The public was persistently informed that his compositions were beyond
ordinary comprehension, and yet designed, as they were, to picture man's
essential life, they have slowly but surely found their way to the
popular heart. It was the very essence of his musical dramatic creed
that to have blood in its veins and sincerity in its soul art must come
from the people and be addressed to the people. He chose the national
myth and hero tradition as the basis of his music-drama because of the
universality of their content and application, and because he believed
they reflected the German world-view. Himself he regarded as the
Siegfried whose mission it was to slay the dragon of sordid materialism
and awaken the slumbering bride of German art.
Bach and Chopin had anticipated him in some of his most startling chord
progressions. The motives of Bach's fugues and Beethoven's sonatas and
symphonies, and the so-called "leading motives" of the Frenchman, Hector
Berlioz, had preceded his "typical motives.
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