Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/371

 found alteration of the entire spirit in which both the composition and the performance of a work were approached.

For example, the old detached overture or sinfonia in three movements was dropped in favor of a brief introduction suggesting the leading topics and sentiments of the play itself and passing without break into the action. The chorus was freely employed as a significant element in the vivid depiction of situations and as a setting for individual utterance. Concerted passages of any form were made lawful, if demanded by the plot, especially in the building up of climaxes. All the old rules about the structure and collocation of recitatives and arias were abrogated as rules, the employment of such formal methods being determined solely by the demands of the drama. Thus the text was elevated to primary importance. Its subject and disposition were estimated first of all from a dramatic point of view, and literary power in it became indispensable. The personages in their contrast and interplay were studied individually, and each was conceived and treated in its own proper quality. The details of expression were then elaborated from this characterization and from the development of the situations. At this point Gluck's instinct saved him from running to an extreme of declamation. Furthermore, he saw clearly that the opera called for more than merely vocal effects. He sought, therefore, to raise the orchestra from its position as a mechanical support or an occasional by-play into a genuine constituent in the total action, assigning to it a constant part in suggesting the progress of sentiment and in heightening the emotional effect. Here again, his instinct saved him from falling into the attempt to provide merely pictorial effects.

Theories like these involved a revolution in the whole process of making and giving operas. The librettist must be both poet and dramatist. The composer could no longer turn off work after work with clever versatility, but must immerse himself in the atmosphere of each new play and, if necessary, be ready to devise for each a new method of expression. The entire personnel of performance must be imbued with a new spirit, in which the petty search for chances of personal display had no place. And even the attitude of the public required alteration, so that the hearer should realize that the opera was no longer a variegated concert, but a unified and dignified piece of dramatic art. It is clear that