H Each of these, so far as he has rendered any service, has been an educatcr in some aspect of the art. Some of them have exhibited, for instance, such high technical excellence in performance that the American public, especially in our large cities, are dissatisfied with the slovenly and incompetent performer. Others have been the heralds of new movements in music or revivers of old and permanently valuable forms. OWEVER Americans and to omit altogether a host of singers maypride themselves and violinists. upon the fact that their land is commercially and politically free and independent, they are not ashamed of the fact that musically their land is dependent upon Europe. Indeed, they seem to relish their condition of musical inferiority. A foreign name is actually an asset for a musician in America; foreign approval of a musical performer or a composition is almost a requisite for favorable reception by American audiences; and the more foreign the foreigner who comes to our shores, the more likely he is to find people ready to listen to his claims to musical genius or skill. This is not altogether unfortunate. It is incidentally hard, perhaps, on American musicians; but it is of some advantage to the American public. It has resulted in making the United States musically cosmopolitan. German, Frenchman, Norwegian, Hungarian, Russian, and Pole are all equally welcome to these shores. They bring with them widely various musical ideals; they acquaint American hearers with different musical temperaments; they represent diverse currents in the stream of musical development. The United States is still in its period of tutelage in the art of music, and it therefore profits by a variety of teachers. Some breadth of view almost necessarily follows from conditions that bring to this land such visitors as von Bülow, Rubinstein, Paderewski, d'Indy, Strauss, Humperdinck, Elgar, such sojourners as Gericke, Nikisch, Dvořák, and such adopted Americans as Thomas and the Damrosches -to mention names almost at random, Among those who have set before the lovers of music in America the highest standards of musicianship, no one has surpassed Felix Weingartner. There are a host of Americans who have reasc:1 for deeply regretting his decision, recently announced, to "retire from active concertconducting." He gives as his reason his desire for seclusion and for release from the excitement that accompanies his appearance in public. He wishes now to devote himself to writing and to composition. His two visits to the United States will long be remembered. To many hearers his interpretation of a Beethoven symphony was like the opening of a door into a new world of music. He is not confined, however, to one school of music. He has the rare power of understanding composers of differer.t periods and diverse temperaments. More than that, he has the power to evoke from the orchestra the music that he finds in the score. His clear, direct, expressive movements seem to transform themselves into sound. But whether he makes the music tremble with the intensity of emotion, or soar exultingly, or sway languorously, or shimmer with woven melodies, or throb in martial rhythm, one feels that the music is all the while under the complete control of a masterful will and a clear-seeing mind. It is hard not to speak extravagantly of Weingartner's insight, taste, and consummate skill as an orchestral conductor. Whether he will continue to conduct the concerts of the Berlin Opera Orches tra is not at present clear; he has not yet been successful in gaining the consent of the authorities to his request for release from the post of conductor; but it is unhappily too likely that he will cease altogether to be a "guest conductor." As a composer Felix Weingartner has not yet attained a position which merits than he has heretofore been free to entertain. ors "invited by the New York Philharmonic Society to conduct its concerts. Now Mr. Safonoff is engaged to be the regular conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra. It sometimes seems as if In comparison with Felix Weingartner, Wassili Safonoff, of Moscow, is an emotional conductor-or rather one who is most effective in the interpretation of Americans needed no education in emo mental. If this is so, the new Philharmonic conductor may bring with him an artistic power which we Americans need. Incidentally it will be interesting to note how the Philharmonic Orchestra under his direction will survive the exciting phony Orchestra, has not appeared in the United States before. He is not quite forty-seven years old. He studied to fit himself to be a Government official, and bears the degree of Ph.D.; but he early turned to music. He has been opera conductor at Zurich, Salzburg, Graz, and Prague. For about fourteen years he has been Kapellmeister in the Royal Opera, Berlin; from this post he has a leave of absence in order to accept his present engagement. He has directed concerts of several European orchestras, including those of the Vienna Philhar monic Society. There are contradictory opinions concerning his qualities as an orchestral conductor. The practice of the Boston Symphony Orchestra of visit ing regularly other cities will give opportunity for many American concert-goers and critics to judge of his qualities for themselves. A FOUNTAIN OF GARDENS IT BY ZONA GALE T seems to Peleas and me that most of the beautiful things that have come to us have been a part of our old age, as if in a kind of tender compensation. But there is one beautiful happening of our youth that we love to remember, the more because it befell in the very week of our betrothal. And though our betrothal was more than fifty years ago, I suppose, to be quite truthful, that there is very little about those days that I do not recall; or if there be any forgotten moments, I grieve to confess. them. There are, however, I find to my amazement, many excellent people who conscientiously remember the dates of the Norman Conquest and the fall of Constantinople, and who are yet obliged to stop to think on what day their betrothal fell. As for me, I would far rather offend my conscience in a matter of Turks than in a matter of love-knots. On a delicate day in May, Eighteen Hundred and Thirty-five, Peleas and I, who are now more than seventy, were quite other people. And I do protest that the lane where we were walking was different, too. I have never seen it since that summer; but I cannot believe that it now wears anything like the same fabric of shadow, the same curve of hedge-row, or that season's pattern of flowers. The lane ran between the Low Grounds and the property of the Governor, on one side the thatched cots of the mill-folk and the woodsmen, and on the other the Governor's great mansion, a very treasure-house of rare canvas and curio. That morning the lane was a kind of causeway between two worlds, and there was no sterner rampart than a hedge of early wild roses. I remember how, stepping with Peleas along that way of sun, I loved him for his young strength, and his blue eyes, and his splendid shoulders, and his strong hands, and for the way he looked down at me-but I think that he must have loved me chiefly for my little gown of roses and for the roses in my hat. For I took very little account of life save its roses, and I must believe that a sense of roses was my most lovable quality. We were, I recall, occupied chiefly in gathering roses from the hedge-row to fill my reticule. "Now, suppose," said Peleas, busy in a corner of green where the bloom was thickest, "suppose we were to find that the hedges go on and never stop, and that all there is to the world is this lane, and that we could walk here forever ?" I nodded. That was about my conception of the world, and that speculation of Peleas's did not impress me as far wrong. "Do you wish this morning could last forever, Ettare, do you?" asked Peleas, looking down at me. "Yes," said I, truthfully, "I do." I hope that there is no one in the world who could not, with his whole soul, say that at least once of some hour of spring and youth. In such a moment, it is my belief, the spirit is very near entering upon its own immortality—since I have always held that immortality must begin at some beautiful moment in this life. Though as for me, at that moment, I confess myself to have been thinking of nothing more immortal than the adorable way that Peleas had of saying my name. "But by and by," Peleas went on, "I think we would come to a garden. Who ever heard of a love story without a garden? And it will be a different' garden from all the rest-the trees will be higher, and the shadows will be made differently, and instead of echoes there will be music. And there will be foun |