He is absolutely himself, absolutely characteristic, for example, in his tripartite tone-poem, "Jour d'été à la montagne." This music is a hymn the grave ecstasy and the utter sincerity of which are as evident as they are impressive. In its art it is remarkable – not so monumental in plan, so astoundingly complex in detail, as his superb B-minor symphony, yet a work that is full of his peculiar traits.
Now it would seem as if so fastidious and individual a musician as this might do something of very uncommon quality if he once turned his hand to opera-making. Yet in his "L'Étranger," completed only a year before he began work on his astonishing B-minor symphony, and in his "Fervaal" (1889-95), we have the melancholy spectacle of M. d'Indy concealing his own admirable and expressive countenance behind an ill-fitting mask modelled imperfectly after the lineaments of Richard Wagner. In these operas (d'Indy calls them, by the way, an action dramatique and an action musicale: evident derivations from the "Tristan" – esque Handlung) – in these operas, the speech, from first to last, is the speech of Wagner. The themes, the harmonic structure, the use of the voice, the plots (d'Indy, like Wagner, is his own librettist) – all is uncommuted Wagnerism, with some of the Teutonic cumbrousness deleted and some of the Gallic balance and measure infused. These scores have occasional beauty, but it is seldom the beauty that is peculiar to d'Indy's own genius: it is an imported and alien beauty, a beauty that has in it an element of betrayal.
We find ourselves confronting a situation that is equally dispiriting to the seeker after valuable achievements in contemporary French opera when we view the performances of such minor personages as Massenet, Bruneau, Reyer, Erlanger, and Charpentier. They are all tarred, in a great or small degree, with the Wagnerian stick. When they speak out of their own hearts and understandings they are far from commanding: they are vulgarly sentimental or prettily lascivious, like the amiable Massenet, or pretentious and banal, like Bruneau, or incredibly dull, like Reyer, or picturesquely superficial, like Charpentier – though the author of "Louise" disports himself with a beguiling grace and verve which almost causes one to forgive his essential emptiness.
Modern Italy discloses a single dominant and vivid figure. In none of his compatriots is there any distinction of speech, of character. In that country the memory of Wagner is less imperious in its control; yet not one of its living music-makers, with the exception that I have made, has that atmosphere and quality of his own which there is no mistaking.
I have referred by implication and reservation to three personalities in the art of the modern lyric-drama who stand out as salient figures from the confused and amorphous background against which they are to be observed: who seem to me to represent the only significant and important manifestations of the creative spirit which have thus far come to the surface in the post-Wagnerian music-drama. They are, it need scarcely be said, Puccini in Italy, Richard Strauss in Germany, and Debussy in France. Yet these men built upon the foundations laid by Wagner; they took many leaves from his vast book of instructions, in some cases stopping short of the full reach of his plans as imagined by himself, in other cases carrying his schemes to a point of development far beyond any result of which he dreamed. But they have not attempted to say the things which they had to say in the way that he would have said them. They have been content with their own eloquence; and it has not betrayed them. No one is writing music for the stage which has the profile, the saliency, the vitality, the personal flavour, which distinguish the productions of these men. So far as it is possible to discern from the present vantage-ground, the future – at least the immediate future – of the lyric stage is theirs. In no other quarters may one observe any manifestations that are not either negligible by reason of their own quality, or mere dilutions, with or without adulterous admixtures, of the Wagnerian brew.
A VIEW OF PUCCINI
A plain-spoken and not too reverent observer of contemporary musical manners, discussing the melodic style of the Young Italian opera-makers, has observed that it is fortunate in that it "gives the singers opportunity to pour out their voices in that lavish volume and intensity which provoke applause as infallibly as horseradish provokes tears." The comment has a good deal of what Sir Willoughby Patterne would have called "rough truth." It is fairly obvious that there is nothing in the entire range of opera so inevitably calculated to produce an instant effect as a certain kind of frank and sweeping lyricism allied with swiftness of dramatic emotion; and it is because the young lions of modern Italy – Puccini and his lesser brethren – have profoundly appreciated this elemental truth, that they address their generation with so immediate an effect.
In those days when the impetus of a pristine enthusiasm drove the more intelligent order of opera-goers to performances of Wagner, it was a labour of love to learn to know and understand the texts of his obscure and laboured dramas; and even the guide-books, which were as leaves in Vallombrosa, were prayerfully studied. But to-day there are no Wagnerites. We are no longer impelled by an apostolic fervour to delve curiously into the complex genealogy and elaborate ethics of the "Ring," and it is no longer quite clear to many slothful intelligences just what Tristan and Isolde are talking about in the dusk of King Mark's garden. There will always be a small group of the faithful who, through invincible and loving study, will have learned by heart every secret of these dramas. But for the casual opera-goer, granting him all possible intelligence and intellectual curiosity, they cannot but seem the reverse of crystal-clear, logical, and compact. A score of years ago those who cared at all for the dramatic element in opera, and the measure of whose delight was not filled up by the vocal pyrotechny which was the mainstay of the operas of the older répertoire, found in these music-dramas their chief solace and satisfaction. Wagner reigned then virtually alone over his kingdom. The dignity, the imaginative power, and the impressive emotional sweep of his dramas, as dramas, offset their obscurity and their inordinate bulk; and always their splendid investiture of music exerted, in and of itself, an enthralling fascination. And that condition of affairs might have continued for much longer had not certain impetuous young men of modern Italy demonstrated the possibility of writing operas which were both engrossing on their purely dramatic side and, in their music, eloquent with the eloquence that had come to be expected of the modern opera-maker. Moreover, these music-dramas had the incalculable merit, for our time and environment, of being both swift in movement and unimpeachably obvious in meaning. Thereupon began the reign of young Italy in contemporary opera. It was inaugurated with the "Cavalleria Rusticana" of Mascagni and the "I Pagliacci" of Leoncavallo; and it is continued to-day, with immense vigour and persistence, by Puccini with all his later works. The sway of the composer of "Tosca," "Bohème," and "Madame Butterfly" is triumphant and wellnigh absolute; and the reasons for it are not elusive. He has selected for musical treatment dramas that are terse and rapid in action and intelligible in detail, and he has underscored them with music that is impassioned, incisive, highly spiced, rhetorical, sometimes poetic and ingenious, and pervadingly sentimental. Moreover, he possesses, as his most prosperous attribute, that facility in writing fervid