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Once engaged on them, however, I have no difficulty." His labors on the Mass aged him. In his prime on its inception, he emerged from his seclusion on completing it, infirm and broken in health. The idea of the Faust music attracted him, as it would have been strictly symphonic in character.

On my return from Hungary in September, I shall bring you the mass and my symphonic bubbles and troubles, half of which will by that time be in print. If my scores should bore you, that will not prevent me from deriving sweetest enjoyment from your creations, and you must not refuse me the favour of singing the whole "Rhinegold" and "Valkyrie" to me.

But illusions have a way of being very real; and a derogatory term does not alter facts. Idealists have declared that what we call evil only increases the divine harmony, as a judicious discord heightens the effect of symphonic combinations. But this æsthetic argument conflicts with moral relations. Surely God would not be so self-centered.

In development and intertwining of themes and in brilliance of orchestration, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy, suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious with wit. Gulliver himself is richly characterized with a burly, blustering English theme.

They will judge a composer on a single work, or a group of works, and class him once and for all.... In reality, my father was a man of all-round accomplishments. As a finished musician, he was master of every form of composition. He wrote both religious and secular music melodies, dances, pastorales, oratorios, symphonic poems, symphonies, sonatas, trios, and operas.

The artist was rehearsing in Philadelphia for an appearance with the orchestra, and the pianist was telling Bok and his wife of the desire of Leopold Stokowski, who had recently become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to eliminate encores from his symphonic programmes; he wanted to begin the experiment with Hofmann's appearance that week.

Besides these works Pratt has written the "Magdalen's Lament," his first orchestral composition, suggested by Murillo's picture; the lyric opera, "Antonio;" a first symphony, of which the adagio was performed in Berlin, the other movements being produced in Boston and Chicago; a second symphony, "The Prodigal Son;" a romantic opera, "Zenobia," produced in Chicago; a lyric opera, "Lucille," which ran for three weeks in Chicago; a symphonic suite based on the "Tempest;" a canon for a string quartette; a serenade for string orchestra; a grotesque suite, "The Brownies," produced in New York and at Brighton Beach by Anton Seidl.

Finally, Mozart's most dramatic finales and concerted numbers are more or less in sonata form, like symphonic movements, and must therefore be classed as musical prose. And sonata form dictates repetitions and recapitulations from which the perfectly unconventional form adopted by Wagner is free.

These facts illustrate the manner in which composers, being virtuosi of the musical imagination, are able to elaborate mentally, and keep in the memory, a complete operatic or symphonic score, just as, for example, Alexander Dumas, when he wished to write a new novel, used to hire a yacht and sail on Southern waters for several days, lying on his back which, by the way, is an excellent method of starting a train of thought and thus arranging all the details of the plot in his mind.

The funeral expenses were unpaid, and Auguste's pupils had been frightened away by the shock of successive disasters and the general atmosphere of wretchedness that pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a symphonic poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son.