Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/641

 The novelty and energy of effort made the period one of notable transitions and revolutions, and hence one of debate and conflict. First came the overflow of the romantic tide, strong in sentiment and phantasy, impatient of set patterns and rules, eager to test instrumental means of expression, yet quick to seize upon the neglected capacity of the solo song, and provocative of new intellectual attitudes toward all musical art. Against this stood both the reactive conservatism of adherents to the old vocal polyphony or the stern and condensed style of Bach, and the compromising party made up of Mendelssohn and his many followers, who sought to utter a romantic message in classical phraseology. This general antithesis broke up into various smaller ones, as between romantic freedom and classical regularity, or between intensely subjective expression and the pursuit of tonal beauty of an objective sort, or between styles generated by the peculiarities of instruments and those that were distinctively vocal, or between lyric melody and polyphonic solidity. In all these directions the new and the old were contesting for supremacy, too often without seeing that they were not utterly at variance.

While all this was going on, came the advent of Wagner with his original, radical and powerful conception of the opera, expressed at first mildly and then with gigantic audacity. Here was a challenge to nearly the whole body of operatic conventions, Italian, French and even German. This throwing down of the gauntlet precipitated a war of words more extensive and bitter than any other in music-history, one which outlasted the period before us and which ran out into all sorts of ramifications. In particular, the Wagner question seemed to be entangled with the whole debate about 'program' versus 'absolute' music, both because Wagner was championed by Liszt and because the Wagnerian theory of the opera had evident analogies with the use of 'program' in instrumental writing. But the Wagner revolution had much more profound characteristics. Wagner's technical procedures involved great apparent departures from accepted standards and put a severe strain upon tastes educated in simpler methods. And the grandiose scale and fervid profusion of his mature creations staggered conservative comprehension. Had not the essential logic of most of his innovations and the genuine value of his musical ideas