Of this he was more than half conscious himself; and it was always clear to him that as he was in the great line of instrumental succession, and that what he was doing was to extend still further the expressive range of instrumental, endlessly melodic music, it might be urged against him that the logical outcome of all his theory and his practice was not the opera but the symphonic poem or the programme symphony. But against that conclusion he always strenuously protested in advance. Something he saw there must be to make definite to the hearer the indefinite emotion of the music alone. He knew that the classical symphony was a work of composite origin, one movement of it—the Minuet or Scherzo,—still maintaining almost unchanged its dance-like character, while in the others the composer aimed more and more at emotional expression. But the musician was hampered here by the fact that the expression of emotion could not rise above a certain intensity without bursting the symphonic mould, and indeed prompting in the hearer a question as to the source of that emotion. There was, as Wagner says, "a certain fear of overstepping the bounds of musical expression, and especially of pitching the passionate, tragic tendency too high, for that would arouse feelings and expectations that would awake in the hearer the disquieting question of \'Why,\'—which the musician himself could not answer satisfactorily."[387] But Wagner would not admit that this something might be a mere programme. "Not a programme, which rather provokes than silences the troublesome question of \'Why,\' can therefore express the meaning of the symphony, but only the scenically-represented dramatic action itself."[388] With the liberation of musical expression from the stereotyped images set before it in the ordinary musical verse, and with the liberation of musical technique effected by the breaking down of the old operatic conventions of form, the power of music could be extended indefinitely. The poet would discover that "melodic form is capable of endlessly richer development than had previously been possible in the symphony itself, and, with a presentiment of this development, he will already project the poetical conception with perfect freedom. Thus where even the symphonist timidly reached back to the original dance-form—never daring, even for his expression, wholly to pass the boundaries that kept him in communication with this form—the poet will now cry to him: \'Throw yourself fearlessly into the full stream of the sea of music: hand in hand with me you can never lose touch with what is most comprehensible to all mankind; for through me you always stand on the ground of the dramatic action, and this action, in the moment of its representation on the stage, is the most immediately intelligible of all poems. Stretch your melody boldly out, that it may pour through the whole work like an endless flood: in it say what I leave unsaid, since only you can say it, and in silence I will utter all, since it is I who lead you by the hand."[389]

Here he is expressing only a personal bias. His own imagin............