musician must find the appropriate emotional expression. Other things being equal, a good text is obviously better than a poor one, but the success even of such operas as Verdi's 'Otello' and 'Falstaff' (of which an admirable performance was quite recently given by the students of the Royal College of Music) is due not to the share which Shakespeare and Boito have had in the text, but to the composer's instinct for seeing the musical value of each situation and his gift for emphasising the emotions underlying the poet's ideas.

Many attempts have been made to solve the problem of words and music. There are the numerous examples of 'melodrama ' left by composers from Benda and Jean-Jacques Rousseau down to those of the present day, in which the speaking voice is combined with music. But no one can have heard even such masterpieces as Schumann's Haideknabe,' or the early version of Humperdinck's' Königskinder,' without wishing to disintegrate the two elements and to hear each separately. The two elements are in fact irreconcilable when presented in this way, because each belongs to a different world and is governed by different laws. Debussy has tried to solve the problem by making the vocal phrases so closely follow the natural inflexions of the speaking voice that they merely add emphasis to the words, and seem to form a single entity with them against the orchestra which supplies a coloured harmonic background for the acting. But so long as the voice is used not for realistic but for musical purposes, it will outweigh the rest of the orchestra, because it is by far the most personal and the most perfect of all the instruments we possess.

Now Strauss does not eliminate the voice for musical purposes as Debussy does; nor, like Moussorgsky, does he let it carry the whole weight of the musical phrase; nor again does he balance voice and orchestra against one another on equal terms like Mozart. Sometimes he ignores the voice and sometimes he emphasises it. He does not ignore it, as Wagner ignores it in such a place as the Liebestod, where the orchestra carries the weight of the melody and the texture is so rich that the voice has practically nothing to add to the ensemble. He ignores it by giving it unemphatic and unvocal phrases to declaim, and then he smothers it with the orchestra. Salome' contains hardly a single vocal phrase as such, except the theme

allotted to the Baptist. This is emphatic enough, and, like some of the vocal themes which are much emphasised in 'Elektra' and 'Ariadne,' is utterly commonplace and vulgar. This thematic vulgarisation, as soon as the theme is vocal, is characteristic of all Strauss's operas. None of the tunes in his purely orchestral music, except perhaps the subject of the new Festliches Praeludium,' is so essentially the lineal offspring of the worst kind of German male-voice quartet as the Baptist's theme in 'Salome,' Chrysothemis's theme in ‘Elektra,' and the tune in D flat in the trio at the end of 'Ariadne.' It is to be noticed also that in 'Elektra' Strauss ignores the voice less than in 'Salome'; and in 'Der Rosenkavalier' and Ariadne' he pays still greater attention to it. Zerbinetta's florid air contains poor coloratura and shows little sense of style, but it is at any rate designed to be emphatically vocal, and so is the whole of the last section of the opera. Much of his best music is to be found in 'Der Rosenkavalier,' and the fact, that the two concerted numbers which are vocally most effective bring the opera to an end, emphasises the change in the composer's point of view since the days of 'Salome.'

One of the weaknesses of 'Der Rosenkavalier' is the unsatisfactory character of the libretto, which alternates between sentimental comedy and rough-and-tumble farce, the farce interrupting the comedy to such an extent that the main character in the first act-the Princess-completely disappears until the very end of the opera, when she has been forgotten and when her return is felt as an intrusion. Ariadne' too is unsatisfactory in this way as an opera, or rather as a mixture of two operas, for nothing is gained by Strauss's method of giving the two together, and a good deal is lost. The combination of a romantic opera beginning on a tragic note with an episode from the Comedy of Masks might have been made quite interesting. The tragedy might have become more tragic if the light-hearted comedians had held the stage simultaneously with Ariadne; or the comedy might have been made more frivolous by contrast with the solitary figure behind; or some quite new and unbelievable world, where the fantastic and the baroque alone had a right to reign, might have been created by blending the two sets of characters with delicacy and imagination. As it was, the story of Ariadne and the play of the comedians did not blend or really overlap to any purpose;

they only alternated, and the result was neither one thing nor the other, neither romance nor fantastic comedy, neither tragedy nor farce, but only dull confusion of two apparently irreconcilable elements. The music too was a confusion of two styles-Strauss's own heavy romantic way of writing, which was at its best in the final duet, and a would-be eighteenth-century idiom, which, like the attempt to recapture the Viennese atmosphere in Der Rosenkavalier,' illustrates the danger of coquetting with the antique. The modern writing sounds at least spontaneous and sincere; the other is essentially Wardour Street music with '1870' and not 1780' showing through its veneer. M. Jourdain, too, is quite an irrelevant figure. He only interrupts the opera by occasional asides (the purport of which was changed in the English version), and might very well have been omitted altogether in favour of a footnote, giving reasons (of which several occur to one) for getting two operas of the sort over in half the time they would require if taken separately.

But the important characteristics of both these later operas are the attention which Strauss gives to the voice and his recognition of the claims of music to be treated at least on terms of equality with the drama. In so far as this is so, he is moving towards the main conclusion to which Cui and his fellow Russians came in considering the operatic problem, the conclusion which Rimsky-Korsakov formulated in a single sentence when he said that 'an opera is above all things a musical 'work.' Stated in these terms the proposition seems too obvious to be contradicted. That its truth needs nevertheless from time to time to be impressed upon composers, as well as audiences, may be inferred from the foregoing brief survey of some of the various types of opera that have prevailed during the last fifty years.

LAWRENCE HAWARD.

THE RENAISSANCE OF DANCING

I. The Russian Ballet. By A. E. JOHNSON. Constable. 1913. 2. The Art of Nijinski. By GEOFFREY WHITWORTH. Chatto and Windus. 1913.

3. Modern Dancing and Dancers. By J. E. CRAWFORD FLITCH. Grant Richards. 1911.

O the average Anglo-Saxon dancing is an amusement, either a spectacular entertainment at which the interest is more often concentrated upon the personal charms of the performers than upon their skill, or a ballroom gathering which suggests an agreeable combination of music and colour, of shady corners and pleasant meetings. To some people it is a puerile diversion merely worthy of contempt; to others a grossly immoral proceeding deserving of utter reprobation. The possibility of its being a serious form of art, requiring a long and arduous apprenticeship and meriting careful and critical comprehension, is a fact appreciated by a minority. Dancing as an integral part of life, an essential factor in religion, as one of the major arts expressive and interpretative, as a valuable educational training, is at the present day hardly conceivable.

The majority of the public have long been content to tolerate its appearance as an inevitable but somewhat uninteresting part of a pantomime, or as one of the less attractive items of a music-hall programme. There is, of course, at times a furore for some particular dancer; and the mass of colour and movement of a good ballet, especially if reinforced by the more questionable charm of a troupe of high kickers, is a fairly certain attraction; but on the whole it must be allowed that the critical appreciation of dancing as an art is limited. Most men probably agree with Shelley's dictum, that every male dancer ought to be hamstrung for effeminacy; and it is by no means one of the least of the triumphs of M. Nijinski, of the Russian Ballet, and M. Mordkin at the Palace Theatre, that they have demonstrated the fact that a man can dance without being necessarily effeminate or ridiculous.

The ballet has tended-in common, it must be allowed,

with other forms of entertainment-to make less and less demand upon intelligence and intellectual appreciation, and more and more upon the eye, by providing a simple sensuous impression of colour on movement. Gradually it has developed into a mere spectacular show, a gorgeous riot of beautiful dresses and faces, the chief interest and attraction of which has remarkably little to do with dancing. Vast sums of money are spent on scenery and dress, large bodies of women, of whom very few are really dancers, are marshalled on to the stage to perform a few more or less simple evolutions, and to compose a background for the performance of one or two favourites.

The dancing, however, which is now coming into fashion, and which seems likely to gain increasing favour, if not to effect a permanent influence, is something different. We are now asked to look upon dancing as an art, as an expression of emotional individuality to a degree, and in a way, to which we have not hitherto been accustomed. This revival has not only had a spontaneous origin in this country but has also come to us from both East and West. There is the renewed interest in the old English dances; the revolt against the limitation of the time-honoured waltz and polka in order to get freedom and interest into the ballroom: the advent of Miss Isadora Duncan from New York and Miss Maud Allan from the wilds of California, calling us to return to nature in the guise of the old Greek dances. From Russia, via Paris, where so much that is new in art and literature has arisen in recent years to stir the rest of Europe, have come Mme. Pavlova and M. Mordkin, and as a culmination the full Russian ballet.

The books at the head of this article-a further indication of the interest that is being aroused on all sides-make an opportune appearance. It is particularly valuable, when the air is so full of ideas and theories with regard to the dance, to have so sane and comprehensive a study of the art of stage dancing as that given by Mr. Crawford Flitch in Modern 'Dancing and Dancers.' All kinds of dancing that have been in vogue during recent years are fully treated. If we are not quite able to endorse the writer's prophecy that dancing is again to hold the place it held in the ancient world, we may well believe that we have in this movement an impetus that will raise the position of dancing-particularly the pantomimic dance-into the region of serious art.