His disquisitions on music
as an art and on Beethoven in particular, are always lucid and forcible.
He may be misty in his philosophical speculations, but when he speaks
on music it is in the authoritative tone of the master, familiar with
every phase of his subject. He always contributes something of value,
and his thoughts are an illumination.
Had Wagner never written a line of music, had he elected to be a
literary man, a poet, a dramatist, philosopher, his fame to-day would
still be world-wide. Had he confined his genius into this one channel of
literary expression, as was his original intention, with his mental
equipment, and a Napoleonic ambition that balked at nothing, the product
would have been as original and extraordinary, we may be sure, as is his
art-product in music. Wagner, the musician, is so commanding a figure
that the literary man is obscured; but when we consider the magnitude of
his literary achievement, the dramas Tannhaeuser, Lohengrin, Flying
Dutchman, Tristan, Parsifal, the stupendous Ring of the Nibelung, the
essays on music, philosophy, criticism and sociology, and reflect that
it is, so to speak, a by-product, it becomes apparent that, had he made
literature his chief aim in life, the result would have been notable in
the annals of the century.
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