Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/580

 they lie close to the mid-point of the century. Their appearance then was the signal for heated debates that lasted twenty years, if not longer. The extreme partizanship developed prevented a cool estimate of Wagner's views. But the logic of events tended to substantiate his main contentions, and in the recent period Wagnerism, at least as applied to the opera, has been a dominant force. Yet it is also clear that his doctrine about the opera cannot be regarded as absolutely final or complete, since it provides only for opera in its highest and most strenuous forms. The central thesis, however, regarding the control of the music-drama by dramatic considerations, is plainly sound and capable of universal application.

Wagner's collected writings fill ten volumes (1871-85). With the autobiographies may be classed many notices of particular works and events, and reminiscences of Spontini, Rossini, Auber, etc. The more noted philosophical essays or treatises are Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1850), Oper und Drama (3 parts, 1851), Das Judenthum in der Musik (1852), Zukunftsmusik (1864), Ueber das Dirigieren (1869), many essays on the Bayreuth enterprise, Religion und Kunst (1880), etc., with striking studies of Liszt's symphonic poems and of Beethoven (1870).

Many who do not accept Wagner's theory of the opera in all its details, and who perhaps are but slightly informed as to his philosophy of music in general, have yet been quick to follow some of his technical methods. Two or three of his characteristic traits of style may well be emphasized here, since they have exerted a wide influence, far beyond the limits of the opera.

Wagner threw his whole weight with those who were breaking away from classical strictness and regularity. Classical practice had made much of the structural plan of composition and of the perfection of its elements or units taken separately. The smaller elements of 'form,' for instance, must be clear-cut, the themes brief and symmetrical, the part-writing guided by careful rules derived from the old vocal counterpoint, the melodic figures and passages selected as far as possible from certain conventional lists, the chords not distorted by extraordinary tones, the modulations managed according to established usage. This stage in practice was necessary to fix the elementary logic of musical construction. But it made composition too much like architecture. Tonal units were treated too much like lifeless bricks or stones. Against this relatively dry and mechanical artistry the romanticists rebelled. But at first they did not know how to break away from it. Wagner had the courage and the creative inspiration to attempt a radically new procedure. His desire