CHAPTER I.

THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA: ITS PROTOTYPES AND ELEMENTS.

Wagner a Regenerator of the Lyric Drama.--Greek Tragedy.--Solemn Speech and Music.--The Poet-composers of Hellas.--The Florentine Reformers and their Invention of the Lyric Drama.--Peri and Caccini.--Their Declamation.--Monteverde's Orchestra.--How Wagner Touches Hands with his Predecessors.--Poet and Composer.--Music a Means, not an Aim in the Drama.--A Typical Teuton, but also a Cosmopolite.--Teutonic and Roman Ideals.--Absolute Beauty and Characteristic Beauty.--The Ethical Idea in Wagner's Dramas.--Fundamental Principle of his Constructive Scheme. The Typical Phrases.--Symbols, not Labels.--Music as a Language.--Characteristics of Some Typical Phrases.--Wotan in Two Aspects.--Form the First Manifestation of Law in Music and Essential to Repose.--Tonality and the Effect of its Loss.--Phrases Delineative and Imitative of External Characteristics.--The Giants, the Dwarfs, the Rhine; Loge, the God of Fire.--Prophetic Use of the Phrases.--Their Dramatic Development.--Wagner's Orchestra and the Greek Chorus.--Alliteration and Rhyme.--The Ethical Idea Again. Pages 1-36