Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/647

 accumulated among Teutonic peoples and expressive of their racial consciousness. And his victory was coincident in time with the unification of the German Empire and its advance into a controlling position in European politics. Hence the Wagnerian style at its climax illustrated and declared the German genius for music in an eminent degree. In consequence, the pursuit of advanced composition in German countries was still further stimulated. At the same time the ambition of other nations was powerfully quickened to achieve something parallel for themselves. The potency of Wagner's influence is attested not only by the direct imitations in its own field, but by some of the efforts to match his success through efforts in other fields that are only distantly analogous.

Among those who have been most stimulated by Wagner and Liszt the tendency has been strong to magnify some sort of literary topic or intellectual train of ideas as a guide in laying out musical processes. This is a natural result of the dramatism of the one master and the 'program' style of the other, though some recent works do not belong exactly to either category. A form of composition that has been specially favored is the choral ballade, usually more or less frankly dramatic—a form susceptible of indefinite orchestral expansion and enrichment, and utilizing the varied capacities of both soloists and chorus as well. The endless production of songs of every description goes steadily on, each centring about a specific text, with its theme, its poetic imagery, its chain of sentiments. But purely instrumental writing, also, shows a striking tendency to follow lines of thought somehow supplied to the hearer by a title, motto or argument. The 'program' method in some form is conspicuous in every variety of composition. By some critics this is attributed to Wagner's influence. By others it is held to be a general modern tendency, of which Wagner and Liszt were merely illustrations. However this may be, it is a question whether the essential limits of musical art have not been stretched in this direction about as far as is wise. Certainly nothing extraneous can take the place of genuine freshness of tonal inspiration. The lack of such inspiration among some recent composers has been evidenced on the one hand by a straining after prodigious intricacy of construction or after startling melodic or harmonic extremes, and, on the other, by a misguided choice of morbid and even degenerate themes. Opulence on the side of procedure and technique have no enduring value unless directed and vitalized by genuine artistic initiative and invention.

From the many German and Austrian composers who have worked in the operatic field the following may be selected as illustrating varied tendencies:—*