XVI.—Music in the Plays of Ludwig Anzengruber

Extract

From time immemorial, it would seem, music and drama have been closely associated, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that music has ever been the handmaid of drama. The import and significance of the choral odes in the Greek theatre, the charming uses of song in Shakespeare's plays, the development of music as a dramatic medium, culminating in the work of Richard Wagner—these phenomena are familiar to all. Yet it may fairly be said that not all the possibilities of the union of music and drama have yet been realized. In musical comedy the dramatic element is negligible; in opera the music is our chief interest. It has remained for a little-known Austrian dramatist to point the way to a new type of play, in which music shall be subordinated, yet indispensable, taking its definite share in the action without usurping the whole stage.