give cohesion and homogeneity to his music-dramas, was a
direct consequence of the efforts of Mozart and Weber to give unity to
their operatic works. For although these composers retained the old
convention of an opera composed of separate numbers, they nevertheless
managed to unify their operas by creating a distinct style in each of
them, and by securing an emotional development in the various arias and
concerted numbers. The step from "Don Giovanni" and "Euryanthe" to
"Tannhaeuser" and "Lohengrin" does not seem quite as long a one to-day as
once it did. Indeed, there are moments when one wonders whether
"Lohengrin" is really a step beyond "Euryanthe," and whether the
increase of power and vividness and imagination has not been made at the
expense of style. Moreover, in much of what is actually progress in
Wagner the influence of Weber is clearly discernible. The sinister
passages seem but developments of moments in "Der Freischuetz"; the grand
melodic style, the romantic orchestra with its sighing horns and
chivalry and flourishes, seem to come directly out of "Euryanthe"; the
orchestral scene-painting from the sunrise and other original effects in
"Oberon."

Even Meyerbeer taught Wagner something more than the use of certain
instruments, the bass-clarinet, for instance. The old operatic
speculator indubitably was responsible for Wagner's grand demands upon
the scene-painter and the stage-carpenter. His pompous spectacles fired
the younger man not only with "Rienzi." They indubitably gave him the
courage to create an operatic art that celebrated the new gold and power
and magnificence, and was Grand Opera indeed. If the works of the one
were sham, and those of the other poetry, it was only that Wagner
realized what the other sought vainly all his life to attain, and was
prevented by the stock-broker within.

And Chopin's harmonic feeling as well as Berlioz's orchestral wizardry
played a role in Wagner's artistic education. But for all his
incalculable indebtednesses, Wagner is the great initiator, the
compeller of the modern period. It is not only because he summarized the
old. It is because he began with force a revolution. In expressing the
man of the nineteenth century, he discarded the old major-minor system
that had dominated Europe so long. That system was the outcome of a
conception of the universe which set man apart from the remainder of
nature, placed him in a category of his own, and pretended that he wa