music and
supermusic. Rubinstein wrote music; Beethoven wrote supermusic (Mr.
Finck may contradict this statement). Bellini wrote operas; Mozart
wrote superoperas. Jensen wrote songs; Schubert wrote supersongs. The
superiority of _Voi che sapete_ as a vocal melody over _Ah! non
giunge_ is not generally contested; neither can we hesitate very long
over the question whether or not _Der Leiermann_ is a better song than
_Lehn' deine Wang'_. Probably even Mr. Finck will admit that the
_Sonata Appassionata_ is finer music than the most familiar portrait
(I think it is No. 22) in the _Kamennoi-Ostrow_ set. But, if we agree
to put Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and a few others on
marmorean pedestals in a special Hall of Fame (and this is a
compromise on my part, at any rate, as I consider much of the music
written by even these men to be below any moderately high standard),
what about the rest? Mr. Finck prefers Johann Strauss to Brahms, nay
more to Richard himself! He has written a whole book for no other
reason, it would seem, than to prove that the author of _Tod und
Verklarung_ is a very much over-rated individual. At times sitting
despondently in Carnegie Hall, I am secretly inclined to agree with
him. Personally I can say that I prefer Irving Berlin's music to that
of Edward MacDowell and I would like to have some one prove to me that
this position is untenable.

What is the test of supermusic? I have read that fashionable music,
music composed in a style welcomed and appreciated by its contemporary
hearers is seldom supermusic. Yet Handel wrote fashionable music, and
so much other of the music of that epoch is Handelian that it is often
difficult to be sure where George Frederick left off and somebody else
began. Bellini wrote fashionable music and _Norma_ and _La Sonnambula_
sound a trifle faded although they are still occasionally performed,
but Rossini, whose only desire was to please his public, (Liszt once
observed "Rossini and Co. always close with 'I remain your very
humble servant'"), wrote melodies in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ which
sound as fresh to us today as they did when they were first composed.
And when this prodigiously gifted musician-cook turned his back to the
public to write _Guillaume Tell_ he penned a work which critics have
consistently told us is a masterpiece, but which is as seldom
performed today as any opera of the early Nineteenth Century which
occasionally gains a hearing at all. Ther