ever be surprised and caught) to have been dependent on ‘preconceived poetical ideas;' and of setting a gulf between his sources of inspiration and those of his predecessors. Some of the ideas have even been written down for him by Wagner, in the mountains of flabby verbiage known as 'Programmatische Erläuterungen' which occasionally figure in our concert-books-impotent heavings. of that portent of prose Dichtung which is so apt to entrap the Jonahs whom Poetry casts overboard. The convenience of this means of claiming descent from the greatest of musicians on the side of 'poetical ideas,' when musical ones too obviously fail, is undeniable; and a theory born of a deficiency may appropriately be bolstered by a blunder— historic neatly replacing melodic invention. But I must hurry on to a final word—as to the further bearing of these latter points on production in general. The first great bane of contemporary music lay, we saw, in displacement of coherent form by incoherent colour; the second no less certainly lies in a cognate displacement of steady effort directed to the distinctively musical exaltation, by random attempts at definite representation and suggestion. Wagner's successes in this line-e.g. the wonderful passage where Siegfried is breaking through the ring of fire of course defy imitation, because they result from splendid musical invention, in other words, from the presence of the distinctive exaltation; equally, of course, the genre without the invention is imitated. Would that the evil influence were confined to the theatre. But it only needs now to salute some loose jumble of images and sentiments as 'poetry,' for that alien parentage, which all great musical work from Handel and Bach to Schumann and Brahms scornfully disowns, to become a true Sycorax for the monstrosities of the modern programme-music; while Caliban can go through his pantomime bedizened in all the gaudy trappings, can wield all the thunderbolts and turn on all the lime-lights, of the wonderful modern orchestra. And here, again, no hearer should be so humble as to refrain from asking himself how much he really likes it. A most natural impulse to that humility is found in the reflection that technically Alas for the uninitiated! Having been forewarned of this passage, I felt my pleasure in listening to it distinctly increased by the idea that the hero's advance through the flames was typified by the manner in which the melodic strain seems again and again to force its way through the changing harmonies. What, then, was my chagrin, on consulting the Guide through the Music above mentioned, to discover that the strain was the 'slumber-motive,' and that what was really being typified was Brünhilde's repose! instructed musicians, who must know more about it' than he does, encourage and perform in such exhibitions. But it cannot be too strongly urged that the conditions of enjoyment in performing and in listening may be widely different, and that Music, being so much in the hands of performers, runs a peculiar risk from that very fact. Performance may be good fun, even for a voice which is wasting its sweetness on such desert airs as some of Wagner's recitatives. All skilful conquest of difficult things, and accurate thridding of labyrinthine things, and collaboration in the production of overpowering things, are exciting outlets of energy; and in these respects connoisseurs, who appreciate technical difficulties and can see how the thing is made, are more or less one with the performers. But I am speaking of the average music-lover: it is surely for him rather than for exceptional experts that Music must be held to exist. All this may be amusing for them: is it amusing for him, whose attention is mainly occupied in verifying the printed assurance that the noise means this, that, and the other? Or even if it be for a time amusing, is not that the utmost that can be said for it? unless or until perchance the strains wander, sure of a forgiving welcome, into the paths of musical beauty, still seeking there, if they will, such delicate suggestiveness of outer things as under Schumann's wand could make of a humble piano a joker of divinest jokes. At any rate, whoever it be who truly finds his poetry in the 'desolate disarray' of ordinary programme-images, and his music in their broken sound-reflection-if this is what he prefers to the art which is no more truly typified by Volkslied and chorale, by Beethoven's sonatas and Schubert's songs, than by the noble melodies that have won Wagner the popular heart-let him at least say so and recognise the distinction, that we may know where we are. For it would be speculatively interesting, however mournful, to mark how, so far as his taste prevails, the symbolism from which Painting and Sculpture were able to emerge, just because in their case it was frank and rigid and expressionless, need only seize in sound the chance of making itself ingenious and fluctuant and pseudoexpressive, to become the engulfing death of the sister art. 47 A MUSICAL CRISIS. Virtù diversi esser convegnon frutti DANTE. IN writing a paper about Music for the general reader, there is always this difficulty-that, however modern and however popularly interesting be the topic selected, no profitable discussion of it can avoid beginning as it may seem a long way off, among quite fundamental conceptions, luckily few, but unluckily dry. In dealing with visual art, the critic is not obliged to start all his views from an inquiry into men's natural love of imitation, or into the reasons why church spires must be built point upwards, or into the most obvious implications of terms like form and colour. But in the case of Music, however cramped by its conditions, he will not gain in the end by ignoring them; his work may easily lose a place in science without finding one in literature. And the necessary |