t of the drama. When the creative genius
of Greece had set toward its ebb, they were divorced, and music was only
set to lyric forms. Such remained the status of the art till, in the
Italian Renaissance, modern opera was born in the reunion of music and
the drama. Like the other arts, it assumed at the outset to be a mere
revival of antique traditions. The great poets of Italy had then passed
way, and it was left for music to fill the void.

The muse, Polyhymnia, soon emerged from the stage of childish
stammering. Guittone di Arezzo taught her to fix her thoughts in
indelible signs, and two centuries of training culminated in the
inspired composers, Orlando di Lasso and Pales-trina. Of the gradual
degradation of the operatic art as its forms became more elaborate and
fixed; of the arbitrary transfer of absolute musical forms like the
aria, duet, finale, etc., into the action of the opera without regard to
poetic propriety; of the growing tendency to treat the human voice like
any other instrument, merely to show its resources as an organ; of
the final utter bondage of the poet to the musician, till opera became
little more than a congeries of musico-gymnastic forms, wherein the
vocal soloists could display their art, it needs not to speak at length,
for some of these vices have not yet disappeared. In the language of
Dante's guide through the Inferno, at one stage of their wanderings,
when the sights were peculiarly mournful and desolate--

"Non raggioniam da lor, ma guarda e passa."

The loss of all poetic verity and earnestness in opera furnished the
great composer Gluck with the motive of the bitter and protracted
contest which he waged with varying success throughout Europe, though
principally in Paris. Gluck boldly affirmed, and carried out the
principle in his compositions, that the task of dramatic music was to
accompany the different phases of emotion in the text, and give them
their highest effect of spiritual intensity. The singer must be the
mouthpiece of the poet, and must take extreme care in giving the full
poetical burden of the song. Thus, the declamatory music became of
great importance, and Gluck's recitative reached an unequaled degree of
perfection.

The critics of Gluck's time hurled at him the same charges which are
familiar to us now as coming from the mouths and pens of the enemies of
Wagner's music. Yet Gluck, however conscious of the ideal unity between
music and poetry, never thou