Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1882-10-10
Wagner's Music.

was HUI AucISs
The Wagner afternoon at the May
festival, we said, was both a reye.
lation and conversion. There were
many persons who had been in 1.-The
misty mid region" of doubt about
his music. But after that wonderful
performance they felt that they had
seen a great sight, and that there
could be reasonable doubt no longer
of the power and beauty of music.
In this last spring, also, the Wagner
opera has captivated London, and it
is plain from the newspapers of both
countries that the younger critics
will no more permit the old times and
the old masters to monpolize all the
fame of great music than Charles Yves
ley would permit the devil to have
all the good music. Indeed, when
composer draws princes and poten-
tates with their glittering trains, and
pilgrims of every lesser degree,
from all parts of Christendom to a
dull little town in Germany, and
when the great newspapers all over
the world give greater space to the
description of the performance of his
music than to political events and
battles which menace the existing
limits of States and nations, and
when all this betokens a universal
curiosity and interest in intelligent
and art>loving circles everywhere, it
can hardly be allowed that the sig
nifcance of the composer IN the world
of art should be CONTEMPORARY
challenged. The nature and value of
the power which produces this re-
suit 1t may not be easy precisely to
determine. But to stigmatize it as
merely eccentric charlatanry is laugh
able. There was quite as much
skeptical and scofing heak shaking
over Beethoven as there has been
over Wagner. That does not prove
Wagner to be a new Beethoven. But
it certainly does not help the theory
that he is pretentious quack and
mere grotesque sensationalist.
The performance OF ParsJm was
apparently successful. Indeed, where
there has been so much preparation
and anticipation, not to fail is to sue
coed. There was the inevitable com
parison with other works of the same
composer, but there was the un>
doubted touch of the same hand,
and an actual addition to the
NEUROLOGICAL opera. Wagner's theo-
ries of opera need not disturb the
hearer. So long as he produces such
music as was heard on the Wagner
afternoon in May, he may write it
according to what dogmas he will,
since no one susceptible to exquisite
musical effects can deny its charm
and power. He cannot, indeed, des
stroy the universal delight in melo.'
dy, in tune, and, despite the enthu-
siasts, it is still possible to enjoy
other music of other schools. Moth.
ing could well be more strikingly |
contrasted than the singing of Ma
terna and the singing of Gerster.
But it is poverty stricken taste that
can not enjoy both, each in it's own
kind.
True love in this differs from gold and |
clay,
That to divide is not to take away"
There still remains, indeed, the
question, whether is greater" the
Guelf or the Ghibelline? But this
is question which vexes only the
contentious, not the contented, mind.
The man who can see only one color,
who can enjoy only one scent, who
can hear but one strain, is bereaved
of more than half the charm of the
world.-Editors Easy Chair, in Har-
pers Magazine for October.
Dol4a~ that ill