use of music in drama. For Wagner, mixing genres meant reuniting the art
forms that with the decline of Greek tragedy had become separated, this
disintegration of the unity of the arts being a symptom of the basic frag-
mentation that afflicts modern culture in general. Moreover, Wagner felt
that bringing the arts back together would actually lead to the regeneration
of modern culture. In Wagner's theory, art can affect politics, and the inner
can revolutionize the outer.

In particular, Wagner's thought belongs to the stream of nineteenth-cen-
tury redefinitions of tragedy. He explicitly placed his works within the
tradition of Greek tragedy, and many Wagner scholars have variously
investigated this topic. For instance, the influence of Greek tragedy upon
Wagner's works has best been outlined by Wolfgang Schadewaldt. ² The
three main aspects of Wagner's work that show, according to Schadewaldt,
the influence of Greek tragedy are, first, the notion of Greek tragedy as a
religious celebration; second, the raw material of Greek tragedy as myth
and legend, that is, indigenous products of the "Volk"; and, third, Greek
tragedy as a "Gesamtkunstwerk," that is, as a union of the arts of poetry,
music, and dance.

An analysis of Wagner's theory with regard to only the use of music in
drama thus neglects this important aspect of his thought. Wagner was, of
course, first and foremost a composer, but to regard his works as purely
musical phenomena does a great injustice to their complexity, in fact, their
very nature as a synthesis of art forms, as Wagner prescribed, of which
music is just one, regardless of the almost overwhelming importance it
assumes in his theory and dramas. In Oper und Drama, Wagner made a point
to describe music as a means to an end, and not an end in itself. Not only
does this treatise contain an elaborate theory about how to synthesize
words and music in the art-work of the future, which is presented mostly
in the third part of the treatise, but in the second part, Wagner discusses
German drama at great length. In this manner, Wagner embeds the theory
about words and music in a broader framework. He makes it clear that the
work he sketches out is drama, not opera. In particular, it is a modern
German rebirth of tragedy.

Wagner never advocated a simple return to the form of Greek tragedy.
He felt that it needed to be redefined for the modern age, which is what he
does in the second part of Oper und Drama. He essentially deconstructs
Greek tragedy, and in doing so he presents a theory that describes the rebirth
of Greek tragedy on the stage of reflection. Thus, when one simply com-
pares the plots of his dramas with the myths of Greek tragedy by drawing
parallels between the Ring and plays by, for instance, Sophocles or Aeschy-
lus, one completely ignores Wagner's insistence that Greek tragedy cannot
be revived in its previous form but, rather, that it needs to be tailored to the
problems of modern times.

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