It is suggestive to note that the earliest recognized function of music, before it had learned to enslave itself to mere sensuous enjoyment, was similar in spirit to that which its latest reformer demands for it in the art of the future.  The glory of its birth then shone on its brow.  It was the handmaid and minister of the religious instinct.  The imagination became afire with the mystery of life and Nature, and burst into the flames and frenzies of rhythm.  Poetry was born, but instantly sought the wings of music for a higher flight than the mere word would permit.  Even the great epics of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were originally sung or chanted by the Ilomerido, and the same essential union seems to have been in some measure demanded afterward in the Greek drama, which, at its best, was always inspired with the religious sentiment.  There is every reason to believe that the chorus of the drama ofAEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides uttered their comments on the action of the play with such a prolongation and variety of pitch in the rhythmic intervals as to constitute a sustained and melodic recitative.  Music at this time was an essential part of the drama.  When the creative genius of Greece had set toward its ebb, they were divorced, and music was only set to lyric forms.  Such remained the status of the art till, in the Italian Renaissance, modern opera was born in the reunion of music and the drama.  Like the other arts, it assumed at the outset to be a mere revival of antique traditions.  The great poets of Italy had then passed way, and it was left for music to fill the void.

The muse, Polyhymnia, soon emerged from the stage of childish stammering.  Guittone di Arezzo taught her to fix her thoughts in indelible signs, and two centuries of training culminated in the inspired composers, Orlando di Lasso and Pales-trina.  Of the gradual degradation of the operatic art as its forms became more elaborate and fixed; of the arbitrary transfer of absolute musical forms like the aria, duet, finale, etc., into the action of the opera without regard to poetic propriety; of the growing tendency to treat the human voice like any other instrument, merely to show its resources as an organ; of the final utter bondage of the poet to the musician, till opera became little more than a congeries of musico-gymnastic forms, wherein the vocal soloists could display their art, it needs not to speak at length, for some of these vices have not yet disappeared.  In the language of Dante’s guide through the Inferno, at one stage of their wanderings, when the sights were peculiarly mournful and desolate—­

     “Non raggioniam da lor, ma guarda e passa.”

The loss of all poetic verity and earnestness in opera furnished the great composer Gluck with the motive of the bitter and protracted contest which he waged with varying success throughout Europe, though principally in Paris.  Gluck boldly affirmed, and carried out the principle in his compositions, that the task of dramatic music was to accompany the different phases of emotion in the text, and give them their highest effect of spiritual intensity.  The singer must be the mouthpiece of the poet, and must take extreme care in giving the full poetical burden of the song.  Thus, the declamatory music became of great importance, and Gluck’s recitative reached an unequaled degree of perfection.