Wagner as Man & Artist

by Ernest Newman

VIII

If, then, there is no æsthetic falsity involved in assuming some previous knowledge of the action or the motive on the part of the spectator, or in communicating this knowledge by other means than a stage presentation, why should we not boldly recognise that the time is ripe for a new form of art that shall carry the potency of music a step further than it was carried by Wagner? After all, it is the music that counts for ninety-five per cent, of our enjoyment of a Wagner opera. The "philosophy" of the Ring may be something to write or read about in the study, but in the theatre it really goes for very little. It is interesting to talk about the Schopenhauerian or Hindoo significance of the discourse of the lovers, in the second Act of Tristan, upon Love and Death, and Night and Day; but again—for how much does this count in the theatre? Has there ever been a single spectator, since Tristan was first given, who could make out from the performance alone what philosophy it was the lovers were talking, or whether they were talking philosophy at all? And how many people who do know the text at this point—because they have read it—feel in the theatre that very much of the essential emotion of the work would be lost if the characters sang Chinese words, or Choctaw words, or no words at all, so long as the music was left to tell its own tale? I must guard against possible misunderstanding here. I am not for a moment urging that speech should henceforth be banished from opera as a mere superfluity.[417] There are many subjects in which it will always be a necessity; the world of the Meistersinger, for instance, could have been made real to us in no other medium than that of music with words. But I do contend that there are many poetic subjects in which virtually the whole of the expression could be entrusted with perfect safety to music alone,—not necessarily in the form of a symphonic poem, but in a sort of drama without actors—if the paradox may be permitted—or with speechless actors. And could we not in this way approach a step nearer to the ideal musical art-work, in which all the needful suggestiveness of poetry was retained without any admixture of the cruder non-musical elements that at present merely go to make plot and persons intelligible to the auditor?