as hurried away it will continue to have a large measure of
popularity I also fully expect, for in it, together with much that
appeals only to us unhealthy folk of to-day, there is much that will
appeal to the race, no matter how healthy it may become, so long as it
remains human in its desires and instincts.

LAMOUREUX AND HIS ORCHESTRA

Richter and Mottl, the only considerable conductors besides
Lamoureux whom we had heard in England up to 1896, may be compared
with a couple of organists who come here, expecting to find their
instruments ready, in fair working order, and accurately in tune.
Lamoureux, on the other hand, was like Sarasate and Ysaye, who would
be reduced to utter discomfiture if their Strads were to stray on the
road. He played on his own instrument--the orchestra on which he had
practised day by day for so many years. Richter and Mottl took their
instruments as they found them, and devoted the comparatively short
time they had for rehearsal to the business of getting their main
intentions broadly carried out, leaving a good deal of minor detail to
look after itself, and not complaining if a few notes fell under the
desks at the back of the orchestra. Lamoureux had laboriously
rehearsed every inch of his repertory until it was note-perfect, and
each of his men knew the precise bowing, phrasing, degree of piano or
forte, and tempo of every minutest phrase. Now I do not mean by this
that the orchestras on which Richter and Mottl performed played many
wrong notes, while the Lamoureux orchestra played none; and still less
do I mean that Lamoureux got finer results than Richter or Mottl. So
far as the mere notes are concerned, the Englishmen who played for the
German conductors acquitted themselves quite as well as the Frenchmen
who played for Lamoureux. Both made mistakes at times; and a seemingly
paradoxical thing is that when a Lamoureux man stumbled all the world
was bound to hear it, whereas in our English orchestras a score of
mistakes might be made in an evening without many of us being much the
wiser. The reason for this is the reason why the playing of Lamoureux
on his trained orchestra, for all its accuracy, was not better than,
nor in many respects so good as, the playing of Richter and Mottl on
the scratch orchestras which their agents engaged for them. Probably
few uninformed laymen have any notion of the extent to which mere
noise is responsible for the total effect of a Wagner piece o