Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/646

 *struction was demanded, since the Wagnerian movement was itself characteristically German, an organic extension of drifts that had been strong since Weber's time.

But quite as significant was the reaction of the Wagnerian style upon orchestral music. With Wagner himself the orchestra was a means to an end, but his use of it was so extraordinary that it generated a new style. Here he was in line with several other masters who, consciously or unconsciously, had been breaking away from the strict notions of form and disposition that had been pushed into the foreground by the founders of modern orchestral music. Wagner was attacked by Hanslick and others as the enemy of 'absolute music,' and the effort was made to show that his tendency was so to mingle musical expression with other elements, especially those of literature, that his style was actually subversive of the purity and individuality of music as an art. But the fact proved to be that in his use of orchestral resources—as, indeed, of vocal resources—he disclosed important new possibilities of expression, which could be applied fruitfully without being entangled in dramatic or other literary alliances. Whether or not this was deliberately a part of the program of his ambition, the result showed that his influence upon orchestral music was as rapid and thoroughgoing as upon the opera. Here again the consequences in different countries varied greatly according to the quality of the national genius, but were conspicuous everywhere except in Italy (which has never shown national power in orchestral writing). Inasmuch as the apparatus for orchestral performances of the finest character is generally more available than that of the opera in its most advanced form, the practical effect of this orchestral influence has been more widely felt than that of the operatic influence above mentioned.

The success of Wagner was a crowning triumph for German music. His style and theories were legitimate results of movements in artistic thought that had been progressing in central Europe for more than a century, and that had made German musicians in most respects the lawgivers and prophets of the musical world. Wagner's own spirit was intensely and passionately German. His whole mental training had been in the atmosphere of German science, literature and philosophy. He drew his artistic inspiration mainly from the store of myths