MUSIC AND THEATRES IN PARIS.

(From our own Correspondent.)

ever

Sept. 27, 1860. THE special performance at the Opéra Comipue for the benefit of the Christians in Syria, which I just mentioned in my last, was a very brilliant affair. The house was crowded, and, though the programme was not exhausted till past one, all kept their places to the end. After the Chaises à Porteurs, in which Conderc and Mlle. Lemercier sang and acted with wonderful spirit, a little disturbance arose at the moment of lifting the curtain for L'Etoile du Nord. Only the first act had been announced, but the audience had made up their minds that this implied the overture, and on finding that it was omitted, set up a general clamour. The regisseur had to come forward and explain, that as only the first act was promised in the bills, and nothing said of the overture, the management had not expected it would be called for, and had not therefore provided the double orchestra of Sax's instruments which were necessary to its execution. After a while the audience got the logic of this argument into their heads and allowed matters to take their course. Mad. Ugalde sang the part of Catherine, in which she acquitted herself as admirably as and was called before the curtain. A pleasant little opera, Ma Tante Dort, originally produced at the Lyrique with great success, followed, and Mad. Ugalde appeared in the part of Martine, originally created by her. All the fun and vivacity shown by her on the first production of the opera were equally at command now; and both she and Mocker, who played Scapin, were recalled at the end. The great point of interest of the evening, however, was the interlude, in which Mlle. Monrose sang three pieces from the Pardon de Ploërmel. As this rising young vocalist is about shortly to essay the part of Dinorah, great curiosity was felt to know how she would probably acquit herself of the arduous undertaking. The triumphant manner in which Mlle. Monrose surmounted the vocal difficulties of the celebrated Ombre légére, and the grace and sprightliness of her acting, afforded the most favourable augury of her success in interpreting the entire rôle of Dinorah. After the buffo duet, "Chateau-Trompette," sung by M. Berthelier and Mlle. Lemercier, an excerpt from Fra Diavolo, and the Beaumont-Cohen cantata, in honour of the Napoleonic festival, brought this long and well-filled evening to a worthy conclusion. The Petit Chaperon Rouge of Boieldieu, revived last season after an interval of many years, has been again brought forward at this house. The part of Comte Rodolphe is now played by M. Montaubry, who is as accomplished a comedian as he is a graceful singer.

The Grand Opera still goes on with Semiramis, and the sisters Marchisio are still the life and soul of Rossini's great work. Pierre de Medicis makes an occasional appearance in the bills. Le Propheté, whose advent has been imminent for some time, is retarded by the illness of Mad. Tedesco. Meanwhile Guillaume Tell is in preparation, and Mlle. Carlotta Marchisio will sing the part of Mathilde, restoring the air and scena which had been omitted since the reduction of the opera to three acts. The ballet which Mlle. Taglioni has invented for Mlle. Emma Livry, in whom the embryo of a second Carlotta Grisi is detected by the choreosophists, will make its appearance about the middle of next month. The young danseuse is daily rehearsing her part with a zeal and application which are directed and stimulated by the counsels of her celebrated patroness. Some of the pas in which Mlle. Livry is to shine are spoken of with raptures of anticipation. In particular are mentioned a certain Mazurka in the first tableau to which all previous mazurkas are to be as barbarous jigs; a valse des rayons, destined to illuminate the second tableau with splendours which its title render it difficult to define; a pas noble which will in future be danced only by permission of the College of Heralds; and lastly a pas finale, which will in every way deserve its designation by being the ultima thule of the choreographic art, beyond which comes chaos and the primitive "double shuffle" again. Before I leave the operas let me mention that the manager of the Opéra Comique had determined to cast the part of Hoel in the Pardon, which, as I have said, he is about to produce, to Mlle. Werteimber, who had already played parts written originally for bass voices. Meyerbeer is said to have approved the arrangement. The opera in three acts by Scribe and M. Offenbach is in rehearsal,

and it is to be produced with great splendour of scenery and decoration.

The Italian opera season is expected to be very brilliant this winter, and it is said the subscription list is already crowded with the highest names among the wealthy and the aristocratic. At the Théâtre Lyrique an opera in one act is said to be in rehearsal, the words of which are by MM. Theodore Barrière and Carré, and the music by M. Leo Delibes. M. Maillart's opera, Les Pêcheurs de Catane, is also in active preparation. There has been a squabble between the director of this house, M. Retz, and a composer, M. E. Reger, author of Selam and Maitre Wolfram. The latter had written the music to a libretto by MM. Michel Carré and Jules Barbier in three acts, and, according to an agreement with the previous manager, M. Carvalho, the work was to have been produced at the opening of the theatre. This was the term fixed. When M. Retz assumed the management he begged M. Reger to put off the production of his opera to the month of December, and with the consent of the other collaborators, the delay was granted. The manager, under pretext of having made fresh engagements, then sought to adjourn the opera sine die, but the authors have very naturally refused to accept so uncertain an arrangement, and the affair is accordingly to be referred to a court of law, unless the Sociéte des Auteurs should exercise its power in favour of the composer and his fellow labourers. No amount of damages, however high, compensates a composer for the suppression of a work on which he may have bestowed all the resources have built with reason the hope of enhanced fame. of his talents and his happiest inspirations, and in which he may

The Gymnase has produced a new piece in four acts, entitled Le Voyage de M. Perrichon, which turns on the opposite means employed by two suitors for the hand of his daughter to gain the fife of the father of his beloved, and reckons on his gratitude; the good graces of an honest French bourgeois. One has saved the other has had his life saved by the same individual, and builds on the love of protection and patronage which is natural to the human bosom in opposition to the repugnance commonly felt at being under an obligation. At first the suitor who reckons on the meaner motive carries everything before him; but the betrayal of his deliberate designs opens the eyes of the bourgeois to the baseness of the impulse he had followed, and reinstates the rival in his good graces. The idea is well worked out, and contains a lesson on human weakness which is amusingly conveyed. M. the Bourgeois de Paris, plays M. Perridion, and seems likely to Geoffroy, so celebrated for his manner of rendering the type of establish the character as a popular favourite. At the Variété a novelty, entitled Une Chasse à St. Germain, has been successful, although very stale in idea. An unfortunate painter about to contract a marriage is persecuted by three former mistresses, whom he contrives to pass off for the flames of as many friends.

Henri Monnier has also appeared again in the well-known character of Joseph Prudhomme, which he has had the credit of inventing, and the advantage of trading on for the last thirty years. Joseph Prudhomme chef de Brigands is the new phase in which he now introduces him; but, although there is undoubted fun in the idea, and Monnier is still amusing in the part, the notion is too worn out to afford ground for a very brilliant

success.

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LIVERPOOL. (From our own Correspondent.) — The Philharmonic Society gave their eighth subscription concert on Tuesday night before a fashionable audience. The vocalists were Mlle. Titiens, Signors Giuglini, Vialetti, and Valsovani. The concert was a very great success, and Signor Giuglini, who was in unusually good voice, sang Spirto gentil" (La Favorita), and "Aurora che sorgerai' (La Donna del Lago), delightfully. Mlle. Titiens' solos were, "Non mi dir" (Don Giovanni), and "The Last Rose of Summer." Both were given in perfect style; and the fair Teutonic prima donna fairly astonished the amateurs by the expression and the simplicity of her rendering of Moore's charming ballad. The band played Spohr's symphony in D for the first time in Liverpool in admirable style, and the audience appeared to thoroughly appreciate it. Mad. Grisi and Signor Mario sing at the next concert on Tuesday.-Our Italian opera season commences at the Theatre Royal on Monday, and we

Not many years ago M. Jules de Glimes came to London with ambassadorial functions. He had been despatched as an emissary from M. Fétis, to pick up scraps of information concerning British music and British musical practitioners. The contrapuntally erudite and historiographically laborious Walloon had suddenly come to the conclusion that, after all, a "Biographie Universelle" would not be a "Biographie Universelle" unless it were (tant soit peu) universal, and that to be universal he must, maugre his beard, include a handful of the British Isles. Man, Wight, Alderney, Sark-even the Orkneys, although King Lot of old was a great patron of minstrels, and Sir Dinadam, one of his knights, is storied to have made "the worst lay that ever harper sung with harp or with any other instrument "might be omitted; but England, which gave birth to Purcell and fame to Handel, not; Scotland, where Mary Stuart sang to the accompaniment of Rizzio, not; and Ireland, where grew the melodies to which Moore attuned his lyre, not; at any rate not without punity. So M. de Glimes, accredited to the post of "Charged with Affairs," proceeded straight to Ostend, and without stopping to swallow one huitre at the Flemish Broadstairs, set sail for perfidious Albion, where (as usual) he was received with open cliffs at Dover. His credentials were endorsed, and the nature of his mission, set forth and published in the columns of The Musical World, was made patent to the realm, from Mutton Island to the Wash, from Portland Bill to Lossiemouth-throughout the breadth and length, in short ("bref"),of the three Kingdoms, not rejecting the pugnacious Principality. Are we to reconnoitre the item "Balfe," or "Balph," in the Fétisian sheets, as the first instalment of M. de Glimes' researches? By Hercules!-nay. We, who know and appreciate the moral and artistic stature of that excellent and most worthy musician, should be loth to believe it. Not only is the biography of the minstrel of Loughbrickland scanty and imperfect; not only is it crammed with errors, but worse than all, it is tempered with a spirit of supercilious acrimony, for which, in the days of King Anguish or Brian Baroimhe, the hosts of Ierne would have invaded the straight and muddy marches of Flanders, in a fleet of flatbottomed boats. The whole tone of the "item," indeed, is so uncharitable and (as Voltaire may have said somewhere) "acerbe," that we have scarcely patience to quote more than a passage or so."

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"Balph," it appears, was born, not at Dublin-as the Conversations-Lexicon and Mr. Balfe alike assert-but at Limerick. Although endowed with "la plus heureuse organisation pour la musique," he "never made any serious study of composition." He has, nevertheless, "obtained successes as a singer, with a mediocre voice," and "improvised .some twenty operas little remarkable for invention," but evidencing, on the other hand, "instinct, a good feeling for harmony, and a knowledge of instrumentation." Va pour la vingtaine d'opéras! ("And thus departed Sir Pedivere of the Straight Marches"). That Balph is "un homme d'esprit," however, M. Fétis admits; and this, we are told, has enabled him to draw more advantages from his faculties than they seemed to promise. This, morever, probably enabled him to compose an opera by the late O'Rourke (Rooke) viz. Amalia, or the Love-Test-which, according to M. Fétis, Balph "fit représenter à Londres," in 1838, a year after his JEANNE Grey had achieved a fiasco, and three years after his ITALIAN opera, L'Assedio di la Rochelle, was

* The Lay of King Mark of Cornwall.

brought out at Her Majesty's Theatre, and "eut QUELQUE succès." "Here's a coil"-says Nurse to Juliet. "Enter Rommi" - we had almost said. First, Amalia (Amilie)—as all the world (except M. Fétis) knows-was Rooke's, not Balfe's; secondly, Balfe wrote an opera entitled Catherine Grey, but never an opera called Jeanne Grey; thirdly, The Siege of Rochelle was an English, not an Italian, opera, and as all the world knows (except M. Fétis)-Balfe's first production on the English stage; given, too, not as M. Fétis states, with "quelque succès," but with enormous and longcontinued success, at Drury Lane Theatre.*

-

Next we are told that the book of The Maid of Artois was founded on that of the ballet and opera of Clari, when (except M. Fétis) all the world knows that Clari is almost identical with Linda di Chamounix, while The Maid of Artois is derived from Manon L'Escaut-the name by which it is recognised everywhere on the Continent. Apropos of Manon L'Escaut, we are advised that, "little scrupulous in the choice of ideas, Balph had borrowed from several operas then in vogue in order to fabricate his own; BUT a waltz by Strauss, of which he had made an air, sung by Malibran with marvellous verve, ensured the success of this work!" The Maid of Artois, nevertheless-like AMILIE, Falstaff, and Joan of Arc-" was written too rapidly to find place among real works of art, although connoisseurs recognised some progress, on the score of originality, in Falstaff." Diadeste, we are told, "did not succeed;" Keolanthe had but "a mediocre success;" the Puits d'Amourt-represented at the Opéra Comique in 1843-" destitute of originality," had some good qualities (“ du mouvement”- a dash of which would not make the Biographie less readable-among others), and succeeded both at home and abroad; The Bohemian Girl evinced "progress, and showed that Balph had been sensible to the criticism of the Parisian journals" (!!); The Daughter of St. Mark is merely named; L'Etoile de Seville (in Paris-1846) failed, "notwithstanding that the principal parts were entrusted to Gardoni and Mad. Stoltz;" while The Bondman and The Maid of Honour, brought out the same year (three grand operas in one year, we think, would puzzle even Balfe), "created little sensation." The Quatre Fils Aymont escapes animadversion (mirabile dictu!). "Of all the works of Balph this is the one which has achieved the most uniform success," in France, Germany, England, and Holland. "Although it exhibits the same negligence and over-facility of composition" as its predecessors, "it cannot be denied" (what a pity for M. Fétis !) "that the Quatre Fils Aymon is his best work, and that it contains some pretty things." How condescending! The Sicilian Bride, The Devil's in it, Duca e Pittore (Trieste), and The Rose of Castille, not being even mentioned, we must presume the accurate bibliographer was unaware of their existence; and yet all the world knows (except M. Fétis) that The Rose of Castille "ran" for nearly two seasons, and is still considered one of the most popular works of its composer. Satanella, and an elementary work called Indispensable Studies for a Soprano Voice (of which we never heard) are named in a breath, as the sum total of Balfe's exploits between the years 1852 and 1859 inclusive. "According to the journals"

*The Siege of Rochelle was first performed on the 29th of October, 1835. Produced at the Princess's Theatre, under the title of Geraldine. Produced at the Princess's Theatre, under the name of The Castle of Aymon.

-says M. Fétis-" Satanella, a romantic opera in three acts, obtained a brilliant success, and is regarded in England as the composer's best work."

The early career of Balph in Italy, whether as singer or composer, would appear, according to M. Fétis, to have been in no respect luckier than his career at home and across the Manche. Three Italian operas, given successfully at Palermo, Florence, and Milan, in the last of which, Enrico IV., Mlle. Roser (afterwards Mad. Balfe) appeared, must have been heard, if we read aright, with indifference. Enrico IV. was condemned for the "numberless reminiscences " remarked by the public. As a singer Balph was especially unfortunate, his début (as Signor Balli) at the Italian Opera in Paris (1825) being a failure, in consequence of a barytone voice "mal timbrée," inexperience of the stage, and his association with "excellent singers" in the same opera (Il Barbiere); nor does he ever seem to have redeemed this mishap. Enfin he was fairly driven out of Italy. "At the Fenice (Venice), Balph had the unhappy idea of mutilating the Crociato of Meyerbeer, by introducing pieces of his own composition, and others of Rossini and Donizetti." (We should have termed this amplifying). "The indignation of Italy against this act of barbarism obliged Balph to quit the country."

To which (if true) Mr. Bunn (and the English public) are indebted for The Siege of Rochelle, and a long list of operas, almost every one of which, in spite of M. Fétis, were successful and deservedly successful. We had always looked upon Balfe as one of the luckiest of composers, and contemplated his career as one of uninterrupted sunshine and prosperity. But M. Fétis has opened our eyes to the truth. There was never at any period so unlucky a composer, or one whose successive efforts have been received so coldly and rewarded so miserably. Poor Balfe or "Balph !"

To end with the beginning. M. Fétis informs us that Balph's first instructors were his father and Horn*; whereas all the world (except M. Fétis) knows that Bandmaster Meadows taught him the rudiments of music, and then placed him under Hicky (or Hickie) of Wexford. True Balph was subsequently articled to Horn for seven years, and ultimately studied with O'Rourke (Rooke), of whose best opera, Amilie, M. Fétis makes him out the composer. And all these blunders in a book of reference ! Have we been reading a suppositious Biographie?-a Fetisius Hypobolimaus? In that case we must proffer the foregoing remarks as our Confutatio Fabule Burdonum. Truly M. Fétis would be a wonderful bibliograph, if (as some one wrote, with less justice, of Joseph Scaliger) "il avoit l'esprit autant posé comme il l'a bizarre." To conclude, every English amateur will protest against the article "Balfe," or "Balph," in the Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, as a tissue of misrepresentations in the form of a libel.

the composer of Der Freischütz expresses with enthusiasm his approbation of Hoffmann's Undine, and if it delighted him, surely it cannot matter much, as far as Hoffmann's reputation is concerned, who is dissatisfied with it. There is another writer, greater than Hoffmann, whose musical pretensions are never questioned in the present day, though numbers of his contemporaries refused to admit them, not on the ground that the music he gave to the public was worthless, but on the very simple plea that it was the composition of another person. We allude to Jean Jacques Rousseau, the author and accredited composer of Le Devin du Village; the Rousseau of the Confessions, who reproaches himself so bitterly with having stolen a ribbon, passes complacently over a hundred acts of meanness committed by him, and ends by declaring that any one who may come to the conclusion that he, Rousseau, is un malhonnête homme, is himself "a man to be smothered" (un homme à étouffer).

Le Devin du Village is undoubtedly the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau, as far as the libretto is concerned, but it can be shown on better evidence, even than that on which the charge of ribbon-stealing rests (for which we have only Rousseau's own word), that the music was the production of Granet, a composer residing at Lyons.

One day in the year 1751, Pierre Rousseau, called Rousseau of Toulouse, to distinguish him from the numerous other Rousseaus living in Paris, and known as the director of the Journal Encyclopedique, received a parcel containing a quantity of manuscript music, which, on examination, turned out to be the score of an opera. It was accompanied by a letter, addressed like the parcel itself, to M. Rousseau, homme de lettres, demeurant à Paris," in which a person signing himself Granet, and writing from Lyons, expressed a hope that his music would be found worthy of the illustrious author's words, that he had given appropriate expression to the tender sentiments of Colette and Colin, &c. Pierre Rousseau, though a Journalist, understood music. He knew that Granet's letter was intended for Jean Jacques, and that he ought to return it with the music to the post office, but the score of the Devin du Village, from the little he had seen of it, interested him, and he not only kept it until he had made himself familiar with it from beginning to end, but even showed it to a friend, M. de Bellissent, one of the conservators of the Royal Library, and a man of great musical acquirements. As soon as Pierre Rousseau and De Bellis sent had quite finished with the Devin du Village, they sent it back to the post office, whence it was forwarded to its true destination.

Jean Jacques had been expecting Granet's music, and, on receiving the opera in a complete form, took it to La Vaupâlière the farmer-general, and offered it to him, directly or indirectly, as a suitable piece for Mad. de Pompadour's theatre at Versailles, where several operettas had already been produced. La Vaupâlière was anxious to maintain himself in the good graces of the favourite, and purchased for her enThis handsome present cost the gallant financier the sum of tertainment the right of representing the Devin du Village. six thousand francs. However, the opera was performed, was wonderfully successful, and was afterwards produced at the Académie, when Rousseau received four thousand francs more so at least say some authorities who derive their information from the books of the theatre-though, according to Rousseau's own statement in the Confessions, the Opera sent him only fifty louis, which he declares he never asked for, but which he does not pretend to have returned.

Rousseau "confesses," with studied detail, how the music of each piece in the Devin du Village occurred to him; how he at one time thought of burning the whole affair (a conceit by the way which has since been rendered commonplace by amateur authors in their prefaces); how his friends succeeded in persuading him to do nothing of the kind; and how, at last, he wrote the drama, and sketched out the whole of the music in six days, so that, when he arrived with his work in Paris, he had nothing to add but the recitative and the "remplissage "--by which we suppose he means the orchestral parts. In the next page he tells us that he would have given anything in the world if he could only have had the Devin du Village, performed for himself alone, and have listened to it with closed doors as Lulli is reported to have listened to his Armide, executed for his sole gratification. This egotistical pleasure might, perhaps, have been enjoyed by Rousseau if he had really composed the music himself, for when the Académie produced his second Devin du Village, of which the music was undoubtedly his own, the public positively refused to listen to it, and hissed it until it was withdrawn. If the director had persisted in representing the piece the theatre would doubtless have been deserted.

But to return to the original score which, as Rousseau himself informs us, wanted nothing, when he arrived in Paris, except what he calls the " remplissage " and the recitative. He had intended, he says, to have Le Devin performed at the Opera, but M. de Ŏury, the intendant of the Menus Plaisirs, was determined it should first be brought out at the Court. A duel was very nearly taking place between the two directors, when it was at last decided by Rousseau himself that Fontainebleau, Mad. de Pompadour (and La Vaupâlière), should have the preference. Whether Granet had omitted to write recitative or not, it is a remarkable fact that recitative was wanted when the piece came to be rehearsed, and that Rousseau allowed Jéliotte the singer to supply it. This he mentions himself, as also that he was not present at any of the rehearsals for it is at rehearsals above all that a sham com

poser runs the chance of being detected. It is an easy thing for any man to say that he has composed an opera, but it may be difficult for him to correct a very simple error made by the copyist in transcribing the parts. However, Rous seau admits that he did not attend rehearsals and that he did not compose the recitative, which the singers required forthwith, and which had to be written almost beneath their eyes.

But what was Granet doing in the meanwhile? it will be asked. In the meanwhile Granet had died. And Pierre Rousseau and his friend M. de Bellissent? Rousseau of Toulouse, supported by the Conservator of the Royal Library, accused Jean Jacques openly of fraud in the columns of the Journal Encyclopédique. These accusations were repeated on all sides, until at last Rousseau undertook to reply to them by composing new music to the Devin du Village. This new music the Opera refused to perform, and with some reason, for it appears (as the reader has seen) to have been detestable. It was not executed until after Rousseau's death, and at the special request of his widow, when, in the words of Grimm, "all the new airs were hooted without the slightest regard for the memory of the author."

It is this utter failure of the second edition of the Devin du Village which convinces us more than anything else that the first was not from the hand of Rousseau. But let us not say that he was un malhonnête homme." Probably

the conscientious anthor of the Contrat Social adopted the children of others by way of compensation for having sent his own to the "Enfants Trouvés."

MOLIQUE'S "ABRAHAM."

(From the Morning Post.)

this morning for the first time, we shall not be able to speak in detail Sept. 21.- Or the new oratorio of Abraham, which is to be performed until to-morrow, as the morning concerts here terminate almost simultaneously with the starting of the train that carries our despatch; but having heard a rehearsal of Abraham, we are now in a position to offer some general remarks upon the work which may not perhaps be unacceptable. Firstly, Abraham is the work of a highly educated the best influences, and perfectly acquainted with the greatest models. musician, one brought up in a thoroughly good school, surrounded by All that intelligent study, observation, and experience can confer, Herr Molique possesses completely. A master of harmony, counterpoint, form, and instrumentation, he, at least, enters upon the glorious field where artists contend for immortality, armed at all points, and ready for all emergencies that human skill can meet. It must be further observed that Herr Molique is not only a learned man, but also scrupulously conscientious; one who always does his best, who is incapable of making any concession to the "popular" taste of the day, and with whom, therefore, the dignity of art is safe. The value of an artist like Herr Molique at this really critical period of art can scarcely be over-estimated. Musical conservatives of ability were never more wanted than at the present moment, when in Germany a movement which threatens the very existence of music as an independent art is rapidly progressing, and in Italy all purity of style and loftiness of purpose are as rapidly 'giving way before mere sensuousness and socalled brilliancy of effect. The state in which Beethoven left musical art was a very dangerous one. The later works of that most extraordinary genius, though betokening exhaustless imagination, and revealing to us a new world of music, also exhibited a certain irregularity of form. The boundless imagination of the true Shakspeare of music could not be imitated, although it might be emulated. Another Beethoven might possibly arise, but there could be no successful follower of that wondrous master. The only characteristic of his later style that his would-be disciples have attempted to imitate (though none of them have understood it) is the irregularity of form of which we have spoken. This, the consequence of an imagination teeming with novel ideas, and a command of artistic means emanating from immense experience, that enabled him instantly to give the happiest expression to any idea whatever (powers which, in his waywardness, he perhaps sometimes abused), has been falsely regarded as the cause of his superlative greatness, and a justification for such wild, licentious theories as strike at the very root of musical art. But fortunately, soon after the death of Beethoven, there arose another very great man, who, fully understanding the situation, knew how to become master of it, and put a salutary curb upon the downward course of Phoebus's chariot. A man who had drunk deeply at the Pierian spring, who had completely infused into himself the spirit which animated Bach and Handel, a man whose sympathy was with order and regularity, whose mind was of the most classic character, but who could place his own stamp upon all he touched, and animate old forms with a new soul. That man's name was conservatives, looked as to the living depository of their most sacred Mendelssohn. To him, then, the lovers of genuine art, the true musical traditions-the most perfect illustration of their fundamental theory, that the great principles of musical art (like those of every other) are immutable, and eternally productive. As Mendelssohn was gifted with the power of expressing all that the most enlightened lovers of musical art had long thought of and hoped for, he naturally became the head and representative of a great and important movement. It is therefore not at all astonishing that Mendelssohn should have had numerous disciples. A safer model, so far as modern art is concerned, there could not possibly be. He has influenced the musical minds of the present generation far more than any contemporary composer. His vast merits have won the homage of all earnest students, and the great success of his works has stimulated them to follow in his footsteps. That the influence of Mendelssohn should not be felt by an artist of kindred spirit like Molique, that the mind of the author of Elijah should exercise no power over the thoughts or feelings of a classic musician of the present day in the composition of an oratorio, is scarcely to be expected.