Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/228

is absolutely certain) in a continuous and systematic way. The essential feature of the leit-motiv lies in these two characteristics; it is a fixed musical formula attached to a person, a sentiment, an idea or a situation, and reappearing every time they reappear on the stage or in the words. In the Tetralogy it often has a wonderful effect: often also it has a very heavy one. In any case the possibility of applying it presupposes a dramatic composition of a very special kind, one in which the characters have no natural life, and are personified abstractions or walking images rather than really animated beings. The fixity of the formula cannot be made to suit the expression of living beings or things in action or movement. It is therefore utterly absurd to employ the Wagnerian leit-motiv in the music of a drama of normal quality, I mean one that aims at giving us the impression of life and nature. A young musician not fanatically devoted to Wagner, once told me that whatever might be the case with other elements of his art he had at least found in the leit motiv the only possible means of giving musical unity to composition. I do not believe anything of the kind. The greatest dramatic musicians of the past left something still to be discovered in this respect; Wagner has the very great merit of having posed this problem of unity, but the solution which he adopted cannot pretend to have a general validity. The problem perhaps still awaits solution, at any rate in part. But sooner or later a genius will arise who will easily fill this gap, almost unconsciously, and certainly without having recourse to these gross and glaring methods.