ter portion of the chord from its beginning, and thus to
dwarf the utterance of the word "Awake." To us this effect was very
disagreeable; and it was obviously contrary to the effect intended by
the composer. But with a weight of four or five hundred voices, the
effect would be entirely different. Instead of entering upon the scene
as intruders, the mighty trombones would only serve to swell and enrich
the ponderous chord which opens this noble chorus. Given greater weight
only, and the performance of the admirable Portland choir would have
left nothing to be desired.

We cannot speak with so much satisfaction of the performance of the
orchestra. The instrumentation of "St. Peter" is remarkably fine. But
this instrumentation was rather clumsily rendered by the orchestra,
whose doings constituted the least enjoyable part of the performance.
There was too much blare of brass, whine of hautboy, and scraping of
strings. But in condonation of this serious defect, one must admit that
the requisite amount of rehearsal is out of the question when one's
choir is in Portland and one's orchestra in Boston; besides which the
parts had been inaccurately copied. For a moment, at the beginning of
the orchestral lament, there was risk of disaster, the wind instruments
failing to come in at the right time, when Mr. Paine, with fortunate
presence of mind, stopped the players, and the movement was begun over
again,--the whole occurring so quickly and quietly as hardly to attract
attention.

In conclusion we would say a few words suggested by a recent critical
notice of Mr. Paine's work in the "Nation." While acknowledging the
importance of the publication of this oratorio, as an event in the
art-history of America, the writer betrays manifest disappointment that
this work should not rather have been a symphony, [63] and thus have
belonged to what he calls the "domain of absolute music." Now with
regard to the assumption that the oratorio is not so high a form of
music as the symphony, or, in other words, that vocal music in general
is artistically inferior to instrumental music, we may observe, first,
that Ambros and Dommer--two of the most profound musical critics now
living--do not sustain it. It is Beanquier, we think, who suggests that
instrumental music should rank above vocal, because it is "pure
music," bereft of the fictitious aids of language and of the emotional
associations which are grouped about the peculiar timbre of the hu