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Readers desirous of studying the tetralogy more closely, whether from its literary, ethical, or musical side, must refer to one or more of the many handbooks devoted to its elucidation for criticism on a more elaborate scale than is possible within the narrow limits of such a work as the present.
He demanded that no one should admire him for the opposite of what he was: and he was always prone to regard as enemies those who were his friends, by mistake. And so he was not at all pleased with Kling for seeing in him a disciple of Wagner, and trying to see connections between passages of his Lieder and passages of the Tetralogy, which had nothing in common but certain notes of the scale.
The culminating art-splendor of his life, however, was the production of his stupendous tetralogy, the "Ring der Nibelungen," at the great opera-house at Baireuth, in the summer of the year 1876. The first element to be noted in Wagner's operatic forms is the energetic protest against the artificial and conventional in music.
The others form a consecutive series, in the following order: Richard II. the two parts of Henry IV., Henry V., the three parts of Henry VI., and Richard III. This series may be divided into two, each forming a tetralogy, or group of four plays. In the first the subject is the rise of the house of Lancaster. But the power of the Red Rose was founded in usurpation.
We all enjoy these little pictures of the Tetralogy, delicately drawn and worked up by the aid of a magnifying-glass pictures of Wagner, languishing and beautiful, in a mournful salon, and pictures of the athletic meetings of the other musicians, who were "too robust"! The amusing part is that this piece of wit has been taken seriously by certain arbiters of elegance, who are only too happy to be able to run counter to any current opinion, whatever it may be.
For those who have sensitive feelings the fourth day of the Tetralogy has a depressing effect. I remember the tears I have seen shed at the end of the Ring, and the words of a friend, as we left the theatre at Bayreuth and descended the hill at night: "I feel as though I were coming away from the burial of someone I dearly loved." It was truly a time of mourning.
There is little scope in it for the delicate psychology which enriches the later divisions of the tetralogy, but, on the other hand, Wagner has reproduced the 'large utterance of the early gods' with exquisite art.
And so it happens that for six years the Chevillard Concerts have been given at the back of a music-hall, which has the same entrance, and which is only separated from the concert-room by a small passage, so that the roaring choruses of a danse du venire may mingle with an adagio of Beethoven's or a scene from the Tetralogy.
After the books on the three cities Zola planned a sort of tetralogy, intended to sum up his social philosophy, which he called the "Four Gospels." Feconditie is a tract against race suicide. The others of this series are entitled Travail, Verite and Justice, the latter projected but not begun.
Nearly half a century has passed since the tetralogy was written; and in that time the purposes of many half instinctive acts of genius have become clearer to the common man than they were to the doers.
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