e Walkuere" and "Tristan und Isolde," and who spoke of these
experiences in voices and manners different from those in which they
spoke, say, of the theater or the concert. And there were magnificent
and stately and passionate pieces that drew their way across the
pianoforte, that seized upon one and made one insatiable for them. Long
before we had actually entered the opera house and heard one of Wagner's
works in its entirety, we belonged to him and knew his art our own. We
were born Wagnerians.

But of late a great adventure has befallen us. What once seemed the
remotest of possibilities has actually taken place. We who were born and
grew under the sign of Wagner have witnessed the twilight of the god. He
has receded from us. He has departed from us into the relative distance
into which during his hour of omnipotence he banished all other
composers.

He has been displaced. A new music has come into being, and drawn near.
Forms as solid and wondrous and compelling as his are about us. Little
by little, during the last years, so gradually that it has been almost
unbeknown to us, our relationship to him has been changing. Something
within us has moved. Other musicians have been working their way in upon
our attention. Other works have come to seem as vivid and deep of hue,
as wondrous and compelling as his once did. Gradually the musical
firmament has been reconstellating itself. For long, we were unaware of
the change, thought ourselves still opposite Wagner, thought the rays of
his genius still as direct upon us as ever they were. But of late so
wide has the distance become that we have awakened sharply to the
change. Of a sudden, we seem to ourselves like travelers who, having
boarded by night a liner fast to her pier and fallen asleep amid
familiar objects, beneath the well-known beacons and towers of the port,
waken suddenly in broadest daylight scarcely aware the vessel has been
gotten under way, and find the scene completely transformed, find
themselves out on ocean and glimpse, dwindling behind them, the harbor
and the city in which apparently but a moment since they had lain
enclosed.

It is the maturing of a generation that has produced the change. For
each generation the works of art produced by its members have a distinct
importance. Out of them, during their time, there sparks the creative
impulse. For every generation is something of a unit.

"Chaque generation d'hommes
Germant du champs m