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French gipsies! And while Mr. Sharp is on the subject of something besides a building to be erected upon Debussy as a typical Frenchman, I invite him to give us the a plot of land rented from the London County national common denominator for Rameau, Couperin, Méhul, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Council, notwithstanding the interesting argument Godard, Fauré, d'Indy, Debussy, and Délibes, each of which he pleaded (as a reason for being charged whom would be claimed as 'the typical Frenchman by a low ground rent) that the London Opera House was intended primarily as an educational instituWe will not presume here to hold the scales in tion. One may well ask now what was the balancing these conflicting arguments. Whoever educational value of a batch of exotic novelties is right, it is quite certain that communal thanks sandwiched between as many hackneyed or halfare due to Mr. Sharp for his great work of collecting forgotten operas, sung in Italian and French by and disseminating this form of our native art. artists of the second, third, or fourth rank, to be That much of it is really beautiful cannot be heard for most of the time at only the highest gainsaid. We need not be very much concerned grand-opera prices! as to whether what is good has been fashioned into its present shape by an individual or the community; and whether this folk-music will really become the basis of a national art is a question for time and the gods to settle. It will have to drift into that channel naturally, or not at all.

THE OPERATIC

IMPASSE.'

BY HERMANN KLEIN.

This allusion to recent events must not be thought to savour of ingratitude. It is made, on the contrary, because the Kingsway experience was an instructive one; and we may not, where opera is concerned, hope to pave the way for better things unless we do so in the light of past history. It is generally agreed that the condition of operatic affairs in this country, and in London especially, is unsatisfactory in the extreme. Eliminate Covent Garden, and what is there? Include Covent Art is at all times more or less in a state of Garden, and we are still worse off, in some transition. This is true of music as well as of respects, than many a small Continental city. The painting or the drama; and in no branch of musical fact is admitted, and able writers are wont to art is the law of constant change, slow and subtle deal with it from time to time in the critical and though it be, more palpably illustrated than in correspondence columns of the daily Press. opera. Style Style changes, taste changes, popular Unfortunately, the memories of most of these inclination changes. One school is succeeded writers are short. They know pretty well what by another, a new craze' by a newer one. And has happened during the past ten or fifteen years. amid this gradual process of evolution, of development, of building up, the older forms do not become wholly lost. At each stage there is a 'survival of the fittest,' an addition to the permanent group of some new masterpiece that has achieved fame in its day, and then passed into the higher category of things which endure.

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But of the struggles, the decline and renascence, the seasons of slow upward progress and brilliant promise through which opera pursued its chequered London career during the preceding quarter of a century, these writers or certainly the majority of them-would seem to possess neither personal knowledge nor reliable second-hand information. If this were not the case, we should scarcely be told with such painful reiteration that the people of London have never in the main really cared for opera; that it is useless to try to educate the rising generation to love serious opera whilst they succumb to the glamour of musical comedy and the music-halls; above all, that there never was, and is not now, a popular demand for opera sung in English or, for that matter, in any language whatsoever.

Of such masterpieces-ranging from those of Gluck and Mozart to the latest utterances of our own day-the repertory of every leading operatic institution must include its full representative share. Without a repertory so furnished and enriched, no opera-house can be worthy of either State aid or the support of individual subscribers. It may call itself a place of amusement first and an educational establishment afterwards; but even so it cannot be regarded as completely equipped for operatic purposes unless it is in a position to Now these assertions are as inaccurate and mount the best examples of every school and unfounded as they are pessimistic and discreditable. period, and provide a generous selection of them True it is that the efforts made in recent years to during the course of every season. Such a popularise English opera in the Metropolis have repertory, with all the traditions that appertain to not proved fruitful. True, also, that outside of it, cannot of course be built up in a year or two. the Covent Garden monopoly, with its Society The process necessarily occupies a long time, and, subscription, its Wagner cycles, and its Puccini what is more, has to be begun in the right manner. rights, no operatic undertaking of any kind has It was one of the chief weaknesses of established a paying foothold in the centre of Mr. Hammerstein's ill-starred campaign that London. But history in this branch of music he began at the wrong end. He did not even does not begin nor will it end with the events of plunge in medias res. He started as though the this same period. What of the decade between conditions essential for the success of a new 1875 and 1885, when Carl Rosa entered a operatic enterprise-all but the actual locale deserted and apparently barren field? His was a itself were already in existence and entirely hard struggle, but neither an unfruitful nor an favourable to his purpose. He did not dream, unprofitable one. He always brought a talented, apparently, that he had to dig the foundations of well-trained company, secured an unimpeachable

ensemble, and gave fine performances, in English expensive level of theatre prices. In neither case only, of all the popular works then in the repertory, were the results wholly satisfying in a financial from Mozart down to Wagner. His audiences sense. Yet one manager showed that the sowere invariably large and enthusiastic, and the balance was only on the wrong side because the cost of novelties and new productions was debited to London, where they were brought out, and not to the provinces, where the real financial harvest was reaped. Unhappily, Carl Rosa died before his time, and his work was left unfinished.

called masses were ready and willing to be 'tapped' for English opera; the other that a tolerably successful appeal could be made to a combination of the masses' and the more cultivated classes.

What is the reason, then, why at this present moment the good ship English Opera lies stranded What of the decade between 1886 and 1896, high and dry upon the Metropolitan shore, without when Sir Augustus Harris restored the then fallen apparent sign of a returning tide to float her off? fortunes of Covent Garden and laid the foundations The company founded by Carl Rosa still flourishes of the monopoly of to-day? Harris had already in the country and the suburbs, but avoids London achieved two notable triumphs in the domain of proper, as does also the Moody-Manners organizaopera. He brought the Hamburg (Pollini) troupe tion. Mr. Beecham has retired from the fray, to Drury Lane in 1882, with Richter as conductor, albeit he threatens a German campaign in the early mounting 'Tristan' and 'Die Meistersinger' for the first time here, along with the earlier Wagner works, with 'Der Freischütz,' 'Euryanthe,' &c. He demonstrated that there was a paying public for German opera well performed. He co-operated with Carl Rosa at the same house in '83 and '84, and took over the direction of the Carl Rosa company when its founder died, carrying it on successfully in addition to his own multifarious theatrical ventures.

spring at Covent Garden. Mr. Hammerstein loathed the very idea of condescending to give opera in English, even at the critical period when (for a consideration) he opened the portals of the London Opera House to The Children of Don.’ What is the reason, the true cause, of all this fear and hesitancy in the face of obvious artistic duty and possible pecuniary reward?

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Alas, there are many causes, many reasons, besides that tiresome explanation about musical Then came Sir Augustus Harris's third and comedy and the music-hall! The question is greatest triumph, during the decade above referred rather how and where to find the remedy for the to, when (in 1887) he was content to lose £10,000 condition of apathy that has supervened. I have by a brief four weeks' season at Drury Lane in little faith in State subsidies for opera, even if one order to show the world that there were still great could be obtained. If a National Opera House singers to be heard in Italian opera and people in were endowed next year. I am sorely afraid that London interested enough to listen to them. That nothing short of an Act of Parliament would limit glorious defeat proved in the following year to have its activities to the fostering and building up of been a glorious victory for operatic enterprise of native lyric art. And such ideas are mere daythe kind since associated with Covent Garden. dreams. But unfortunately, so long as English With Society at his back, Harris took the big opera has no home there will be no inducement— house and, as with the drama at Drury Lane, nay, no means or opportunity for our best singers converted a losing into a profitable game. to undergo the thorough operatic training essential Unhappily, he too died before his time, and for the making of first-rate opera singers. So long, since that untoward event occurred, in 1896, too, will there be no trouble taken to gratify London has had no great impresario worthy of English ears with less childish and ridiculous the name. Augustus Harris worked hard and versions of foreign libretti, and perhaps more unselfishly and with the right understanding, out important still-a clear, distinct, unadulterated of sheer love for that operatic art which our pronunciation of the English text. diffident public had almost forgotten how to appreciate and enjoy.

The memories of Carl Rosa and Augustus Harris may have faded somewhat, but I cannot believe that either worked in vain. Remember, these were the men who rid us of the ballad opera and gave us something better in its place. One proved that we had a huge public for opera sung in English; the other that we had cultivated audiences who liked to hear modern operatic masterpieces sung in the original German and French and French as well well as in the all-grasping Italian. It is not credible that the broader and more popular section of the London public has either disappeared or lost its love of opera as presented through the medium of our native tongue. Indeed, managers like Mr. Charles Manners and Mr. Thomas Beecham have demonstrated the contrary-the former from the standpoint of cheap opera, the latter at a more

The average talent of native opera singers has undergone serious deterioration in the last few years. That it could be improved and raised to the highest level there is no doubt, provided the right conditions were forthcoming. The material is there, the milieu is not. The public is ready, the entertainment is not. In short, we have arrived at a kind of impasse, which will be neither penetrated nor overcome without the leadership of some genius full of energy and resource-some born impresario as deeply in sympathy with English opera and all that belongs to it as the great impresarios of the past were with its Italian progenitor. From what quarter such a being is to spring I know not; but if the need be real, that which has been demonstrated again and again in other fields of endeavour will also be made manifest in this. The hour will surely bring the

man.

HEINE AND SOME MUSICIANS: A BLOT ON THE ESCUTCHEON. By M.-D. CALVOCORESSI.

In 1835, when the poet attempted his first extortions, he was on very friendly terms with the composer, whose praise he used to sing in lyric terms. He therefore approached him with great caution, speaking of certain enemies of Meyerbeer, Although men of genius are known to have their to silence whom a sum of five hundred francs was failings, and to be, like all mortals, liable to err, it necessary. He resorted to the same device several is no common experience to discover that a great times. In 1842 the enemies are no longer artist, the loftiness of whose artistic ideals none'starving Germans who plot in the dark,' but would think of questioning, has committed acts of Escudier frères (the estimable publishers and an irretrievably degrading nature. And, no doubt, editors of the weekly France Musicale). Heine, to all admirers of Heine as a poet, the discovery of owing to his efforts on behalf of Meyerbeer, is out the fact that he on more occasions than one of pocket, and once more five hundred francs are actually sank as low blackmail will be needed. as unwelcome indeed. Unfortunately, one case has been established long ago, and another has this very month come to light.

That Heine attempted to blackmail Liszt is evident from the following letter, published by La Mara in her Briefe berühmter Zeitgenossen an Franz Liszt (Leipsic, 1895):

'I will await your visit, dearest friend, to-morrow between two o'clock and three. I have just written a first article, which I wish to send before your second concert. And perhaps it contains things that might not please you; therefore, it is quite suitable that I should previously have a talk with you. Your friend,

Finding Meyerbeer credulous and ready enough, Heine thought it no longer necessary to take the trouble to invent bugbears. In 1844 he writes complaining that Meyerbeer leaves him without money: You have sent me two-hundred francs only. I accept the sum, however, because I believe that one should never refuse money. Do not the people who say I am devoid of principles know me very badly?'

In the same letter, he recommends warmly to Meyerbeer the brothers Escudier-probably forgetting what he had written previously.

A month later Heine warns Meyerbeer that Spontini was about to publish a libel, but adds that he, Heine, has taken all necessary steps to frustrate Spontini's designs.

Meyerbeer appears to have grown tired, after ten years, of his friend's expensive services, for Heine's last letter is in altogether a different tone:

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'I cannot bear to have asked for a thing in vain.. I must say that I realise that, though you are a genius in music, it is in that respect only that one may admire and esteem you.'

[1844.] H. HEINE.' The 'talk' did not lead to satisfactory results for Heine. In her biography of Liszt-published, it should be remembered, under the composer's supervision-Mrs. Lina Ramann tells us that, presumably in 1844, Heine attempted to draw on Liszt for several thousand francs, but Liszt had refused, 'not caring to buy recognition on the market.' The letters to German periodicals written by Heine in that year (1844) are filled with rancorous and even insulting remarks on Liszt. Although in this case the proof is strong enough Meyerbeer's answer is full of dignity. He is -and, indeed, Liszt could never have descended grieved, he writes, by Heine's letter. This to countenance slander, nor invented so improbable bitterness is caused by the fact that his purse a tale—even more damning evidence has recently can no longer satisfy Heine's wishes. But he been found in a lot of autographs by a German cannot so easily renounce Heine's friendship, and dealer. It consists of seven letters of Heine to will continue to admire Heine's genius and to bear Meyerbeer, and of one of Meyerbeer to Heine, him faithful and devoted goodwill. showing not only that the case of Liszt was not an exception, but also that all composers were not, like him, averse to 'buying recognition on the

market.'

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Scripta manent, says the proverb. And it is, alas! too true that besides so many beautiful writings, a few letters now remain, a blemish on the memory of Heine the man. It would not be, As far as Meyerbeer only is concerned, such perhaps, altogether insidious criticism to connect proof was hardly needed. It is a known fact that the facts under notice with Heine's scepticism, he had made it a practice to bestow opportune with his ironical and blasé view of things in liberalities on corruptible journalists. For general. But who, when attempting to write on instance, before the production of one of his Heine, would not prefer to content himself with operas he had sent to Fiorentino, a disreputable considering the Buch der Lieder' or the writer at the time acting as critic of the Romancero' in themselves? Constitutionnel, a thousand-franc banknote. At a time when another opera of his was to be produced, he sent the same Fiorentino five hundred francs. In his 'feuilleton' the critic, with ready wit, wrote that 'Meyerbeer's new opera was only half as good as the foregoing one.' So that Meyerbeer fell a ready victim to Heine.

B

concerts, to take place at Bechstein Hall (in afternoon and The Classical Concerts Society announce ten Autumn evening alternately), from October 16 to December 18. The artists engaged include the London, Klingler, and English String Quartets, and Señor Casals. The committee make an urgent appeal for support. The secretary is Mr. A. H. Robinson Smith, 7, Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, London, W.

Occasional Motes.

Mr. Ernest Newman, in a letter that appears below, endorses our analysis of the musical evidence brought forward by the authors of 'An adventure' with the object of proving the truth of this remarkable story. If, after this, no satisfactory explanation of the musical difficulty gratuitously raised by the authors is forthcoming, we must conclude that the book is simply clever fiction. The letter is as follows:

DEAR SIR,-I was greatly interested in your comments in the September number on the book entitled 'An Adventure, published a year or so ago. The book came into my hands for the first time last month. I quickly drew the conclusion that it was a rather clever hoax, and I intended writing to you on the subject; but I first wanted to turn up some of the reviews of the book and find out whether any of the literary reviewers had come to the same conclusion. Your comments have forestalled mine, but I should like to press your point further home, and to ask the ladies who are responsible for the book to give the public the explanation that is certainly due.

pave the way for a special Bill in the Reichstag extending the copyright and performing rights. This movement has the enthusiastic support of Dr. Richard Strauss, who has created a sensation by publishing a letter of which the following is a translation:

I

As far as I am concerned there is only one side of the Parsifal' question-respect for the will of genius. Unfortunately, those who have the last word in the question of protecting 'Parsifal' are lawyers and politicians who, while desiring in their hearts to spread and ennoble our civilisation, have no comprehension of the rights of intellectual property. I have myself been present at debates in the German Reichstag in the course of which the representatives of the German nation, with a few rare exceptions, have discussed questions of the rights of authors and extensions of protection with enviable ignorance. myself have heard a certain Herr Eugen Richter* have recourse to wicked misstatements in order to tread under foot the rights of two hundred pitiable German composers and the heirs of Richard Wagner. This state of things will not be altered so long as we have to suffer universal suffrage, so long as votes are counted instead of weighed, and so long as the vote of a Richard Wagner is not equivalent to the vote of a hundred thousand navvies. If it were, perhaps I might not hear talk about the rights of the German nation to rob, thirty years after his death, that genius whom it had banished and persecuted during his lifetime, and to prostitute his work on the smallest provincial stages. We may protest, but in vain. In two years the German 'bourgeois' can, between his dinner and his nightcap,' hear Parsifal' for sixpence as a change from the cinematograph show and the cheap musical comedy. And we wonder that the Italians and French reckon us as barbarians on all questions relating to products of the intellect !

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Dr. Strauss's political opinions have aroused a storm of indignation, but one must admit he has the courage of his convictions. His attitude is not likely to win much sympathy in England. If the German 'bourgeois' will be able to do as Dr. Strauss predicts, so much the better for the 'bourgeois.' London contains keen Wagnerians by the thousand, and few of them can afford to go to Bayreuth. 'Parsifal' at Covent Garden is the one great boon they still have to long for.

My own suspicions were first aroused by the very completeness of the way in which every detail-as to costume and so on-that the ladies say they observed was afterwards confirmed by documentary research. One could hardly doubt that the thing was written backwards, like a detective story: that is, the authoresses had worked up the historical details and invented their 'experiences,' then narrated the ' experiences' as something hardly explicable, and then 'confirmed' the 'experiences' by research. It struck me that had they admitted a little error here and there we should have been more likely to believe the story. When, however, I came across those wildly ludicrous pages dealing with the phantom music that the ladies say they heard, my last shreds of credence vanished. What a sceptic would be inclined to say has happened is this: the ladies have been told that the musical pitch was lower in the 18th century than it is now. They therefore thought it would give verisimilitude to their narrative if they said they heard some music, and that it was in a lower pitch than ours. They evidently did not realise the absurdity of such a remark. I am told by a personal friend of one of the pseudonymous ladies that she is really musical. If so, no doubt she will be willing to try to explain away the central difficulty of her statement. If I know that a melody is written in A, but that it sounds, on a given instrument, as if An interesting article, by Caroline V. Kerr, in the it were in G or A flat, I can say at once that the pitch of the Observer recently, threw some new light upon the instrument is low. But no musician could listen to a piece nature of Strauss's new opera, 'Ariadne auf Naxos,' of music he had never heard before, without any knowledge which, as our readers are doubtless aware, IS of the key in which it was supposed to be written, and say incorporated in Strauss's incidental music to that the pitch was low.' The thing is so grotesque, to Hoffmannsthal's version of Molière's 'Le Bourgeois musicians, that I apologise for stating it at such length. I Gentilhomme.' The writer says: only do so to make it quite clear to the authoresses of 'An Adventure,' and to ask them to come to the rescue of a palpitating world with an explanation. The publishers (Messrs. Macmillan) were generous enough to vouch for the bona fides of the book. They too may like to have this point brought to their notice.-Yours sincerely,

ERNEST NEWMAN.

Perhaps the ladies would be kind enough also (1) to print the music they say they heard, (2) to give us the name of the 'expert' to whom they submitted it.-E. N.

At present the momentous question of the copyright of 'Parsifal' is attracting the attention of the whole musical world. According to law, the copyright, and the right of the Villa Wahnfried to proscribe all performance outside Bayreuth expire next year; according to Wagner's expressed wish, performances of 'Parsifal' should be for ever confined to Bayreuth. There is a widespread feeling in Germany that the composer's desire should be carried out. To strengthen this opinion, Hermann Bahr, whose wife is the famous Wagnerian singer, Frau BahrMildenburg, has undertaken a lecture-campaign to

von

Readers of the Molière comedy will remember that the inglorious hero of the play is a certain M. Jourdain, who, in order to climb from his parvenu position, has surrounded himself with masters of the fine arts, including a maître de musique. This latter has a pupil whom he has succeeded in bringing to the attention of the rich Jourdain, and in the Hoffmannsthal version this composer is none other than the young Strauss. He has composed an opera, Ariadne auf Naxos,' which Jourdain has commanded to be performed at a soirée he is giving for the beautiful Marquise Dorimène. This young composer (alias Richard Strauss !) has a speaking rôle in the revised comedy, and a scene created for the purpose of focussing the attention of the audience upon him and his work affords an opportunity for the ventilation of views on the conditions of present-day music. In the play it is arranged that 'Ariadne' shall be followed by a light musical piece of the nature of a harlequinade. M. Jourdain, however, decides that the possible boredom of his audience with a classical theme had best be avoided or mitigated by the simultaneous presentation of the two works.

* A famous Liberal Parliamentarian.

The young composer is frantic at the mutilation of his work, and finds but poor consolation in the irony of the dancingmaster, who says: But would you not rather have your work heard in an abbreviated form than not heard at all? It is just the opportunities for judicious "cutting" which often contribute largely to the success of a work, and the first thing which a Court Intendant who is obliged to cater to a Royal patron asks about all opera is whether there are any good "cuts." It is high time that some clever musician should avail himself of this and intentionally compose a certain number of such passages in his score, so that when they are eliminated the work would remain as originally planned.' From this it will be seen that under cover of the stage Strauss is having his fling at the operatic managers of the present day.

It has long since been remarked that Strauss makes a new departure for every new work that he writes, and it still remains true.

The 'essay in dissonance' by Arnold Schönberg which was recently put before the public at a Queen's Hall Promenade Concert and moved it to laughter, hisses, and applause, was an acute instance of a new problem that is facing the critics of to-day. Past generations of critics unhesitatingly condemned the new and strange and unintelligible, and are now held up to pity and ridicule. If we pour scorn on our Futurist' school, are we preparing the same fate for ourselves? On the other hand the movement may be ephemeral and its supporters become known as the victims of a passing craze. At present we have no critical means to take the true measure of 'Futurist' music. All that we know is that it gives us no pleasure, and there is no harm in saying so. No London critic has taken kindly to Schönberg's 'Five orchestral pieces,' but one finds little of the lofty scorn and anger with which, for instance, Victorian critics rejected Wagner's music. Some have wisely taken the attitude of dispassionate examination of a curiosity.

We quote some remarks suggested by the Queen's Hall performance :

There seems to be no good reason why a composer should not select dissonance as a medium, if he pleases, as an artist might state his problem in terms of magenta, or any other colour. Only he puts off the day of his appeal to the world at large. It was like a poem in Tibetan; not one single soul in the room could possibly have understood it at a first hearing. We can, after all, only progress from the known to the unknown; and as the programme writer, who had every reason to know, said, there was not a single consonance from beginning to end. Under such circumstances the listener was like a dweller in Flatland straining his mind to understand the ways of that mysterious occupant of three dimensions, man. As far, however, as it was possible to transcend one's limitations, the music seemed to be a study in textures. Considered as that alone there were some extremely interesting moments; and things were done with out-of-the-way combinations of instruments which were rare, at any rate, if not new. At some moments the music seemed more French than the Frenchmen, but at others a little heavy-handed, as if it was not quite certain that esprit had been got in exchange for geist. Whether it has a real message it is simply too early to say.'-The Times.

Ugliness, in which Schönberg is supposed to specialise, is, to begin with, a relative thing, a thing of context, a thing that has very often a tremendous dramatic value. Upon the case of ugliness in music a jury of average intelligent listeners would be almost certain to disagree; you would possibly get three or four points of view from twelve men. And so when we are faced with a new "ugliness" we have to remember not merely the platitude that tastes differ, but that our intelligent fathers and grandfathers have been shocked at the dissonance in the overture to the "Meistersinger" or the wanton extravagance of Grieg's Pianoforte concerto

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It is music well put together; form and contrast-two big things-are there, "ugliness" galore, "beauty" starved to death, sheer technical skill unsurpassed. And one may find in it, too, a certain humour and tenderness, and (at times) a certain hardness, that are after all not so very far removed from life. It is a "human document," bewildering enough, it is true, but human, and immensely personal to the writer himself.'-Daily Telegraph.

'The truth is that Schönberg has visions of possibilities in music for which neither he nor anyone else has as yet been able to find the right idiom. It is unquestionable that modern harmony can expand almost indefinitely. The problem is how to keep it still coherent and logical as it grows more subtle and complex. It must, like prose or poetry, talk sense, and, like painting, it must be recognisably veracious. The trouble is that you cannot test the truth of music as you can test the truth of poetry, or painting, or sculpture, by comparing it with any external original. Who, then, is to say what is right or wrong, false or true?'-Nation.

as

the

The composer

'It is best described as nature music. It is free and untrammelled of by consideration distinctive themes, their logical development, or such things relation of the harmonies one to the other. works his sweet will, and leaves it to the hearer to make the most he can out of the result. The key to the understanding of this "music" is an acquaintance with open-air life, preferably in that part of the world where there are large quantities of live stock. The sounds they would add to those of nature are faithfully reproduced. This being so, the members of the audience, many of them newly returned from holiday-making in the country, were able to appreciate the realism.'-Morning Post.

'It would be idle to pretend that there was nothing to admire in the ingenious interweaving of themes; and the composer's novel harmonic progressions and fertile, almost fiendish, ingenuity in scoring, contained much that was strange and stimulating. But to listen with the heart was For the music resembled the dismal quite another matter.

wailings of a tortured soul, and suggested nothing so much as the disordered fancies of delirium or the fearsome, imaginary terrors of a highly nervous infant.'-Globe.

The second number was

'They are formless, incoherent, disjointed, and utterly defiant of all preconceived ideas of what constitutes music. The first piece suggested to me that the composer was endeavouring to illustrate the various sounds heard at feedingtime at the Zoological Gardens. less aggressive in character, and the suggestion of hypochondriacal melancholia was intensified by the abortive attempt of a solo viola to get through some kind of theme. In the third section the composer would seem to be experimenting with changing dissonances irrespective of any significance. Up to the fourth movement the audience on Tuesday had listened to the various effects as a burlesque on modern orchestration, and more than once a ripple of laughter went through the hall; but with the fourth number the want of ideas and continued vagueness became wearisome, and this developed into absolute boredom in the Finale.' -Referee.

We notice with amusement that the gentle sarcasm of the Morning Post has, apparently, been taken too seriously by a certain writer, who complains of the vain ambitions of modern programme music!

Some high prices were paid for musical manuscripts forming part of the Sophie Schnerder collection that was recently sold by auction in Berlin. An unpublished Canon by Beethoven was sold for £50, and another Beethoven manuscript, containing hisBusslied' and 'Gottes Macht und Vorschung,' fetched £150.

A letter from Beethoven to Ritter von Türkheim Seilersteg changed hands at £31. The sum of £37 10s. was paid for a letter of Leopold Mozart, and the 'Historic' Museum in Cologne bought the autograph of a Rondo by Mozart for £100.

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