[4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus, see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.
Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of which, in fact, the æsthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.
Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of "Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely, with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of tonality than any other known composer of the day.