associates itself very happily with music?  If only they would try to root up this great fiction, which has bothered us for the last three centuries; if only they would open their eyes and see—­what great men like Rousseau and Tolstoy saw so clearly—­the silliness of opera; if only they would see the anomalies of the Bayreuth show.  In the second act of Tristan there is a celebrated passage, where Ysolde, burning with desire, is waiting for Tristan; she sees him come at last, and from afar she waves her scarf to the accompaniment of a phrase repeated several times by the orchestra.  I cannot express the effect produced on me by that imitation (for it is nothing else) of a series of sounds by a series of gestures; I can never see it without indignation or without laughing.  The curious thing is that when one hears this passage at a concert, one sees the gesture.  At the theatre either one does not “see” it, or it appears childish.  The natural action becomes stiff when clad in musical armour, and the absurdity of trying to make the two agree is forced upon one.  In the music of Rheingold one pictures the stature and gait of the giants, and one sees the lightning gleam and the rainbow reflected on the clouds.  In the theatre it is like a game of marionettes; and one feels the impassable gulf between music and gesture.  Music is a world apart.  When music wishes to depict the drama, it is not real action which is reflected in it, it is the ideal action transfigured by the spirit, and perceptible only to the inner vision.  The worst foolishness is to present two visions—­one for the eyes and one for the spirit.  Nearly always they kill each other.

The other argument urged against the symphony with a programme is the pretended classical argument (it is not really classical at all).  “Music,” they say, “is not meant to express definite subjects; it is only fitted for vague ideas.  The more indefinite it is, the greater its power, and the more it suggests.”  I ask, What is an indefinite art?  What is a vague art?  Do not the two words contradict each other?  Can this strange combination exist at all?  Can an artist write anything that he does not clearly conceive?  Do people think he composes at random as his genius whispers to him?  One must at least say this:  A symphony of Beethoven’s is a “definite” work down to its innermost folds; and Beethoven had, if not an exact knowledge, at least a clear intuition of what he was about.  His last quartets are descriptive symphonies of his soul, and very differently carried out from Berlioz’s symphonies.  Wagner was able to analyse one of the former under the name of “A Day with Beethoven.”  Beethoven was always trying to translate into music the depths of his heart, the subtleties of his spirit, which are not to be explained clearly by words, but which are as definite as words—­in fact, more definite; for a word, being an abstract thing, sums up many experiences and comprehends many different meanings.  Music is a hundred times more expressive and exact than speech; and it is not only her right to express particular emotions and subjects, it is her duty.  If that duty is not fulfilled, the result is not music—­it is nothing at all.