New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1907-01-23
THE MUSIC OF WAGNER.
BY Robert G. lneersoll.

OF one thing am certain, and that
is that music was born Of love. Had
there never been any human affection,
there never would have been uttered
strain of music. Possibly some
mother, looking in the eyes of her
babe, gave the first melody to the
enraptured air.
Language is not subtle enough, ten
der enough, to express ali that we
feel, and when language fails the
highest and deepest longings are
translated into music. Music is the
sunshine, the climate of the soul, and
it floods the heart with a perfect June.
I am also satisfied that the greatest
music is the most marvellous mingling
of love and death. Love is the great
est of all passions and death is it's
shadow. Death gets all its terror
from love, and love gets it's intensity,
is radiance, it's glory and its rapture
from the darkness of death. Love is
a flower that grows on the edge of the
grave.
When I read Shakspere, am
astonished that he has expressed so
much with common words, to which
he seems to give new meaning; and so
when l hear Wagner exclaim: Is it
possible that all this is done with
common air!
In Wagner's music there is touch
of chaos that suggests the infinite.
The melodies seem strange and chang
ing forms like summer clouds, and
wierd harmonies come like sounds
from the sea, brought by fitful winds,
and others moan like waves on desc
late shores, and mingled with these
are shouts Of Joy, with signs and sobs
and ripples- of laughter and the
wondrous vocies of eternal love.
Wagner is the SHAKESPEARE of music.
The funeral march for "Siegfried" is
the funeral music for all the dead.
Should all the gsds die, this music
would be perfectly appropriate. It is
elemental, universal, eternal. The
love-music in Tristan and Isolde is,
like ''Romeo and Juliet, - an express
sion Of the human heart for all time.
SO the love duetin 1.-THE Flying Dutch
man. has in it the conservation, the
infinite self-denial of love. The whole
heart is given-every note has wings,
and rises and poises like an eagle in
the heaven of sound.
When I listen to the music of Wag-
ner see pictures, forms, glimpses of
the perfect-the swell of hip. the
wave of breast, the glance of an eye.
l am in the midst of the great galleries.
Before me are passing the endless
panoramas. / see vast landscapes
with valleys OF verdure and vine, with
soaring crags, snow-cro#ned. I am
on the wide seas where countless bill
lows burst into the whitecaps of joy.
/ am in the depths ofcavesa o'erWalled
with mighty crags, while through some
rent see the eternal stars. In a mo-
ment the music becomes a river OF
melody flowing through omewondrous
lane suddenly it falls in strange
chasms, and the mighty cataract is
changedto seven-hued foam.
Great music is always sad, because
it tells US of the perfect, and such is
the difference between what we are
and that which music suggests, that
even in the vase of Joy we find some
tears.
The music of Wagner has color, and
when I hear the violins the morning
seems to slowly come. A horn puts a
star above the horizon The night in
the purple hum of bass wanders
away like some enormous bee across
wide fields of dead clover. The light
grows whittier. as the violins increase
Color comes from the other instru.
ments, and then the full orchestra
floods the world with day.
Wagner seems not only to have
given us new tones, new combinations
but the moment the orchestra begins
to play his music, all the intruments
are TRANSPORTED. They seem to utter
the sounds that they have been long
ing to utter. The horns run riot, the
drums and cymbals join in the genera
JOY. The old bass viols are alive
with passion. The 'cellos throb with
love, the violins are seized with q