Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/221

 Haydn and Mozart wrote. It suffices for all healthy and normal needs of expression. If ever the day comes when it begins to fall into neglect, then European music will be starting down the road of decadence, and will fall more or less rapidly to the level of Arab or Chinese music, the level of Cairo Street. It is in the musicians who are called classical that this language presents itself in the character of the most perfect generality; they remain therefore its immortal initiators, it is they who may be imitated without peril to a composer's personality. But at bottom Wagner's musical vocabulary, though far more individual and not admitting of direct imitation, is the same as theirs. I leave out of consideration for the moment the orchestration, which is, of all elements of expression, the most external. I shall speak of it later. I am now concentrating on the musical writing in itself—melody, harmony, composition.

There is nothing more permanent than this classical writing, but there is also nothing that lends itself to greater variety. It constitutes a very rich fabric, and in this fabric it only needs that the relative importance of certain elements be modified for its general coloration to give effects hitherto unknown. The chord of the ninth led up to in conformity with the most fixed laws of harmony only figures in the style of the classical composers in a transitory and fugitive state; it merely occurs in passing. In Wagner this rich chord is promoted to a more brilliant destiny; it takes up room, it flaunts itself, communicating to the whole of the style in which it plays this part its fine flamboyant character. At the present day we have had more than enough of the ninth, we will have nothing more to do with it; too many musicians have