestralwriting as this, sound becomes colour, and colour sound: it is not asingle sense which is engaged, but a subtle and indescribable complexof all the senses; one not only hears, one also imagines that-88- onesees and feels these tones, and is even fantastically aware of theirpossessing exotic and curious odours, vague and singular perfumes. Itis when one turns from the bewildering magnificence of its orchestralsurfaces to a consideration of the actual substance of the music, thefundamental ideas which lie within the dazzling instrumental envelope,that it is possible to realise why, for many of his most determinedadmirers, this work marks a pathetic decline from the standard set byStrauss in his former achievements. The indisputable splendour of thismusic, its marvellous witchery,-89- are incurably external. It is agorgeous and many-hued garment, but that which it clothes andglorifies is a poor and unnurtured thing. There is little vitality,little true substance, within this dazzling instrumental envelope; andfor any one who is not content with its brave exterior panoply, andwho seeks a more permanent and living beauty within, the thing seemsbut a vast and empty husk. It is not that the music is at timescacophonous in the extreme, that its ugliness ranges from that whichis merely harsh and unlovely to that which is brutally anddeliberately-90- hideous; for we have not to learn anew, in these days ofpost-Wagnerian emancipation, that a dramatic exigency justifies anypossible musical means that will appropriately express it: to-day wecheerfully concede that, when a character in music-drama tells anothercharacter that his body is "like the body of a leper, like a plasteredwall where vipers crawl ... like a whitened sepulchre, full ofloathsome things," the sentiment may not be uttered in music ofMendelssohnian sweetness and placidity. It is because the music is sooften vulgarly sentimental, when it should be terrible-91- and unbridledin its passion, that it seems to some a defective performance. Forsheer commonness, allied with a kind of emotionalism that is the worsefor being inflated in expression, it would be hard to find, in anyscore of the rank of "Salome," the equal of the two themes whichStrauss uses so extensively that they stand almost as the dominantmotives in the score: the theme which is associated withSalome'sdesire to kiss the lips ofJohn, and that other theme—it has beencalled that of "Ecstasy"—which begins like thecantabile subject inthe first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pa-92-thetic" Symphony, andends—well, like Strauss at his worst.

An astounding score!—music that is by turns gorgeous, banal,delicate, cataclysmic, vulgar, sentimental, insinuating, tornadic:music which is as inexplicable in its shortcomings as it isoverwhelming in its occasional triumphs.

We may now consider that other aspect from which, I have said, thecandid observer is compelled to regard this remarkable work.

Those over-zealous friends of Strauss who have sought to justify theoffensiveness of "Salome" by-93- alleging the case of Wagner's "DieWalküre," and the relationship that is there shown to exist betweenthe ill-starred Volsungs, are worse than misguided; for howeverunhallowed that relationship may be, it conveys no hint of sexualmalaise.Siegmund andSieglinde are superbly healthful anduntainted animals: to name their exuberant passion in the same breathwith the horrible lust ofSalome is stupid and absurd.

Let us not confuse the issue: The spectacle of a woman fondlingpassionately a severed and reeking head and puling over its dead-94-lips, is not necessarily deleterious to morals, nor is it necessarilyan act of impudicity; it is merely, for those whose calling does nothappen to induce familiarity with mortuary things, horrible andrevolting. No matter how, in practice on the stage, the thing may beameliorated, the fact,—the situation as conceived and ordered by thedramatist,—is inescapable. It has been said that this scene is notreally so sickening as it is alleged to be, since the stage directionsrequire thatSalome's kisses be bestowed in the obscurity of adarkened stage. But to that it-95- may be replied, in the first place,that darkness does little to mitigate the horror of the scene asconveyed by the words ofSalome—so little, in fact, thatHerod,who was anything but a person of fastidious sensibilities, is overcomewith loathing and commands her despatch; and, secondly, that the stagedirections expressly declare for an illumination of the scene by a"moonbeam" ... which "covers her with light," just before the end,while she is at the climax of her ghastlylibido.

Mr. Ernest Newman, a thoroughly sane and extremely able-96- champion ofall that is best in Strauss, has said, in considering this aspect of"Salome," that "the whole outcry against it comes from a number of tooexcitable people who are not artists, and who therefore cannotunderstand the attitude of the artist towards work of this kind. Humannature," he goes on, "breaks out into a variety of forms of energythat are not at all nice from the moral point of view—murder, forexample, or forgery, or the struggle of the ambitious politician forpower, or the desire to get rich quickly at other people's expense.But because these things-97- are objectionable in themselves anddangerous to social well-being there is no reason why the artistshould not interest us in them by the genius with which he describesthem. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde was a dangerous person whom, inreal life, we should want the police to lay by the heels; but sensiblepeople who read the story do not bristle with indignation at Stevensonfor creating such a character; they simply enjoy the art of it. Thewriting of the story did not turn Stevenson into a monster ofdeception and cruelty, nor does the reading of it have that effect-98- onus. Things are different in art from what the same things would be inreal life, and an artist's joy in the depiction of some dreadful phaseof human nature does not necessarily mean that, as a privateindividual, he is depraved, or that the spectacle of his art will makefor depravity in the audience. Now Wilde and Strauss have simply drawnan erotic and half-deranged Oriental woman as they imagine she mayhave been. They do not recommend her; they simply present her, as aspecimen of what human nature can be like in certain circumstances....The hysterical-99- moralists who cry out against 'Salome' ... have aterrified, if rather incoherent, feeling that if women in general weresuddenly to become abnormally morbid, conceive perverse passions forbishops, have these holy men decapitated when their advances wererejected, and then start kissing the severed heads in a blind fury oflove and revenge in the middle of the drawing-room, the respectable£40 a year householder would feel the earth rocking beneath his feet.But women are not going to do these spicy things simply because theysawSalome on the stage do some-100-thing like them, any more than menare going to walk over the bodies of little children because they readthat Mr. Hyde did so, or murder their brothers because Hamlet's unclemurdered his."

Now that, of course, is irresistible. But Mr. Newman's gift ofvivacious and telling statement, and his natural impatience with thecant of those who hold briefs for a facile morality, have here ledhim, as it seems to me, astray. To deny that an intimate and vitalrelationship exists between the subject chosen by an artist and itsprobable effect upon the public is to yield the-101- whole case to thosewho hold that this relationship, in the case of the theatre (and, ofcourse, the opera house), is merely casual and inconsequential: it isto yield it to the upholder of the stage as an agent of "relaxation,"an agent either of mere entertainment or mere sensation. It is notunlikely that Mr. Newman would be the first to admit that, if theprime function of art can be postulated at all, it might be conceivedto be that of enlarging the sense of life: as an agency for liberatingand mellowing the spirit: as an instrument primarily quickening andemancipative. "The sad-102-ness of life is the joy of art," said Mr.George Moore. The sadness of life, yes; and the evil and tragedy, theterror and violence, of life: for the contemplation of these may,through the evoking of pity, nourish and enlarge the spirit of thebeholder. But are we very greatly nourished by the contemplation ofthat which must inevitably arouse disgust rather than compassion? I donot speak of "morality" or "immorality," since there is nothing stablein the use or understanding of these terms. But those aspects of lifewhich sicken the sense, which are loathsome rather-103- than terrible—arethey fit matter for the artist?

It is a much mauled and much tortured point, and I, for one, am notunwilling to leave the matter in the condition in which Dr. Johnsonleft the subject of a future state, concerning which a certain ladywas interrogating him. "She seemed", recounts the admirable Boswell,"desirous of knowing more, but he left the matter in obscurity."

To return, in conclusion, to Strauss the musician: Where, one ends bywondering, is the earlier, the greater, Strauss?—the unparalleledmaker of music, the indis-104-putable genius who gave us a sheaf ofmasterpieces: who gave us "Don Quixote," "Ein Heldenleben,""Zarathustra," "Tod und Verklärung." Has he passed into that desolateregion occupied in his day by Hector Berlioz, for whom a sense of thetragic futility of talent without genius did not exist—the futilityof application, of ingenuity, of constructive resource, without thatultimate and unpredictable flame? Is not Strauss, in such a work as"Salome," but another Berlioz (though a Berlioz with a gleaming past)?Is he not here as one disdainfully indifferent to the-105- ministrationsof that "Eternal Spirit" which, in Milton's wonderful phrase, "sendsout his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch andpurify the lips of whom he pleases"?

A PERFECT MUSIC-DRAMA

Somewhat less than a century ago William Hazlitt, whose contempt foropera as a form of art was genuine and profound, observed amiably thatthe "Opera Muse" was "not a beautiful virgin, who can hope to charm bysimplicity and sensibility, but a tawdry courtesan, who, when herpaint and patches, her rings and jewels are stripped off, can exciteonly disgust and ridicule." It may be conceded that matters-110- haveimproved somewhat since that receding day when Hazlitt, whose criticalforte was not urbanity, uttered this acrimonious opinion. The opera isdoubtless still, as it was in his day, ideally and exquisitelycontrived "to amuse or stimulate the intellectual languor of thoseclasses of society on whose support it immediately depends." Yet theshade of Hazlitt might have been made sufficiently uncomfortable bybeing confronted, half a century after his death, by the indignant andvoluble apparition of Richard Wagner. To tell the truth, though,Wagner is scarcely the opera-maker-111- with whose example one mightto-day most effectually rebuke the contempt of Hazlitt. While the Musewhich presided at the birth of the Wagnerian music-drama can certainlynot be conceived as "a tawdry courtesan," neither can she be conceivedas precisely virginal, persuasive by reason of her "simplicity" and"sensibility." Wagner, for all his dramatic instinct, was, as we aregrowing to see, as avid of musical effect, achieved by whateverdefiance of dramatic consistency, as was any one of the other facileand conscienceless opera-wrights whom his doctrines con-112-temned. Theultimate difference between him and them, aside from any questions ofmotive, principle, or method, is simply that he was a transcendentgenius who wrote music of superlative beauty and power, whereas theywere, comparatively speaking, Lilliputians.

Mr. William F. Apthorp, speaking of the condition of the Opera beforeWagner's reforms were exerted upon it, observes that it "remained(despite the efforts of Gluck) virtually what Cesti had made it—not adrama with auxiliary music, but adramma per musica—a drama for(the sake of)-113- music." Now it was, of course, the passionate aim ofWagner to write music-dramas which should be dramas with auxiliarymusic, rather than dramas for the sake of music; yet it is becomingmore and more obvious that what he actually succeeded in producing,despite himself, were dramas which we tolerate to-day only because oftheir transfiguring and paramount music. In view of recentdevelopments in the modern lyric-drama which have resulted from bothhis theories and his practice, it may not be without avail to reviewcertain aspects of his art in the perspective afforded-114- by thequarter-century which now stretches lengtheningly between ourselvesand him.

It is, of course, a truism to say that the corner-stone of Wagner'sdoctrinal arch was that music in the opera had usurped a position ofpre-eminence to which it was not entitled, and which was not to betolerated in what he conceived to be the ideal music-drama. Heconceived the true function of music in its alliance with drama to bestrictly auxiliary—an aid, and nothing more than an aid, to the-115-enforcement, the driving home, of the play. As Mr. Apthorp hasexcellently stated it, his basic principle was that "the text (what inold-fashioned dialect was called the libretto) once written by thepoet, all other persons who have to do with the work—composer,stage-architect, scene-painter, costumer, stage-manager, conductor andsinging actors—should aim at one thing only: the most exact, perfect,and lifelike embodiment of the poet's thought." Wagner's chief quarrelwith the opera as he found it was with the preponderance of themusical element in its constitu-116-tion. If there is one principle thatis definite, positive, and unmistakable in his theoretical position itis that, in the evolution of a true music-drama, the dramatist shouldbe the controlling, the composer an accessory, factor—like thescene-painter and the costumer, ancillary and contributive. If it canbe shown that in the actual result of his practice this relationshipbetween the drama and the music is inverted—that in his music-dramasthe music is supreme, both in its artistic quality and in its effect,while the drama is a mere framework for its splendours—it becomes-117-obvious that he failed (gloriously, no doubt, but still definitively)in what he set out to achieve. It was his dearest principle that, inMr. Apthorp's words, "in any sort of drama, musical or otherwise, theplay's the thing." Yet what becomes of "Tristan und Isolde," of"Meistersinger," of "Götterdämmerung," when this principle is testedby their quality and effect? Would even the most incorruptible amongthe Wagnerites of a quarter of a century ago, in the most exalted hourof martyrdom, have ventured to say that in "Tristan," for example, theplay's the thing? Im-118-agine what the second act, say, divorced from themusic, would be like; and then remember that the music of this act,with the voice-parts given to various instruments, might, with alittle adjustment and condensation, be performed as a somewhatraggedly constructed symphonic poem. The test is a rough and partialone, no doubt, and it is subject to many modifications andreservations. It is not to be disputed, of course, that here is musicwhich is always and everywhere transfused with dramatic emotion, andthat its form is dramatic form and not musical form;-119- but is thereto-day a doubt in the mind of any candid student of Wagner as to theelement in this musico-dramatic compound which is paramount andcontrolling?

It should be remembered that what Wagner thought he was accomplishing,or imagined he had accomplished, is not in question. He conceivedhimself to be primarily a dramatist, a dramatist using music solelyand frankly as an auxiliary, as a means of intensifying the action andthe moods of the play; and this end he pathetically imagined that hehad achieved. Yet it is becoming more and more gener-120-ally recognisedand admitted, by the sincerest appreciators of his art, that as adramatist he was insignificant and inferior. Had any temerarious soulassured him that his dramas would survive and endure by virtue oftheir music alone, it is easy to fancy his mingled incredulity andanger. He was not, judged by an ideal even less uncompromising thanhis own, a musical dramatist at all. It is merely asserting a truthwhich has already found recognition to insist that he was essentiallya dramatic symphonist, a writer of programme-music who used the dramaand its appurtenances, for the-121- most part, as a mere stalking-horsefor his huge orchestral tone-poems. He was seduced and overwhelmed byhis own marvellous art, his irrepressible eloquence: his drama isdistorted, exaggerated, or spread to an arid thinness, to accommodatehis imperious musical imagination; he ruthlessly interrupts orsuspends the action of his plays or the dialogue of his personages inorder that he may meditate or philosophise orchestrally. He called hisoperas by the proud title of "music-dramas"; yet often it isimpossible to find the drama because of the music.

It was not, as has been said before,-122- that he fell short, but that hewent too far; he should have stopped at eloquent and pointedintensification. Instead, he smothered his none too lucid dramas in awelter of magnificent and inspired music—obscured them, stretchedthem to intolerable lengths, filled up every possible space in themwith his wonderful tonal commentary, by which they are not, as hethought, upborne, but grievously overweighted. Mr. James Huneker hasremarked that Wagner was the first and only Wagnerite. As a matter ofsober fact, he was one of the most formidable antagonists thatWagnerism ever had.-123-

It appears likely that his lyric-dramas will endure on the stage bothin spite of and because of their music. The validity andpersuasiveness of "Tristan" and the "Ring" as music-dramas, asconsistent and symmetrical embodiments of Wagner's ideals, seems lesscertain than of old. But the music,qua music, is of undiminishedpotency—it is still, regarded as an independent entity, of almostunlimited scope in its voicing of the moods and emotions of men andthe varied pageant of the visible world; and it will always float andsustain his dramas and make them viable. Gorgeous and exquisite,-124-epical and tender, sublimely noble, and earthly as passion anddespair, it is still, at its best, unparalleled and unapproached; and,as Pater prophesied of the poetry of Rossetti, more torches will belit from its flame than even enthusiasts imagine. Nothing can ever dimthe glory of Wagner the conjurer of tones. His place is securely amongthe Olympians, where he sits, one likes to fancy, apart—a littlelonely and disdainful. In his music he is almost always, as Arnoldsaid of the greatest of the Elizabethans, "divinely strong, rich, andattractive"; and at his-125- finest he is incomparable. No one but amaster of transcendent genius, and the most amazingly varied powers ofexpression, could have conceived and shaped such perfect yet diversethings as those three matchless passages in which he is revealed to usas the riant and tender humanist, the impassioned lyrist, and theapocalyptic seer: the exquisite close of the second act of "DieMeistersinger," where is achieved a blend of magically poetictenderness and comedy for which there are analogies only in certainsupreme moments in Shakespeare; the tonal celebration of the-126- ecstaticswoon ofTristan andIsolde in the midst of which the warningvoice of the watcher on the tower is borne across an orchestral floodof ineffable and miraculous beauty; and that last passage to whichthis wonderful man set his hand, the culminating moment in theadoration of the Grail by the transfigured Parsifal—music that is asthe chanting of seraphs: in which censers are swung before celestialaltars. Of the genius who could contrive such things as these, one cansay no less than that, regarded from any æsthetic standpoint at all,he is, as the subtle appreciator whom I have-127- quoted said of a greatthough wayward poet, "a superb god of art, so proudly heedless orreckless that he never notices the loss of his winged sandals, andthat he is stumbling clumsily when he might well lightly be liftinghis steps against the sun-way where his eyes are set."

III

As music-dramas, then, appraised by his own standard, the deficiencyof Wagner's representative works must be held to be the subordinationof the dramatic element in them to a constituent part—theirmusic—which should be accessory and con-128-tributive rather thanessential and predominant. This tyranny is exercised chiefly—and, letit be cheerfully owned, to the glory of musical art—through Wagner'sorchestra: that magnificent vehicle of a tone-poet who was at once itsmaster and its slave. Yet Wagner sinned scarcely less flagrantlyagainst his most dearly held principles in his treatment of the voice.He conceived it to be of vital importance that in the construction ofthe voice-parts no merely musical consideration of any kind should bepermitted to interfere with the lucid utterance of the text.-129- Hissingers were to employ a kind of heightened and intensified speech,necessarily musical in its intervals, but never musical at the expenseof truthfully expressive declamation. Yet in some of the vocal writingin his later works he is false to this principle, for he notinfrequently permits himself to be ravishingly lyrical at momentswhere lyricism is superfluous and distracting when it is notimpertinent. Again he is too much the musician; too little the musicaldramatist.

And herewith I come to a curious and interesting point. Mr. E.-130-A.Baughan, an English critic of authority, who has written with bothcourage and wisdom concerning Wagnerian theories and practices,entertains singular views concerning the nature of music-drama as anart form. "There must be no false ideas of music-drama being drama,"he has asserted: "it is primarily music. The drama of it is merely,"he goes on, "the motive force of the whole, and technically takes theplace of form in absolute music"—a sentence which, one may bepermitted to observe, would contain an admirably concise statement ofthe truth if the word-131- "merely" were left out. Mr. Baughan is led bythis belief to take the position that whereas, in one respect Wagnerwas, to put it briefly, too musical, in another respect he was notmusical enough. He acknowledges the fact that in Wagner's combinationof music and drama, the music, so far as the orchestra is concerned,assumes an oppressive and obstructive prominence; it indulges for themost part, he holds, in a "superheated commentary" which leaves littleto suggestion, which is persistently excessive and overbearing; yet atthe same time Mr. Baughan holds that-132- Wagner, in his treatment of thevoice-parts, did not, as he says, "make use of the full resources ofmusic and of the beautiful human singing-voice in duets, concertednumbers, and choruses." It is the second of these objections which, asit seems to me, contains matter for discussion. So far from beingdeficient in melodious effectiveness, Wagner's writing for the voice,I would hold, errs upon the other side. It would be possible to namepage after page in the "Ring" and "Tristan" which is marred, from amusico-dramatic standpoint, by an excess of lyri-133-cism. It is a littledifficult to understand, for example, how Wagner would have justifiedhis admission of the duet into his carefully reasoned scheme; for ifthe ensemble piece—the quartette in "Rigoletto," for example—isinherently absurd from a dramatic point of view, as itincontrovertibly is, so also is the duet. Even the most liberalattitude toward the conventions of the operatic stage makes itdifficult to tolerate what Mr. W.P. James describes as the spectacleof two persons inside a house and two outside, supposed to beunconscious of each other's presence, mak-134-ing their remarks inrhythmic and harmonic consonance. Yet is Wagner much less distant fromthe dramatic verities when, in the third act of "Die Meistersinger,"he ranges five people in the centre of a room and causes them tosoliloquise in concert, to the end of producing a quintette ofravishing musical beauty? Had he wholly freed himself from what heregarded as the musical bondage of his predecessors when he couldtolerate such obvious anachronisms as the duet, the ensemble piece,and the chorus? The truth of the matter seems to be that if Wagner's-135-music, in itself, were less wonderful and enthralling than it is,those who would fain insist upon a decent regard for dramaticconsistency in the lyric-drama would not tolerate many things in thevocal writing in "Tristan," "Meistersinger," the "Ring" and "Parsifal"which are not a whit more dramatically reasonable than the absurditieswhich Wagner contemptuously derided in the operas of the old school.His vocal writing, far from being deficient in melodic quality, farfrom ignoring "the full resources of music and of the beautifulsinging voice," is saturated and overflowing-136- with musical beauty, andwith almost every variety of melodic effectiveness except that whichis possible to purely formal song. Mr. Baughan complains that thevoice-parts have "no independent life" of their own. "In many cases,"he says, "the vocal parts, if detached from the score [from theorchestral support] are without emotional meaning of any kind—theexpression is absolutely incomplete." An astonishing complaint! Forthe same thing is necessarily true of any writing for the voice alliedwith modern harmony in the accompaniment. How many songs written-137-since composers began to discover the modulatory capacities ofharmony, one might ask Mr. Baughan, would have "emotional meaning," orany kind of expression or effect, if the voice part were sung withoutits harmonic support?

No; Wagner cannot justly be convicted of a paucity of melodic effectin his writing for the voice. He would, one must venture to believe,have come closer to realising his ideal of what a music-drama shouldbe if, in the first place, he had been able and willing to restrainthe overwhelming tide of his orchestral eloquence; and if, in the-138-second place, he had been content to let hisdramatis personæemploy, not (in accordance with Mr. Baughan's wish) a form of lyricspeech richer in purely musical elements of effect, but one of morenaturalistic contour, simpler, more direct, less ornately andintrusively melodic in its utterance of the text.

It would be fatuous, of course, to deny that there are passages inWagner's later music-dramas to which one can point, by reason of theircontinent and transparent expression of the dramatic situation, asexamples of a perfect kind of music--139-drama: which satisfy, not onlyevery conceivable demand for fullness of musical utterance (for thatWagner almost always does), but those intellectual convictions as towhat an ideal music-drama should be which he himself was pre-eminentlyinstrumental in diffusing. In such passages his direct and pointedlydramatic use of the voice, and his discreet and sparing, yet deeplysuggestive, treatment of the orchestral background, are ofirresistible effect. How admirable, then, is his restraint! As in, forexample,Waltraute's narrative in "Götterdämmerung"; the earlyscenes be-140-tweenSiegmund andSieglinde, andBrunnhilde'sannouncement of the decree of death to the Volsung, in "Walküre"; andin "Tristan" the passage wherein the knight proffers toIsolde hissword; the opening of the third act; and the first sixteen measuresthat follow the meeting of the lovers in the second act—where thebreathless, almost inarticulate ecstasy of the moment is uttered withextraordinary fidelity, only to lead into a passage wherein the pairsuddenly recover their breath in time to respond to the need ofbattling against one of the most glorious but dramatically inflatedoutpour-141-ings of erotic rapture ever given to an orchestra.

But scenes of such perfect musico-dramatic adjustment are rare inWagner. It is not likely, in view of his insuperable propensity towardmusical rhetoric and his amazingly fecund eloquence, that, even if hehad kept a more sternly repressive hand upon his impulse towardmusical elaboration, he could have accomplished the union of drama andmusic in that exquisite and scrupulously balanced relationship whichproduces the ideal music-drama. That achievement had to wait until thematerials of musical-142- expression had attained a greater ductility andvariety, and until the intellectual and æsthetic seed which Wagnersowed had ripened into a maturer harvest than was possible in his owntime—it had to wait, in short, until to-day. For there are those ofus who believe that the feat has at last been actually achieved—thatthe principles of musico-dramatic structure inimitably stated by Gluckin his preface to "Alceste" have been, for the first time, carried outwith absolute fidelity to their spirit; and, moreover, with thatcohesion of organism which Gluck signally failed-143- to achieve, and withthat fineness of dramatic instinct the lack of which is Wagner's primedeficiency.

It is not every generation that can witness the emergence of amasterpiece which may truly be called epoch-making; yet whenFrance—not the Italy of Peri and Monteverdi; nor the Germany of Gluckand Wagner—produced, doubtless to the stupefaction of the shades ofMeyerbeer, Bizet, and Gounod, the "Pelléas et Mélisande" of ClaudeDebussy, it produced a work which is as com-144-manding in quality as itis unique in conception and design.

It has been left for Debussy to write an absolutely new page in theeventful history of the opera. This remarkable composer is to-dayregarded with suspicion by the vigilant conservators of our musicalintegrity—those who are vigorous and unconquerable champions ofæsthetic progress so long as it involves no change in establishedmethods and no reversal of traditions; for he has shown a perversedisinclination to conform to those rules of procedure which, in musicas in the other arts, are held-145- to be inviolable until they are setaside by the practice of successive generations of inspiredinnovators. He has, in brief, affronted the orthodox by creating aform and method of his own, and one which stubbornly refuses to squarewith any of the recognised laws of the game. He is nowhere sosignificant a phenomenon to the curious student of musical developmentas in his setting of Maeterlinck's drama. For the first time in thehistory of opera we are confronted here with the spectacle of alyric-drama in which, while the drama itself holds without compromisethe paramount place-146- in the structural scheme, the musical envelopewith which it is surrounded is not only transparent and intensifying,but, as music, beautiful and remarkable in an extraordinary degree.The point to be emphasised is this: that the postulate of CountBardi's sixteenth century "reformers," formulated by Gluck almost twohundred years later in the principle that the true function of musicin the opera is "to second poetry in expressing the emotions andsituations of the plot," has its first consistent and effectiveapplication in Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande." What theCamerata,-147-and their successors, could not accomplish for lack of adequatemusical means, what Gluck fell short of compassing for want ofboldness and reach of vision, what Wagner might have effected but fortoo great a preoccupation with one phase of the problem, a Frenchmanof to-day has quietly and (I say it deliberately) perfectly achieved.

His success is as much a result of time and circumstance and the slowgrowth of the art as of a preeminent natural fitness for the task. TheFlorentines, for all their eagerness and sincerity, were helpless-148-before the problem of putting their principles into concrete andeffective form, for they were hopelessly blocked by reason of thedesperate poverty of the musical means at their disposal. Spurning theelaborate and lovely art of the contrapuntists, they found themselvesin the sufficiently hopeless situation of artists filled withpassionate convictions but without tools—in other words, they aspiredto write dramatic music for single voices and instruments with nothingto aid them save a rudimentary harmonic system and an almostnon-existent orchestra, and with-149- virtually no perception of thepossibilities of melodic effect. Their failure was due, not to anyinfirmity of purpose, but to a simple lack of materials. Of Gluck itis to be said that, ardent and admirable reformer as he was, and clearas was his perception of the rightful demands of the drama in anyserious association with music, he failed, as Mr. Henry T. Finckjustly says, to effect a "real amalgamation of music and drama,"failed to strike out "a form organically connecting each part of theopera with every other." His unconnected "numbers," his indulgence invocal em-150-broidery, his retention of many of the encumbrances of theoperatic machinery, are all testimony to a not very rigorous orfar-seeing reformatory impulse. If, as Mr. Finck pointedly observes,he "insisted on the claims of the composer as against the singer, hedid not, on the other hand, alter the relations of poet and composer.Such a thing as allowing the drama to condition the form of the musicnever occurred to him." A spontaneous master of musico-dramaticspeech, he stopped far short of striking out a form of lyric-drama inwhich the music was really made to exercise,-151- continuously andundeviatingly, what he stated to be "its true function." It would beabsurd to dispute the fact that his sense of dramatic expression wasboth keen and rich; but it was an instinct which manifested itself inisolated and particular instances, and it was not strong enough orexigent enough to compel him to devise a new and more intelligentmanner of treating his dramatic text as a whole.

Of the degree in which Wagner fell short of embodying hisprinciples—which were of course in essence the principles of theFloren-152-tines and of Gluck—and the evident reason for his failure,enough has already been said. So we come again to Debussy. For it is asingular fact—and this is the point to insist upon—that this Frenchmystic of to-day is the first opera-maker in the records of musicalart who has exhibited the courage, and who has possessed the means, tocarry the principles of theCamerata, of Gluck, and of Wagner totheir ultimate conclusion. In "Pelléas et Mélisande" he has made hismusic serve his dramatic subject, in all its parts, with absolutefidelity and consis-153-tency, and with a rigorous and unswerving logicthat is without parallel in the history of operatic art; we are hereas far from the method of Richard Strauss, with its translation of theentire dramatic material into the terms of the symphonic poem, andwith the singing actors contending against a Gargantuan and mercilessorchestra (which is nothing, after all, but an exaggeration of themethod of Wagner), as we are from the futile experimentings of theCamerata.

One cannot but wonder what-154- Hazlitt, who could not think of beauty,simplicity, or sensibility as qualities having any possibleassociation with opera, would have said of a manner of writing for thelyric stage which ignores even those opportunities for musical effectwhich composers of unimpeachable artistic integrity have always heldto be desirable and legitimate. There is an even richer invitation tothe Spirit of Comedy in trying to imagine what Richard Wagner wouldhave said to the suggestion of a lyric-drama in which the orchestra isnot employed at its full strength more than three times in the course-155-of a score almost as long as that of "Tristan und Isolde," and inwhich the singers scarcely ever raise their voices above amezzo-forte. Debussy's orchestra is unrivalled in musico-dramaticart for the exquisite justness with which it enforces the moods andaction of the play. It never seduces the attention of the auditor fromthe essential concerns of the drama itself: never, as with Wagner,tyrannically absorbs the mind. Always in this unexampled music-dramathere is maintained, as to emphasis and intensity, a scrupulousbalance between the movement of the drama-156- and the tonal undercurrentwhich is its complement: the music is absolutely merged in the play,suffusing it, colouring it, but never dominating or transcending it.It is for this reason that it deserves, as an exemplification of theideal manner of constructing a music-drama, the hazardous epithet"perfect"; for it is, one cannot too often repeat, a work far morefaithful to Wagner's avowed principles than are his own magnificentlyinconsistent scores. In this music there is no excess of gesture,there is none of Wagner's gorgeously expansive rhetoric: the "Jet'aime,"-157- "Je t'aime aussi" of Debussy's lovers are expressed with asimplicity and a stark sincerity which could not well go further; andit is a curious and significant fact that the moment of theirprofoundest ecstasy, though it is artfully and eloquently prepared, isrepresented in the orchestra by a blank measure, a moment of completesilence. This, indeed, is almost the supreme distinction of Debussy'smusic-drama: that it should be at once so eloquent and so discreet:that it should be, in the exposition of its subject-matter, so richand intense yet so delicately and heedfully reti-158-cent. After the gravespeech and simple gestures of these naïve yet subtle and passionatetragedians, as Debussy has translated them into fluid tone, theposturings and the rhetoric of Wagner's splendid personages seem, fora time, violently extravagant, excessive, and overwrought. To attemptto resist the imperious sway which the most superb of musicalromantics must always exert over his kingdom would be a futileendeavour; yet it cannot be denied that for some the method of Debussyas a musical dramatist will seem the more viable and the more sound,as it is grate-159-ful to the mind a little wearied by the drums andtramplings of Wagnerian conquests.

His use of the orchestra differs from Wagner's in degree rather thanin kind. As he employs it, it is a veracious and pointed commentary onthe text and the action of the play, underlining the significance ofthe former and colouring and intensifying the latter; but its commentsare infinitely less copious and voluble than are Wagner's—indeed,their reticence and discretion are, as it has been said, extreme.Debussy's choric orchestra is often as remarkable for what it doesnot-160- say as for what it does. Can one, for example, imagine Wagnerbeing able to resist the temptation to indulge in some graphic anddetailed tone-painting, at the cost of delaying the action andoverloading the score, at the passage whereinGolaud, coming uponthe errant and weepingMélisande in the forest, and seeing her crownat the bottom of the spring where she has thrown it, asks her what itis that shines in the water? Yet observe the curiously insinuatingeffect which results from Debussy's deft and reticent treatment ofthis episode—thepianissimo chords on the muted horns, followed-161- bya measure in which the voices declaim alone. And would not Wagner havewrung the last drop of emotion out of the death scene ofMélisande?—a scene for which Debussy has written music of almostinsupportable poignancy, yet of a quality so reserved and unforcedthat it enters the consciousness almost unperceived as music.

The discursive and exegetical tendencies of Wagner are forgotten; norare we reminded of the manner in which Strauss, in his "Salome,"overlays the speech and action of the characters with a dense,oppressive, and many-stranded-162- web of tone. Yet always Debussy'smusical comment is intimately and truthfully reflective of what passesvisibly upon the stage and in the hearts of his dramatic personages;though often it transmits not so much the actual speech and apparentemotions of the characters, as that dim and pseudonymousreality,—"the thing behind the thing," as the Celts have namedit,—which hovers, unspoken and undeclared, in the background ofMaeterlinck's wonderful play. We are reminded at times, in listeningto this lucent and fluid current of orchestral tone, of Villiers deL'Isle-Adam's descrip-163-tion of the voice of hisElen: "... it wastaciturn, subdued, like the murmur of the river Lethe, flowing throughthe region of shadows." This orchestra, seldom elaborate in thematicexfoliation, and still less frequently polyphonic in texture, is, forthe most part, a voice that speaks in hints and through allusions. Thehuge and imperious eloquence of Wagner is not to be sought for here.Taine once spoke of the "violent sorcery" of Victor Hugo's style, andit is a phrase that comes often to the mind in thinking of the musicof the titanic German. Debussy in-164- his "Pelléas" has written musicthat is rich in sorcery; but it is not violent. In it inheres acapacity for expression, and a quality of enchantment in the result,that music had not before exerted—an enchantment that invades themind by stealth yet holds it with enchaining power. In a curiousdegree the music is both contemplative and impassioned; its pervadingnote is that of still flame, of emotional quietude—the sweeping andcosmic winds of "Tristan und Isolde" are absent. Yet the dramaticfibre of the score is strong and rich; for all its fineness anddelicacy of-165- texture and its economy of accent, it is neitheramorphous nor inert.

Tristan andIsolde, in moments of exalted emotion, utter thatemotion with the frankest lyricism;Pelléas andMélisande, inmoments of like fervour, still adhere to the unformed andunsymmetrical declamation in which their language is elsewherecouched. It is the orchestra which sings—which, passionately ormeditatively, colours the dramatic moment. Wherein we come to what isperhaps the most extraordinary feature of this extraordinary score:-166-the treatment of the voice-parts. Debussy's accomplishment in thisrespect, justly summarised, is this: He has released the orchestrafrom its thraldom to the methods of the symphonic poem (to whichWagner committed it) by making it a background, a support, rather thana thing of procrustean dominance, thus restoring liberty andtransparency of dramatic utterance to the singing actors. He himselfhas succinctly stated the principles which guided him in his manner ofwriting for the voices in "Pelléas." "I have been reproached," he hassaid, "because in my score the-167- melodic phrase is always found in theorchestra, never in the voice. I wished—intended, in fact,—that theaction should never be arrested; that it should be continuous,uninterrupted. I wanted to dispense with parasitic musical phrases.When listening to a [musico-dramatic] work, the spectator is wont toexperience two kinds of emotion: the musical emotion on the one hand;and the emotion of the character [in the drama], on the other.Generally these are felt successively. I have tried to blend these twoemotions, and make them simultaneous.-168- Melody is, if I may say so,almost anti-lyric, and powerless to express the constant change ofemotion or life. Melody is suitable only for the song [chanson],which confirms a fixed sentiment. I have never been willing that mymusic should hinder ... the changes of sentiment and passion felt bymy characters. Its demands are ignored as soon as it is necessary thatthese should have perfect liberty in their gestures as in their cries,in their joys as in their sorrow."

Now Debussy in his public excursions as a critic is not always to betaken seriously; indeed, it is alto-169-gether unlikely that he hasrefrained from demonstrations of exquisite delight over the startledor contemptuous comment which some of his vivacious heresiesconcerning certain of the gods of music have evoked. These publishedappraisements of his are, of course, nothing more than impertinent,though at times apt and sagacious,jeux d'esprit. But when he speaksseriously, as in the defence of his practice which I have just quoted,of the menace of "parasitic" musical phrases in the voice-parts, andwhen he observes that melody, when it occurs in the speech ofcharacters-170- in music-drama, is "almost anti-lyric," he speaks withpenetration and truth. His practice, which illustrates it, amounts tothis: He employs in "Pelléas" a continuous declamation, uncadenced,entirely unmelodic (in the sense in which melodious declamation hasbeen understood). Save for a brief and particular instance, there isno melodic form whatsoever, from beginning to end of the score. Thereis not a hint of the Wagnerian arioso. The declamation is foundedthroughout upon the natural inflections of the voice in speaking—itis, indeed, virtually an electrified and height-171-ened form of speech.It is never musical, for the sake of sheer musical beauty, when theemotion within the text or situation does not lift it to the planewhere the quality of utterance tends naturally and inevitably towardlyricism of accent. He does not, for example, commit the kind ofindiscretion that Wagner commits when he makesIsolde sing thehighly unlyrical line, "Der 'Tantris' mit sorgender List sich nannte,"to a phrase that has the double demerit of being "parasitically" andintrusively melodic and wholly conventional in pattern—one of thosemusical platitudes-172- which have no excuse for existence in any sincereand vital score. Nor in "Pelléas" do the singers ever sing, it needhardly be said, anything remotely approaching a duet, a concertednumber, or a chorus (the snatches of distant song heard from thesailors on the departing ship is a mere touch of atmosphericsuggestion). The dialogue is everywhere and always clearlyindividualised, as in the spoken drama. Yet this surprising fact is tobe noted: undeviatingly naturalistic as are the voice-parts in theirstructure and inflection, and despite their haughty and stoicintolerance of melodic ef-173-fect, they yet are so contrived that theyoften yield—incidentally, as it were—effects of musical beauty; andin so doing, they demonstrate the unfamiliar truth that there ispossible in music-drama a use of the voice which permits of anexpressiveness that is both telling and beautiful, though it yieldsnothing that accepted canons would warrant us in describing as eithermelody or melodious declamation. Now Mr. Baughan, whose viewsconcerning Wagner and his habits have been discussed, craves in themusic-dramas of Wagner a frankness of melody in the vocal writingwhose-174- absence he deplores; and he seems to think that when thismelodiousness of utterance is denied to the voices in modern opera,all that is left them is something "that an orchestral instrumentcould do as well"—something that, inferentially, is anti-vocal, or atleast unidiomatic. It would seem that Mr. Baughan, and those who thinkas he does, fail to realise, as I have remarked before, the immenselyimportant part which it is possible for modern harmony to play in thecombination of a voice and accompanying instruments. It would not bedifficult to demonstrate that a-175- large part of what we are in thehabit of regarding as a purely melodic form of vocal expression in themodern lyric-drama owes a large and unsuspected measure of its potencyof effect to the modulatory character of its harmonic support. Take apassage that we are apt to think of as one of the most ravishingly andpurely melodious in the whole of that fathomless well of lyric beauty,"Tristan und Isolde"—the passage in the duet in the second actbeginning, "Bricht mein Blick sich wonn' erblindet." As one hears itsung by the two voices above the orchestra, it seems a perfectex-176-ample of pure melodic inspiration; yet play the voice-parts, aloneor together, without their harmonic undercurrent, and all the beauty,all the meaning, vanish at once: without the kaleidoscopic harmoniccolor the melodic phrases are without point, coherence, or design. Butthis is aside from the point that I would make—that thepotentialities of modern harmony make possible a use of the voice inmusic-drama which, while it is remote from the character of formalmelody, may yet be productive of a kind of emotional eloquence that isexceedingly puissant and beauti-177-ful, and that may even possess aseemingly lyric quality. We find a foreshadowing of this kind ofeffect in such a passage asTristan's "Bin ich in Kornwall?" whereall of the haunting effect of the phrase is due to the modulation inthe harmony into the G-major chord at the first syllable of"Kornwall." And one might point out to Mr. Baughan that this effect issubtly dependent upon the co-operation of the voice and theinstruments. The phrase in the voice-part is not one "that anorchestral instrument could do as well", as Mr. Baughan would at oncerecognise-178- if he were to play the accompanying chords on a piano andgive the progression in the voice to a 'cello or a violin.

But while Wagner foreshadowed this manner of making his harmonicsupport confer a special character upon the effect of the voice-part,he did not begin to sound its possibilities. That was left for Debussyto do; and for the task he was obviously equipped in a surpassingdegree by his unprecedentedly flexible, plastic, and resourcefulharmonic vocabulary—the richest harmonic instrument, beyondcomparison, that music has yet known.-179- The score of "Pelléas"overflows with instances of this—one may paradoxically call itharmonic—use of the voice: things that Wagner, with his comparativelylimited harmonic range, could not have accomplished. As instanceswhere the voice-part, without being inherently melodic, borrows asemblance of almost lyrical beauty from its harmonic associations,consider the passage in the grotto scene beginning atPelléas'words, "Elle est très grande et très belle", and continuing to"Donnez-moi la main"; or the astonishing passage in the final lovescene beginning atPelléas'-180- words, "On a brisé la glace avec desfers rougis!" or, in the last act, the expression that is given toMélisande's phrase, "la grande fenêtre...." Yet note that in suchpassages the voice-part does not, in Mr. Baughan's phrase, merely"weave up" with the orchestra, as he protests that it does in Wagner'spractice; in other words, it is not simply an incidental strand in thegeneral harmonic texture; it has character and individuality of itsown, though these are absolutely dependent for their full effect upontheir harmonic background. Nor is it, on the other hand, so assertive-181-and conspicuous that it comes within the class of that which Debussyrepudiates as "parasitic." Here, then, is a method of uttering thetext that not only permits of a just and veracious rendering of everypossible dramaticnuance, but which, by virtue of the means ofmusical enforcement that are applied to it, takes on a character andquality, as music, which are as influential as they are unparalleled.

VII

It has been affirmed that in "Pelléas et Mélisande" Debussy hasproduced a work as command-182-ing in quality as it is unique inconception and design. Let us consider what grounds there may be forthe assertion.

To begin with, its spiritual and emotional flavour are without analogyin the previous history, not merely of opera, but of music. Debussy isa man of unhampered and clairvoyant imagination, a dreamer with afar-wandering vision. He views the spectacle of the world through themagic casements of the mystic who is also a poet and visionary. Onecan easily conceive him as taking the more tranquil part in thatprovocative dialogue-183- put by Mr. Yeats into the mouths of two of hisdramatic characters:

In Maeterlinck's "Pelléas et Mélisande," Debussy has, through afortunate conjunction of circum-184-stances, found a perfect vehicle forhis impulses and preoccupations. There will always be, naturallyenough, persons who must inevitably regard such a work as that forwhich he and Maeterlinck are now responsible as, for the most part,vain, inutile, even preposterous. They are sincere in their dislike,these forthright and excellent people, and they are to becommiserated, for they are, in such a region of the imagination asthis drama builds up about them, aliens in a world whose ways andwhose wonders must be forever hidden from their most determinedscru-185-tiny. Such robust and worldly spirits, writes a thoughtfulcontemporary essayist, "that swim so vigorously on the surface ofthings," have always "a suspicion, a jealousy, a contempt, for one whodives deeper and brings back tidings of the strange secrets that thedepth holds": they will not even grant that the depths are anythingsave murky, that the tidings have validity or importance. They takecomfort in their detachment, and are apt to speak of themselves, withmock humility, as "plain, blunt persons," for whom the allegedvacuities of such an order of art are-186- comfortably negligible. Well,it is, after all, as Maeterlinck'sPelléas himself observes, amatter not so much for mirth as for lament; yet even more is it amatter for resignation. There will always be, as has been observed, animmense and confident majority for whom that territory of the creativeimagination which lies over the boundaries of the palpable world willseem worse than delusive: who will always and sincerely pin theirfaith to that which is definite and concrete, patent and direct, andwho must in all honesty reject that which is undeclared, allusive,crepuscular: which-187- communicates itself through echoes and inglimpses; by means of intimations, signs, and tokens. For them itwould be of no avail to point to the dictum of one who, likeMaeterlinck, is aware of remote voices and strange dreams: "Dramaticart," he has wisely said, "is a method of expression, and neither ahair-breadth escape nor a love affair more befits it than thepassionate exposition of the most delicate and strange intuitions; andthe dramatist is as free as the painter of good pictures and thewriter of good books. All art is passionate, but a flame is not theless flame-188- because we change the candle for a lamp or the lamp for afire; and all flame is beautiful."

It is a dictum that is scarcely calculated to persuade a very generalacceptance: a "passionate exposition of the most delicate and strangeintuitions" is not precisely the kind of æsthetic fare which the"plain, blunt man," glorying in his plainness and his bluntness, isapt to relish. It is a point upon which it is perhaps needless todwell; but its recognition serves as explanation of the fact that themusic-drama into which Debussy has transformed Maeterlinck's playshould not every-189-where and always be either accepted or understood.For in the musical setting of Debussy, Maeterlinck's drama has foundits perfect equivalent: the qualities of the music are the qualitiesof the play, completely and exactly; and, sharing its qualities, ithas evoked and will always evoke the more or less contemptuousantagonism of those for whom it has little or nothing to say.

Of the quality of its style, perhaps the most obvious trait to note isits divergence from the kind of music-making which we are accustomedto regard as typically French. We have come to regard as inevitable-190-the clear-cut precision, the finesse, the instinctive grace of Frenchmusic; but we are not at all accustomed to discovering this finenessof texture allied with marked emotional richness, with depth andsubstance of thought—we do not look for such an alliance, nor findit, in any French music from Rameau to Saint-Saëns, Gounod, andMassenet. Yet Debussy has the typical French clarity and fineness ofsurface without the French hardness of edge and thinness of substance.The contours of his music are as melting and elastic as its emotionalsubstance is rich; and it is phantas-191-mal rather than definite andclear-cut; evasive rather than direct. His art, as a matter of fact,has its roots in the literature rather than in the music of hiscountry. His true forebears are not Rameau, Couperin, Boieldieu,Bizet, Saint-Saëns, but Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé; and, beyondhis own frontier, Rossetti and Maeterlinck. There is scarcely a traceof French musical influence in the score of "Pelléas," save for itslimpidity of expression and its delicate logic of structure. The truthis that Debussy, with d'Indy, Ravel, and others, has made itimpossible to speak any longer,-192- without qualification, of "French"quality, or "French" style, in music; for to-day there is the Frenchof Saint-Saëns and Massenet, and the French of Debussy, d'Indy,Duparc, Fauré, Ravel: and the two orders are as inassociable under ageneric yoke as are the poetry of Hugo and the poetry of Verlaine.

But the essential thing to observe and to praise in this music is itsastonishing, its almost incredible, affluence of substance: itsrichness in ideas that are both extraordinarily beautiful and whollynew. The score, in this respect alone, is epoch-making. Debussy is thefirst music--193-maker since Wagner to evolve a kind of style of which thesubstance is, so to say, newly-minted. Strauss is not to be comparedwith him in this regard; for the basis of the German master's style,upon which he has reared no matter how wonderful a superstructure, iscompounded of materials which he got straight from Richard Wagner andhis great forerunner, Franz Liszt; whereas the basis, thestarting-point, of Debussy's style—its harmonic and melodicstuff—existed nowhere, in any artistic shape or condition, beforehim. To speak of it as in any vital-194- sense a reversion, because itmakes use of certain principles of plain-song, is mere trifling.Debussy is a true innovator, if ever there was one. He has added freshmaterials to the matter out of which music is evolved; and no composerof whom this may be said, from Beethoven to Chopin, has failed to findhimself eventually ranked as the originator of a new order of thingsin the development of the art.

VIII

Those who feel the beauty and recognise the important novelty of themusic of "Pelléas et Mélisande"-195- will for some time to come find itdifficult to speak of it appreciatively without an appearance ofextravagance. One owns, in trying to appraise it, to a compunctionsimilar to that expressed by one of the wisest of modern critics,when, after applauding some notable poetry, he whimsically remindedhimself that he "must guard against too great appreciation," and "mustmix in a little depreciation," to show that he had "read attentively,critically, authoritatively." Well, there is no doubt a very definiterisk in praising too warmly a masterpiece which has the effrontery tointrude-196- itself upon contemporary observation, and upon a criticalfunction which has but just compassed the abundantly painful task ofadjusting its views to the masterpieces of the immediate past. I amquite aware that such praise of Debussy's lyric-drama as is spokenhere will seem to many preposterous, or at best excessive. I am alsoaware that the mistaking of geese for swans is a delusion whichafflicts generation after generation of over-confident critics, to theentertainment of subsequent generations and the inextinguishabledelight of the Comic Muse—which, as Mr. Meredith-197- has pointed out,watches not more vigilantly over sentimentalism than over every kindof excess. Yet I am willing to assert deliberately, and with aperfectly clear sense of all that the words denote and imply, that thescore of "Pelléas" is richer in inner musical substance, in ideas thatare at once new and valuable, than anything that has come out ofmodern music since Wagner wrote his final page a quarter of a centuryago. The orchestral score is almost as long as that of "Tristan undIsolde"; yet in the course of its 409 pages there are scarcely half adozen measures in which one cannot-198- point out some touch of genius.The music is studded with felicities. One carries away from a surveyof it a conviction of its almost continuous inspiration, of itsprofound originality. The score overflows with ideas, ideas thatpossess character and nobility, and that are often of deep andravishing beauty—a beauty that takes captive both the spirit and thesense. It is difficult to think of more than a few scores in which theinspiration is so persistent and so fresh—in which there is so littlethat iscliché, perfunctory, derivative. Certainly, if one isthinking of music written for the-199- stage, one has to go to the authorof "Tristan" for anything comparable to it. It has been said that inthis music Debussy is not always at his best, and the comment isjustified. There are passages, most of them to be found in theinterludes connecting the earlier scenes (which, it is well known,were extended to meet a mechanical exigency), wherein the fine andrare gold of his thought is intermixed with the dross of alien ideas.And it is equally true that the vast and wellnigh inescapable shadowof Wagner's genius impinges at moments upon the score: thus we-200- hear"Parsifal" in the first interlude, "Parsifal" and "Siegfried" in theinterlude following the scene at the fountain—the scene whereinMélisande's ring is lost. But the fact is mentioned here only thatit may be dismissed. The voice of Debussy speaks constantly out ofthis music, even when it momentarily takes the timbre of another; andnone other, since the superlative voice of Wagner himself was stilled,has spoken with so potent and magical a blend of tenderness andpassion, with so rare yet limpid a beauty, with an accent so touchingand so underived.-201-

The nature of Debussy's harmony, and the emphasis which is laid uponits remarkable quality by his appreciators, have provoked theassertion that the score of "Pelléas" is devoid of melody, or at leastthat it is weak in melodic invention. Of course the whole matter restsupon what one means by "melody." The comment is a perfectexemplification of that critical method which consists in measuringnew forms of expression by the standards of the past, instead ofseeking to learn whether they do not themselves establish newstandards by which alone they are to be appraised.-202- The method hasbeen applied to every innovator in the records of art, and it isprobably futile to cry out against it, or to assert its stupidity. Themusic of "Pelléas" is rich in melody. It does not, as we have seen,reside in the voice-parts, for there Debussy, for reasons which havealready been discussed, has deliberately and wisely avoided formalmelodic contours. It is to be found in the orchestra—an orchestrawhich, while it depends in an unexampled degree upon a predominantlyharmonic mode of expression, is at the same time very far from beingdevoid of melodic effect. But-203- the melody is Debussy's melody—it isfatuous to expect to find in this score the melodic forms which havebeen made familiar to us by the practice of his predecessors,—men whothemselves were made to bear the primeval accusation of melodicbarrenness. Debussy's melodic idiom is his own, and it often bafflesimpatient or inhospitable ears by reason of its seemingindefiniteness, its apparently wayward movement, and because of theshifting and mercurial basis of harmony upon which it is imposed. Itwould be easy to instance page after page in the score where the-204-melodic expression is, for those who are open to its address, ofinstant and irresistible effect: as the greater part of the scene bythe fountain, in the second act; the whole of the tower scene—anoutpouring of rapturous lyric beauty which, again, sends one to theloveliest pages of "Tristan" for a comparison; the affecting interviewbetweenMélisande and the benign and infinitely wiseArkël, in thefourth act; the calamitous love scene in the park; and almost thewhole of the last act. If Debussy had written nothing else than theentrancing music to which he has set-205- the ecstatic apostrophe ofPelléas to his beloved's hair, he would have established anindisputable claim to a melodic gift of an exquisite and originalkind. It has been said that he is "incapable of writing sustainedmelody"; and though just how extended a melodic line must be in orderto merit the epithet "sustained" is not quite clear, it would seemthat in this particular scene, at all events, Debussy may be said tohave compassed even "sustained" melody; for the melodic line—varied,sensitive, and plastic though it is—is here of almost unbrokencontinuity.-206-

In its total aspect as a dramatic commentary the score provokes wonderat its precision and flexibility. The manner in which each scene isindividualised, differentiated and set apart from every other scene,is of a vividness and fidelity beyond praise. For every changingaspect of the play, for its every emotional phase, the composer hasdiscovered the exact and illuminating equivalent. The eloquence ofthis music is seldom abated; it is as pervasive as it is extreme. Onewould not be far wrong, probably, in finding this music-drama's chiefand final claim to the highest excellence in-207- its triumphant characteras an expressional achievement; in this it ranks with the supremethings in music. There are in the score innumerable passages which oneis tempted to adduce as particular instances of ideally fit andbeautiful expression. It is probably unnecessary to allege the qualityof such examples as the scene by the fountain, the perilous encounterat the tower window, the final tryst in the park, or the interludewhich accompanies the change of scene from the castle vaults to thesunlit terrace above the sea—music that has an entrancing radianceand-208- perfume, through which blows "all the air of all the sea"—thesethings will be rightly valued by every observer of liberalcomprehension and sensitive discernment: to name them is to praisethem. But there are other triumphs of expression in the score whosequality is not so immediately to be perceived. I do not speak of thecountless felicities of structural and external detail: felicitieswhich will repay close and protracted study. I am thinking of remoter,less obvious felicities: of the grave beauty of the passage in whichGeneviève reads to the King the let-209-ter ofGolaud to his brotherPelléas [1]; of the extraordinary final measures of the first act,afterMélisande's question: "Oh! ... pourquoi partez-vous?"; of thedelicious effect which is heard in the orchestra atPelléas' words,in the scene at the fountain, "... le soleil n'entre jamais"; of theexquisite setting ofGolaud's exclamation of delight over the beautyofMélisande's hands; of the entire grotto scene,—a passage ofsuperb imaginative fervour,—with its indescribably poetic ending (thefrag-210-ment of a descending scale given out in imitation by two flutesand a harp); of the passage in the tower scene where the two soloviolins in octaves sing the ravishing phrase that accompanies the"Regarde, regarde, j'embrasse tes cheveux ..." of the enrapturedPelléas; of the piercing effect of theMélisande theme where it iscombined with that ofPelléas in the interlude which follows thescene at the tower window; of the passage preceding the entrance ofMélisande andArkël in the fourth act, whereMélisande's themeis heard in augmentation; of the pas-211-sage in the transitional musicfollowing the misusing ofMélisande byGolaud where her theme isplayed by the oboe above an interchanging phrase in the horns—adiminuendo of inexpressible poignancy; of the impassioned soliloquyofPelléas preparatory to the nocturnal meeting in the park; of thetheme which is played by the horns and 'cellos as he invitesMélisande to come out of the moonlight into the shadow of the trees;of the exquisite phrase given out by the strings and a solo horn as heasks her if she knows why he wished her to meet him; of the interplayof "ninth" chords which is-212- heard, in the final act, whenArkël asksMélisande if she is cold, and the mysterious majesty of the passagewhich immediately follows, asMélisande says that she wishes thewindow to remain open until the sun has sunk into the sea; of, indeed,the whole of the incomparable music ofMélisande's death; andfinally, of that scene wherein the genius of the musician and musicaldramatist is, as I think, most characteristically exerted: thecuriously potent and haunting scene in whichPelléas andMélisande, withGeneviève, watch the departure of the ship fromthe port-213- and speak of the approaching storm. Here Debussy, in settingthe simple yet elliptical speeches of the two tragedians, has writtenmusic which is of marvellously subtle eloquence in its suggestion ofthe atmosphere of impending disaster, of vague foreboding andoppressive mystery, which rests upon the scene. The penetrating "Ons'embarquerait sans le savoir et l'on ne reviendrait plus" ofPelléas, sung over a lingering series of descending chords of theninth; the strange, receding song of the departing sailors; thepassage in triplets which is heard whenPelléas speaks of thebeacon-214- light shining dimly through the mist; the veiled and sinisterphrase in thirds on the muted horns which follows the dying-away ofthe sailors' call: these are salient moments in a masterly piece ofpsychological and (there is no other word for it) subliminaldelineation.

Whatever Debussy may in the future accomplish—and it is not unlikelythat he may transcend this score in adventurousness and novelty ofstyle—will not imperil the unique distinction, the unique value, of"Pelléas et Mélisande." It has had, it has been truly said, nopredecessor, no forerunner; and there is-215- nothing in the musical artthat is now contemporary with it which in the remotest degreeresembles it in impulse or character. That, as an example of the idealwelding of drama and music, it will exert a formative or suggestiveinfluence, it is not now possible to say; but that its extraordinaryimportance as a work of art will compel an ever-widening appreciation,seems, to many, certain and indisputable. Thinking of this score,Debussy might justly say, with Coventry Patmore: "I have respectedposterity."

NOTE

Some of the material contained in the foregoing studies appearedoriginally in articles published inHarper's Weekly,The NorthAmerican Review, andThe Musician. But for the most part the essaysare new; and such passages of earlier origin as are retained have beenconsiderably altered and amplified.

FOOTNOTE

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	Page
Introductory: The Wagnerian Aftermath	1
A View of Puccini	31
Strauss' "Salome": Its Art and its Morals	65
A Perfect Music-Drama	107

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAspects of Modern Opera: Estimates and Inquiries

ASPECTS OF
MODERN OPERA

Estimates and Inquiries

BY
LAWRENCE GILMAN

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

THE WAGNERIAN AFTERMATH

A VIEW OF PUCCINI

STRAUSS’ “SALOME”: ITS
ART AND ITS MORALS

A PERFECT MUSIC-DRAMA

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

NOTE

FOOTNOTE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAspects of Modern Opera: Estimates and Inquiries

ASPECTS OFMODERN OPERAEstimates and InquiriesBYLAWRENCE GILMAN

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORYTHE WAGNERIAN AFTERMATH

A VIEW OF PUCCINI

STRAUSS’ “SALOME”: ITSART AND ITS MORALS

A PERFECT MUSIC-DRAMA

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

NOTE

FOOTNOTE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

ASPECTS OF
MODERN OPERA

Estimates and Inquiries

BY
LAWRENCE GILMAN

INTRODUCTORY

THE WAGNERIAN AFTERMATH

STRAUSS’ “SALOME”: ITS
ART AND ITS MORALS