Often, when several characters are participating in a scene, or when the act or influence of one, or the principle for which he stands in the drama, is potent, though he himself is not present, Wagner with rare skill combines several motives, utilizing for this purpose all the resources of counterpoint. Elsewhere I already have described how he has done this in the Magic Fire Scene in “Die Walküre,” and one could add page after page of examples of this kind. I have also spoken of his supreme mastership of instrumentation, through which he gives an endless variety of tone color to his score.
Wagner was a great dramatist, but he was a far greater musician. There are many splendid scenes and climaxes in the dramas which he wrote for his music, and if he had not been a composer it is possible he would have achieved immortality as a writer of tragedy. On the other hand, however, there are in his dramas many long stretches in which the action is unconsciously delayed by talk. He believed that music and drama should go hand in hand and each be of equal interest; but his supreme musicianship has disproved his own theories, for his dramas derive the breath of life from his music. Theoretically, he is not supposed to have written absolute music—music for its own sake—but music that would be intelligible and interesting only in connection with the drama to which it was set. But the scores of the great scenes in his music-dramas, played simply as instrumental selections in concert and 275 without the slightest clue to their meaning in their given place, constitute the greatest achievements in absolute music that history up to the present time can show.
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