=The Leading Motive=.—The part assigned by the Greek dramatists to the chorus who expounded and commented on the events of the play was in his scheme transferred to the orchestra. This he did by means of the _Leitmotiv_ (leading motive). A leitmotiv is a characteristic theme or harmonic progression associated with each of the _Dramatis Personæ_ and which appears with such modification of mode, rhythm, or any of its component parts as the dramatic situation demands. It is not confined to personages alone; in _The Ring of the Nibelung_, for instance, the stolen gold, the ring formed from it, the sword which plays such an important part in _Die Walküre_ and in _Siegfried_ all have their corresponding motives. It is through these motives that Wagner is able to give his orchestra an all but articulate speech and to weld the music drama into an organic whole. By their transformation and development he succeeds in indicating psychological states and changes as well as material conditions and objects. Reminiscent themes of a somewhat similar nature had been used as far back as Mozart and had been employed more freely by composers of the Romantic school, notably by Weber in _Der Freischütz_ and _Euryanthe_, but they were undeveloped and elementary in character. Berlioz in his _Fantastic Symphony_ was the first to conceive a typical theme and to alter it in logical accordance with the progression of his program, but he did not adopt the practice in his operas. [Illustration: WILHELM RICHARD WAGNER.] =The Unending Melody=.—Beginning with _Lohengrin_, Wagner abandoned fixed forms and substituted what he called unending melody, a practically continuous flow of tone divided alike between voices and instruments. For the most part he assigned the singer a declamation as far removed from the set aria on the one hand as it was from dry recitative of the early Italian opera on the other. Yet like the latter it was conditioned by principles of speech. Like the early composers, also, his subjects with but two exceptions were mythical or legendary. This, because the supernatural and the unreal correspond more closely with the ideal element introduced by the use of song for speech than material drawn from everyday experience or from the exact chronicles of history.