. Richard Wagner : his life and works . he affirms that Wagner would allow no narrations in his operas,and claims that all the important facts are unfolded upon the stage, — there ishardly one of his works, on the contrary, where the recitatives do not hold a veryconsiderable place ; — but he is more in the right when he sums up in few wordsthe different styles in which WTagner successively treated the vocal parts. At theoutset, in Rienzi, he aimed only for simple melodies in which the singer could RICHARD WAGNER 403 become the subjects, or more properly speaking, the themes,which the dramatic
. Richard Wagner : his life and works . he affirms that Wagner would allow no narrations in his operas,and claims that all the important facts are unfolded upon the stage, — there ishardly one of his works, on the contrary, where the recitatives do not hold a veryconsiderable place ; — but he is more in the right when he sums up in few wordsthe different styles in which WTagner successively treated the vocal parts. At theoutset, in Rienzi, he aimed only for simple melodies in which the singer could RICHARD WAGNER 403 become the subjects, or more properly speaking, the themes,which the dramatic symphonist employed while making useof all the orchestral resources of Beethoven, but adding there-to all that the course of the dramatic action could suggest tohim. The tableaux and the events which are unfolded on thestage thus become visions explained by the symphonic music;the orchestra prepares and starts the action, supports thedetails, recalls past events and becomes, in a manner, theartistic conscience of the entire EXCLAMATION FROM ONE OF RICHARD WAGNERS FANATICS. Blissful master, the bassoons are with thee ! (Kikcriki, Vienna, Aug. 6, 1882.) There is little enough point to this motto in the German, and that little disappears in process of translation. Assuredly, it would be ill-timed to demand of all themusicians who write for the theatre a preparatory labor ofthis kind, an equal amount of diversified knowledge, in aa word, an identical method of conceiving and executing, easily produce an effect; then in the Flying Dutchman and still more in Tann-hauser, the ebb and flow of melody is ruled by the dramatic action; in Lohengrin,the emotions attract quite as much attention as the peculiarities of melody, whereasa characteristic harmony and instrumentation accents the melodic outline ; finally,in his latest works, the vocal melody springs directly from the words; it is oftenindependent of the orchestra, and in some cases it is actually nothing more thanan int
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