the music had to be dramatically appropriate.  He got magnificent results; and when the leaven of Wagnerism has ceased to work and froth and bubble in the public brain—­in a word, when Wagner’s music is no longer mere exciting new wine, and we are as accustomed to it as we are to the music of Beethoven—­then we shall turn back to Gluck (and also to Mozart) and find them as young and fresh as ever.

Wagner’s aim was totally different.  First, music, he held, was played out:  one must have the spoken word with it.  He went to the myth for subjects, and gave plentiful reasons, which need not detain us, for the choice.  Then—­and here the effect of his early association with the theatre shows itself—­the music was in nowise to hinder the actor; therefore all formal set numbers must be discarded and replaced by his “speech-singing” expressive recitative which should be beautiful as sheer music, and not hinder the actors from playing their parts as well as singing them.  And, finally, he came to the conclusion that in his music-drama he could effect a synthesis of all the arts.  Music and acting were the basis; there had to be scenery, and the scenery must form pictures, with the figures always properly placed, according to what I suppose painters would call, or refuse to call, the laws of composition.  But each of the figures, or groups of figures, on the stage had also to be regarded as an entity, and as sculpture had not to be excluded from the synthesis, the poses must always be sculpturesque.

Here was a programme indeed!  Very fine it seemed to his young followers; when new it seemed wholly admirable.  Unfortunately, as Wagner found, the moment it was tried it proved impracticable and useless.  Take sculpture, for example.  Sculpture, I take it, has reached a fairly high point when the marble figure gives one the sense of life and of motion.  Wagner, with his sculpturesque poses, instead of letting the living figure give us directly the impression of life and of motion, sought (always theoretically) to attain the end by an imitation of an imitation.  Moreover, no moving figure ever did or can suggest sculpture—­even if we wanted such a suggestion, which we don’t.  Even the Commandatore in Don Giovanni, with the aid of stiff gestures and plentiful whitewash, ceases to look like a statue as soon as he opens his mouth to sing.  Consider, too, the notion of making, so to speak, set pictures—­of dealing, that is, with his puppets and scenery in exactly the opposite spirit to that in which he wished to deal with vocal music.  A realistic picture suggests Nature, and if the figures are well done they suggest human figures; a well-arranged scene does the same.  There was no reason for getting indirectly, again by an imitation of an imitation, an effect that can be got directly.  As for producing a series of “composed” pictures, it was practically impossible and highly undesirable.  A carefully-composed picture needs time for its appreciation, and no one