him by"--

so the highest art is that which best embodies the immortal thought of
the universe as reflected in the mirror of man's consciousness; that
music, as speaking the most spiritual language of any of the art-family,
is burdened with the most pressing responsibility as the interpreter
between the finite and the infinite; that all its forms must be measured
by the earnestness and success with which they teach and suggest what is
best in aspiration and truest in thought; that music, when wedded to the
highest form of poetry (the drama), produces the consummate art-result,
and sacrifices to some extent its power of suggestion, only to acquire
a greater glory and influence, that of investing definite intellectual
images with spiritual raiment, through which they shine on the supreme
altitudes of ideal thought; that to make this marriage perfect as an
art-form and fruitful in result, the two partners must come as equals,
neither one the drudge of the other; that in this organic fusion
music and poetry contribute, each its best, to emancipate art from its
thralldom to that which is merely trivial, commonplace, and accidental,
and make it a revelation of all that is most exalted in thought,
sentiment, and purpose. Such is the aesthetic theory of Richard Wagner's
art-work.

III.

It is suggestive to note that the earliest recognized function of music,
before it had learned to enslave itself to mere sensuous enjoyment, was
similar in spirit to that which its latest reformer demands for it in
the art of the future. The glory of its birth then shone on its brow. It
was the handmaid and minister of the religious instinct. The imagination
became afire with the mystery of life and Nature, and burst into the
flames and frenzies of rhythm. Poetry was born, but instantly sought the
wings of music for a higher flight than the mere word would permit. Even
the great epics of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were originally sung or
chanted by the Ilomerido, and the same essential union seems to have
been in some measure demanded afterward in the Greek drama, which, at
its best, was always inspired with the religious sentiment. There
is every reason to believe that the chorus of the drama ofAEschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides uttered their comments on the action of the
play with such a prolongation and variety of pitch in the rhythmic
intervals as to constitute a sustained and melodic recitative. Music at
this time was an essential par