en altered the entire scheme so as to
imbue--forsooth!--his music with pessimism.

Nor was there ever such folly, such arrant "faking" as this! What has
philosophy, religion, politics to do with operatic music? It cannot
express any one of them. Wagner, clever charlatan, knew this, so he
worked the leading-motive game for all it was worth. Realizing the
indefinite nature of music, he gave to his themes--most of them borrowed
without quotation marks--such titles as Love-Death; Presentiment of
Death; Cooking motive--in _Siegfried_; Compact theme, etc., etc. The
list is a lengthy one. And when taxed with originating all this futile
child's-play he denied that he had named his themes. Pray, then, who
did? Did von Wolzogen? Did Tappert? They worked directly under his
direction, put forth the musical lures and decoys and the ignorant
public was easily bamboozled. Simply mention the esoteric, the
mysterious omens, signs, dark designs, and magical symbols, and you
catch a certain class of weak-minded persons.

Wagner knew this; knew that the theater, with its lights, its scenery,
its costumes, orchestra, and vocalizing, was the place to hoodwink the
"cultured" classes. Having a pretty taste in digging up old fables and
love-stories, he saturated them with mysticism and far-fetched musical
motives. If _The Flying Dutchman_ is absurd in its story--what possible
interest can we take in the _Salvation_ of an idiotic mariner, who
doesn't know how to navigate his ship, much less a wife?--what is to be
said of _Lohengrin_? This cheap Italian music, sugar-coated in its
sensuousness, the awful borrowings from Weber, Marschner, Beethoven, and
Gluck--and the story! It is called "mystic." Why? Because it is _not_, I
suppose. What puerile trumpery is that refusal of a man to reveal his
name! And _Elsa_! Why not Lot's wife, whose curiosity turned her into a
salt trust!

You may notice just here what the Wagnerians are pleased to call the
Master's "second" manner. Rubbish! It is a return to the Italians. It is
a graft of glistening Italian sensuality upon Wagner's strenuous study
of Beethoven's and Weber's orchestras. _Tannhaeuser_ is more manly in its
fiber. But the style, the mixture of styles; the lack of organic unity,
the blustering orchestration, and the execrable voice-killing vocal
writing! The _Ring_ is an amorphous impossibility. That is now
critically admitted. It ruins voices, managers, the public purse, and
our patience. Its s