iously
strove after an ideal music drama. But the times were not ripe, and
therefore such music could not exert its proper influence. The twin
arts of music and poetry, dissociated by the rapid advance of
literature and the slow development of music, pursued their several
paths alone. The attempt to reunite them in the end of the sixteenth
century was futile, and only led to opera which never needed, and
therefore did not employ, great poetry. In Germany music was developed
along instrumental lines until the school arrived at its culmination
in Beethoven; and when an opera composer stopped to think on the
eternal verities, the result must always have been such a prophecy of
Wagner's work as we find in Mozart's letters:

"_October, 1781._--Verse indeed is indispensable for music, but rhyme
is bad in its very nature.... It would be by far the best if a good
composer, understanding the theatre and knowing how to produce a
piece, and a clever poet, could be united in one...."

Other but comparatively unimportant features in the Wagner music drama
are, _e.g._, the use of the _Leitmotiv_, or leading motive--found
occasionally in Gluck, Mozart, Weber, etc., but here first adopted
with a definite purpose, and the contention for mythological rather
than historical subjects--now largely admitted. But all Wagner's
principles would have been useless without the energy and perseverance
which directed his work, the loving study which stored his memory with
all the great works of his predecessors, and, above all, the genius
which commands the admiration of the musical world.

Wagner's works show a remarkable and progressive development. "Rienzi"
is quite in the grand opera style of Meyerbeer, Spontini, etc. The
"Flying Dutchman" is a deliberate departure from that style, and in
romantic opera strikes out for itself a new line, which, followed
still further in "Tannhaeuser," reaches its stage of perfection in
"Lohengrin." From this time dates the music drama, of which "Tristan"
is the most uncompromising type, and by virtue of wonderful
orchestration, and the intense pathos of the beautifully written poem,
the most fascinating of all. The "Trilogy" ("Walkuere," "Siegfried,"
"Goetterdaemmerung," with the "Rheingold" as introduction) is a very
unequal work. It is full of Wagner's most inspired writing and most
marvellous orchestration; but it is too long and too diffuse. The plot
also is strangely confused and uninteresting, and fails