The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
11.
As an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to _Riemann's_ services to rhythmics; he was the first who called attention to the leading idea in punctuation--even for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad word; he called it "phrasing").--All these people, and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner's admirers--they have a perfect right to honour Wagner. The same instinct unites them with one another; in him they recognise their highest type, and since he has inflamed them with his own ardour they feel themselves transformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's influence has really been _beneficent._ Never before has there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now exact and _obtain_ from themselves, they had never exacted before Wagner's time--before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise very scarce,--the good and the excellent have become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more "dramatic" effect. Even talent is out of the question.
Expressiveness at all costs, which is what the Wagnerian ideal--the ideal of decadence--demands, is hardly compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue--that is to say, training, automatism, "self-denial." Neither taste, voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage requires but one thing: _Germans!..._ The definition of a German: an obedient man with long legs.... There is a deep significance in the fact that the rise of Wagner should have coincided with the rise of the "Empire": both phenomena are a proof of one and the same thing--obedience and long legs.--Never have people been more obedient, never have they been so well ordered about. The conductors of Wagnerian orchestras, more particularly, are worthy of an age, which posterity will one day call, with timid awe, the _classical age of war._ Wagner understood how to command; in this respect, too, he was a great teacher. He commanded as a man who had exercised an inexorable will over himself--as one who had practised lifelong discipline: Wagner was, perhaps, the greatest example of self-violence in the whole of the history of art (--even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a Torinese). This view, that our actors have become more worthy of respect than heretofore, does not imply that I believe them to have become less dangerous ... But who is in any doubt as to what I want,--as to what the _three requisitions_ are concerning which my wrath and my care and love of art, have made me open my mouth on this occasion? _That the stage should not become master of the arts. That the actor should not become the corrupter of the genuine._ _That music should not become an art of lying._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.