Note 97 — APPENDICES
Reading edition
'Music may accompany action, but can never become its substitute.'
'In the case even of the best and most ideal examples [of Programme-music] it always happened that I so completely lost the thread that no effort enabled me to recover it,' etc.
Wagner, at a certain period of his career, professed himself a partial convert to Programme-music—i.e., as it is exemplified in the works of Liszt; but it is scarcely possible to read his remarks at this point without feeling that they were wrested from him by his conception of the obligations of friendship, and the circumstances of the time. Confessing that he finds it extremely difficult to explain himself, he says that he leaves to others the task of developing his meaning, and returns repeatedly to the expression of his general dislike of Programme-music.