Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/203

 to let me occupy the chair I would give them cause for much greater astonishment when they saw how far I pushed counsels of caution and restraint as regards the employment of effects of harmony. The first rule that I should give the pupils would be never to leave a key as long as they have something to say to which the key is suited. If this rule were followed we should see, as in old days, the birth of symphonies worth talking about, whereas our modern symphonies deserve nothing but silence."

To demand of symphonic themes a well-defined tonal character, to banish from them, or only admit with infinite discretion, modulation and chromatics, is fine healthy doctrine; it makes Wagner a frank "reactionary" compared with musicians who have boasted themselves of his school; or whom the public's superficial judgment reckons among his followers. It is worth while to dwell upon the thought he expresses. Symphony as everyone knows is a play of music upon given themes—it develops and varies them in a thousand ways, making them pass from one key to another, ornamenting them, combining them, and constantly reshaping their physiognomy by all the resources of harmony and counterpoint, breaking them up and embroidering on their fragments one new fancy after another, bringing them back to view in their original form and key, and after that making them run through a second and third cycle of transformations. In this game—at least when it is animated by the living force of real inspiration and is not engineered by a chill mechanism of scholastic combinations—the expression grows richer and richer, and is constantly illuminated with fresh aspects, with a whole world of new shades, subtleties and features.