went out to it as to their own
adventure. And wherever music reappeared, whether under the hand of the
Japanese or the semi-African or the Yankee, it seemed to be growing from
Wagner as the bright shoots of the fir sprout from the dark ones grown
the previous year. A whole world, for a period, came to use his idiom.
His dream was recognized during his very lifetime as an integral portion
of the consciousness of the entire race.

For Wagner's music is the century's paean of material triumph. It is its
cry of pride in its possessions, its aspiration toward greater and ever
greater objective power. Wagner's style is stiff and diapered and
emblazoned with the sense of material increase. It is brave, superb,
haughty with consciousness of the gigantic new body acquired by man. The
tonal pomp and ceremony, the pride of the trumpets, the arrogant stride,
the magnificent address, the broad, vehement, grandiloquent
pronouncements, the sumptuous texture of his music seems forever
proclaiming the victory of man over the energies of fire and sea and
earth, the lordship of creation, the suddenly begotten railways and
shipping and mines, the cataclysm of wealth and comfort. His work seems
forever seeking to form images of grandeur and empire, flashing with
Siegfried's sword, commanding the planet with Wotan's spear, upbuilding
above the heads of men the castle of the gods. It dares measure itself
with the terrestrial forces, exults in the fire, soughs through the
forest with the thunderstorm, glitters and surges with the river, spans
mountains with the rainbow bridge. It is full of the gestures of giants
and heroes and gods, of the large proud movements of which men have ever
dreamed in days of affluent power. Even "Tristan und Isolde," the high
song of love, and "Parsifal," the mystery, spread richness and splendor
about them, are set in an atmosphere of heavy gorgeous stuffs, amid
objects of gold and silver, and thick clouding incense, while the
protagonists, the lovers and saviors, seem to be celebrating a worldly
triumph, and crowning themselves kings. And over the entire body of
Wagner's music, there float, a massive diadem, the towers and parapets
and banners of Nuremberg the imperial free city, monument of a
victorious burgherdom, of civic virtue that on the ruins of feudalism
constructed its own world, and demonstrated to all times its dignity and
sobriety and industry, its solid worth.

For life itself made the Wagnerian ge