ccident,
a dramatist comparable to Moliere, the obligation to compose operas in
versified numbers not only does not embarrass him, but actually saves
him trouble and thought. No matter what his dramatic mood may be, he
expresses it in exquisite musical verses more easily than a dramatist of
ordinary singleness of talent can express it in prose. Accordingly, he
too, like Shakespeare and Shelley, leaves versified airs, like Dalla sua
pace, or Gluck's Che fare senza Euridice, or Weber's Leise, leise, which
are as dramatic from the first note to the last as the untrammelled
themes of The Ring. In consequence, it used to be professorially
demanded that all dramatic music should present the same double aspect.
The demand was unreasonable, since symmetrical versification is no merit
in dramatic music: one might as well stipulate that a dinner fork should
be constructed so as to serve also as a tablecloth. It was an ignorant
demand too, because it is not true that the composers of these
exceptional examples were always, or even often, able to combine
dramatic expression with symmetrical versification. Side by side
with Dalla sua pace we have Il mio tesoro and Non mi dir, in which
exquisitely expressive opening phrases lead to decorative passages which
are as grotesque from the dramatic point of view as the music which
Alberic sings when he is slipping and sneezing in the Rhine mud is from
the decorative point of view. Further, there is to be considered the
mass of shapeless "dry recitative" which separates these symmetrical
numbers, and which might have been raised to considerable dramatic and
musical importance had it been incorporated into a continuous musical
fabric by thematic treatment. Finally, Mozart's most dramatic finales
and concerted numbers are more or less in sonata form, like symphonic
movements, and must therefore be classed as musical prose. And sonata
form dictates repetitions and recapitulations from which the perfectly
unconventional form adopted by Wagner is free. On the whole, there is
more scope for both repetition and convention in the old form than in
the new; and the poorer a composer's musical gift is, the surer he is to
resort to the eighteenth century patterns to eke out his invention.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

When Wagner was born in 1813, music had newly become the most
astonishing, the most fascinating, the most miraculous art in the world.
Mozart's Don Giovanni had made all musical Europe c