A clause such as “Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond” readily suggests to the ear the position of musical accents which will be identical with those of the verse, but which leave the composer wholly free in his melodic treatment of _lines_. A single glance will demonstrate to the reader that the above words can be placed in lines three or four times as long without making the slightest change in the rhythmical effect produced by the alliteration. We now come to Wagner’s musical method, the nature of which has already been briefly indicated in the account of the birth in his mind of his new ideas. In his search after a modern substitute for the sustained intonation of the Greek drama, he had before him for study the dramatic recitative of Peri and the dramatic _arioso_ style of Gluck. The former was wholly unavailable. Years of use had fastened upon it a collection of traditional phrases, familiar to the ear of every one who goes often to hear opera or oratorio. These traditional phrases, hopelessly inflexible, made dramatic recitative a thing of conventionalities, and unconventionality was the only hope for Wagner’s system. The Gluck _arioso_ style was equally unsuited to his purpose, because, as we have been obliged to note before, it preserved the formalities of the old-fashioned opera,—those very formalities which Wagner felt that he must abandon if he would secure his compact union of the arts tributary to the stage. He needed a style of composition which would permit the music to flow freely from the words and which would impose no obligation on the composer to repeat certain words or lines in order that certain passages of music might be rounded out to a pretty close as in the old-fashioned aria. He was in search of lyric expressiveness freed from lyric conventionality. He therefore decided that each act of any one of his music-dramas must consist of one unbroken stream of melody. In other words, as long as there were persons or scenes before the audience, there must be a musical exposition of their moods, and that exposition must be unbroken and apparently unartificial in form, just as a train of moods is.