who was more revolutionary, achieved the dramatic symphony, of which the
unequalled model to-day is still _Roméo et Juliette_.

The dramatic symphony naturally fell foul of all formal theories. Two
arguments were set up against it: one derived from Bayreuth, and by now
an act of faith; the other, current opinion, upheld by the crowd that
speaks of music without understanding it.

The first argument, maintained by Wagner, is that music cannot really
express action without the help of speech and gesture. It is in the name
of this opinion that so many people condemn _a priori_ Berlioz's
_Roméo_. They think it childish to try and _translate_ action into
music. I suppose they think it less childish to _illustrate_ an action
by music. Do they think that gesture associates itself very happily with
music? If only they would try to root up this great fiction, which has
bothered us for the last three centuries; if only they would open their
eyes and see--what great men like Rousseau and Tolstoy saw so
clearly--the silliness of opera; if only they would see the anomalies of
the Bayreuth show. In the second act of _Tristan_ there is a celebrated
passage, where Ysolde, burning with desire, is waiting for Tristan; she
sees him come at last, and from afar she waves her scarf to the
accompaniment of a phrase repeated several times by the orchestra. I
cannot express the effect produced on me by that _imitation_ (for it is
nothing else) of a series of sounds by a series of gestures; I can never
see it without indignation or without laughing. The curious thing is
that when one hears this passage at a concert, one sees the gesture. At
the theatre either one does not "see" it, or it appears childish. The
natural action becomes stiff when clad in musical armour, and the
absurdity of trying to make the two agree is forced upon one. In the
music of _Rheingold_ one pictures the stature and gait of the giants,