=Wagner’s Theory of the Music Drama=.—_Lohengrin_, like _The Flying Dutchman_, was transitional in character and led into Wagner’s third manner. It was his last opera; all his later works were known as music dramas. In these he pursued unhesitatingly the logical conclusions of the theories which he expounded at great length in his controversial writings, though he was far from being always consistent with himself. Thus he reasoned that since in the spoken drama but one speaker is heard at a time, the same practice should prevail in the music drama, which would naturally do away with all concerted music, choruses, etc. This rule he observed in _The Ring of the Nibelungen_, but he wisely abandoned it in his later works. In _Die Meistersinger_ he also failed to follow his theory that mythical and legendary subjects were the only suitable material for the music drama. Briefly stated, his ultimate conclusion was as follows: that the art-work of the future, as he called it, should consist of a synthesis of all the arts. Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, he asserted, had exhausted all that was possible to them as separate arts; a higher plane could be reached hereafter only by a combination which should gain unity by subordination to a single principle. This principle he found in poetry. Beethoven, he argued, had felt the insufficiency of music alone to express his deepest inspiration, and for that reason had incorporated in his last and greatest symphony a choral movement to the words of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” In the music drama, therefore, the scene painter replaces the artist and the architect, the actor by plastic poses the sculptor, while the musician must allow his music no form but that dictated by the poet in his verses. He ascribed the thrilling effect of the Greek drama to such a union of the arts and this it was his aim to revive through his own works.