ic content with beauty, and to be itself. It has the
firm outlines of Duerer or of Botticelli, with the same constraint within
a fixed form, if one compares it with the Titian-like freedom and
splendour of Wagner. In hearing Mozart I saw Botticelli's "Spring"; in
hearing Wagner I had seen the Titian "Scourging of Christ." Mozart has
what Coventry Patmore called "a glittering peace": to Patmore that
quality distinguished supreme art, and, indeed, the art of Mozart is, in
its kind, supreme. It has an adorable purity of form, and it has no need
to look outside those limits which it has found or fixed for itself.
Mozart cares little, as a rule, for what he has to express; but he
cares infinitely for the way in which he expresses everything, and,
through the mere emotional power of the notes themselves, he conveys to
us all that he cares to convey: awe, for instance, in those solemn
scenes of the priests of Isis. He is a magician, who plays with his
magic, and can be gay, out of mere pleasant idleness, fooling with
Papagenus as Shakespeare fools in "Twelfth-Night." "Die Zauberfloete" is
really a very fine kind of pantomime, to which music lends itself in the
spirit of the thing, yet without condescending to be grotesque. The duet
of Papagenus and Papagena is absolutely comic, but it is as lovely as a
duet of two birds, of less flaming feather. As the lovers ascend through
fires and floods, only the piping of the magic flute is heard in the
orchestra: imagine Wagner threading it into the web of a great
orchestral pattern! For Mozart it was enough, and for his art, it was
enough. He gives you harmony which does not need to mean anything
outside itself, in order to be supremely beautiful; and he gives you
beauty with a certain exquisite formality, not caring to go beyond the
lines which contain that reticent, sufficient charm of the
Mirabell-Garten.

NOTES ON WAGNER AT BAYREUTH

I. BAYREUTH AND MUNICH

Bayreuth is Wagner's creation in the world of action, as the
music-dramas are his creation in the world of art; and it is a triumph
not less decisive, in its transposition of dream into reality. Remember
that every artist, in every art, has desired his own Bayreuth, and that
only Wagner has attained it. Who would not rather remain at home,
receiving the world, than go knocking, humbly or arrogantly, at many
doors, offering an entertainment, perhaps unwelcome? The artist must
always be at cautious enmity with his public