More about names / [Leopold Wagner].

  • Wagner, Leopold, 1858-
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: More about names / [Leopold Wagner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    162/296 (page 158)
    Opera expresses the Latin for a great work. Truly the latter is the crowning effect of human art, since its realisation enlists the several arts of Music, Poetry, Painting, Dancing, and the Drama, to say nothing of the mechanical arts for the production of the various stage effects. These remarks, however, apply exclusively to Grand Opera and the Wag- nerian Music-Drama. The Opera is usually de- scribed as the Lyric Drama, in allusion to the Lyra, now known as the Lyre, the stringed instru- ment upon which the ancient poets accompanied their songs. A Comic Opera, or, if the French designation be preferred, an Opera Comique, is not necessarily comic, provided the music be of a light and cheerful character, and the action does not encroach upon Grand Opera by the employment of tragic incidents. Turning to Church music, an Antiphon, so called from the two Greek words ante, against, and phone, voice, expresses a series of choral responses ; whereas an Anthem, a mongrel term evolved out of “ Antiphon,” is sung by the entire congregation. Hymn is a contraction of the Latin hymnus, a song of praise ; and Psalm of the Greek psalmos, a sacred song. The term Canticle, derived from the Latin canticulum, the diminutive of canticum, a song, claims the same origin as Chant, which comes from cantere, the intensive of canere, to sing. The chant was the earliest form of song, owing to the Hebrew temples being of vast extent and open to the sky; con- sequently it was necessary, in order to make the