Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/200



On Wagner's music I offer not an actual study but merely some notes. This music is so well known to-day that it is unnecessary to analyse it methodically. But it still lends itself to a number of observations which need not lack novelty. I shall consider it not so much by itself as from the point of view of the services that its influence has been able to render, and the harm that it has been able to do, to the art of our country.

When Wagner first appeared, his music was labelled "revolutionary." The epithet is vague. A man is always revolutionary in respect of someone or some thing, if only he has a personality and talent.

In taking the word as meaning "anti-classical" we shall assuredly not be departing from the more or less confused sense in which criticism used it. Does Wagner deserve that the word in this sense should be applied to him? Do the principles of Wagnerian art contain the negation of classical principles?

If this be admitted, then we may say that Wagner did exactly the opposite of what he taught, and of what he held to be good. Here is what I find in his essay on the Application of Music to Drama (he is