fragments. One
scene shows Eurydice running up and down the banks pursued by demons.
Another depicts the death of Orpheus, killed by the Bacchantes. This
score is a curiosity and nothing more, and a reading causes no regret
that the work was not completed.

Like Gluck, Joseph Haydn had the rare advantage of developing
constantly. He did not reach the height of his genius until an age when
the finest faculties are, ordinarily, in a decline. He astounded the
musical world with his _Creation_, in which he displayed a fertility of
imagination and a magnificence of orchestral richness that the oratorio
had never known before. Emboldened by his success he wrote the
_Seasons_, a colossal work, the most varied and the most picturesque in
the history of ancient or modern music. In this instance the oratorio is
no longer entirely religious. It gives an audacious picture of nature
with realistic touches which are astonishing even now. There is an
artistic imitation of the different sounds in nature, as the rustling of
the leaves, the songs of the birds in the woods and on the farm, and the
shrill notes of the insects. Above all that is the translation into
music of the profound emotions to which the different aspects of nature
give birth, as the freshness of the forests, the stifling heat before a
storm, the storm itself, and the wonderful sunset that follows. Then
there is a huntsman's chorus which strikes an entirely different note.
There are grape harvests, with the mad dances that follow them. There is
the winter, with a poignant introduction which reminds us of pages in
Schumann. But be reassured, the author does not leave us to the rigors
of the cold. He takes us into a farmhouse where the women are spinning
and where the peasants are drawn about the fire, listening to a funny
tale and laughing immoderately with a gaiety which has never been
surpassed.

But this gigantic work does not end without giving us a glimpse of
Heaven, for with one grand upward burst of flight, Haydn reaches the
realms where Handel and Beethoven preceded him. He equals them and ends
his picture in a dazzling blaze of light.

This is the sort of work of which the public remains in ignorance and
which it ought to know.

But all this is not what I started out to say. I wanted to write about a
delicate, touching, reserved and precious work by the same author--_The
Seven Words of Christ on the Cross_. This work has appeared in three
forms--for an orc