New-York tribune., 1883-03-11
WAGNhRlSM


II can hardly have escaped notice that most
Of the memorial performances by which musical
societies are demonstrating their respect for
the name Of Richard Wagner impress the out
slider as pertaining not more to the obsequies
of the great composer than to the death and
burial of great musical movement. The idea
may not be often expressed but 1t is more or
less vaguely entertained, that this is the end of
the long war, the final arrest of the new
tendencies in art, and that the Music of the
Future has suddenly by an irrevocable catas-
trophe become the Music of the Past. There
is some reason for this belief. but it is based
upon InisconceptOn of Wagnerism which il
may be worth while to examine.
If Wagner had been like most of his prede-
cessors, unfit to wrestlo with the world, and
willing at every reverse to find solitary comfort
in his art, his works might have rested in dusty
obscurity till long after he and his generation
had passed away But he was "A great fighter.
His energy, his pugnacty, bis perseverance and
his impudence were all of heroic proportions.
lie traversed his era like q streak of disturb
ance. compelling men to listen to him,
not at their pleasure but at his, and to
put his theories to a practical test whether
only at the external side of his immaculate
individual work we can have no hesitation ia
calling him the greatest single force that has
ever appeared in music. With his death Wag-
nerism as an agitation probably comes to full
stop. He has left enthusiastic and even fanat-
ica sdherents, but no one OF bis disciples has
ever shown a spark OF creative power. Com
mentators and interpreters do not constitute a
school and since no opers has been written
upon Wagner's principles except by the master
himself, the Wagner schoOl" " must be consld
cred misnomer. There is nobody to carry on
the Bayreuth idea, and in default of fresh
material to feed upon the discussion and exam
inaton must languish. Magnetism, both as an
agitation and as q creative impulse, was only
Wagner himself.
But if we look at Magnetism as tendency
in art, the permaDency Of this masters reform
seems to be little doubtful. Theodore Thomas
stated the case with precision when he said, in a
conversation reported some time ago in THE
TRIBUNE, that with Wagner music was only
means to an end, not the end itself, rs it was
with Mozart, Beethoven and Weber. Wagner
cared less about the creation of beautiful and
sensuOus forms than the employment Of music
as one or TWO or tnfce cQual agencies TOT the
dramatic expression of feeling; and go far as
dramatic music is concerned his principle is
now generally admitted to be the correct one.
All the important operas of the present day
show traces Of at least n tentative and partial
acceptance of it. The general result is to make
the music of the stage more impassiOncd, more
digniGed. and more freely pOetical than 1t could
be while it followed the old conventional pat
terms, and the gain that has been made in this
direction is not likely to be lost by any reaction.
Neither can we ever lCse the enormous I'M
provemcnt which Wagner made in the manage
ment of the orchestra The peculiarties OF his
method of scoring and the great results
achieved by it were explained in this paper at
the time of his death. These things belong to
the technical side of his art, and are among the
innovations which every great master hands
down to those Who come after him.
There were idiosyncrasies of the composer,
however, which must be considered apart from
his composition and his treatment Of the voices