Preliminary Encouragements - Page 2

In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell
us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias,
recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with
counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are
passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other
ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their
prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never
driving at anything of this sort any more than Shakespeare in
his plays is driving at such ingenuities of verse-making as
sonnets, triolets, and the like. And this is why he is so easy
for the natural musician who has had no academic teaching. The
professors, when Wagner's music is played to them, exclaim at
once "What is this? Is it aria, or recitative? Is there no
cabaletta to it--not even a full close? Why was that discord not
prepared; and why does he not resolve it correctly? How dare he
indulge in those scandalous and illicit transitions into a key
that has not one note in common with the key he has just left?
Listen to those false relations! What does he want with six
drums and eight horns when Mozart worked miracles with two of
each? The man is no musician." The layman neither knows nor
cares about any of these things. If Wagner were to turn aside
from his straightforward dramatic purpose to propitiate the
professors with correct exercises in sonata form, his music
would at once become unintelligible to the unsophisticated
spectator, upon whom the familiar and dreaded "classical"
sensation would descend like the influenza. Nothing of the kind
need be dreaded. The unskilled, untaught musician may approach
Wagner boldly; for there is no possibility of a misunderstanding
between them: The Ring music is perfectly single and simple. It
is the adept musician of the old school who has everything to
unlearn: and him I leave, unpitied, to his fate.