[316] On this point see Albert Schweitzer's J. S. Bach (Eng. trans.), chap. xx.
[317] And of course the quality of the mixture of these factors may vary in different works of the same composer.
[318] Ein glücklicher Abend, in G.S., i. 143, 144.
[319] See Mr. E. Dannreuther's article on Wagner in the new edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, v. 414.
[320] Like all musicians of that time, Wagner had no suspicion of the enormous amount of tone-painting there is in Bach.
[321] Ein glücklicher Abend, in G.S., i. 147, 148.
[322] He expresses the same idea nearly thirty years later in his essay on Beethoven. "What is the dramatic action of the Leonora opera-text but an almost disagreeable watering down of the drama we have lived through in the overture,—as it were a tedious explanatory commentary by Gervinus on a scene by Shakespeare?" Beethoven, in G.S., ix. 105.
[323] This was the explanation of his dislike for much of Berlioz's music. See his remarks on Berlioz in the article On Liszt's Symphonic Poems (G.S., v. 193, 194), and a similar passage in the conversation quoted by Mr. Dannreuther (Grove's Dictionary, v. 414): "The middle of Berlioz's touching scène d'amour in his Romeo and Juliet is meant by him to reproduce in musical phrases the lines about the lark and the nightingale in Shakespeare's balcony scene, but it does nothing of the sort—it is not intelligible as music."
[324] The only other element introduced is the song of the Norwegian sailors from the last Act, which, however good in itself, is perhaps a superfluity in the overture,—a slight concession to that passion for reproducing the details of the drama that Wagner reprobated in others. The true symbolic conflict of the governing desires and principles of the opera can and should be all suggested in the music of Senta and the Dutchman.
[325] Loc. cit., i. 204, 205.