oignant charm. It contains a fugue episode of unsurpassed
beauty.

_Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne_ is, perhaps, the best of the famous
symphonic poems. The author was inspired by Victor Hugo's poetry and
reproduced its spirit admirably. When will this typical work appear in
the concert repertoires? When will orchestra conductors get tired of
presenting the three or four Wagnerian works they repeat _ad nauseum_,
when they can be heard at the Opera under better conditions, and
Schubert's insignificant _Unfinished Symphony_.

* * * * *

The _Christus_ oratorio was given at the first concert of the festival
at Heidelberg. It lasted three hours and a half and is so long that I
would not dare to advise concert managers to try such an adventure. The
performance was sublime. It was given in a newly constructed square
hall. Cavaille-Coll, who knew acoustics, used to advise the square hall
for concerts but nobody would listen to him. Three hundred chorus
singers, many from a distance, were supported by an orchestra that was
large, but, in my opinion, insufficient to stand up against this mass of
voices. Furthermore, the orchestra was placed below the level of the
stage, as in a theatre, while the voices sounded freely above. Two
harps, one on the east side of the stage and one on the west, saw each
other from afar,--a pleasingly decorative device, but as annoying to the
ear as pleasing to the eye. The chorus and the four soloists--their task
was exceedingly arduous--triumphed completely over the difficulties of
this immense work and all the varied and delicate nuances were rendered
to perfection.

Liszt was far from professing the disdain for the limitations of the
human voice that Wagner and Berlioz did. On the contrary he treated it
as if it were a queen or a goddess, and it is to be regretted that his
tastes did not lead him to work for the stage. Parts of _Saint
Elisabeth_ show that he would have succeeded and the fashion of having
operas for the orchestra, accompanied by voices, which we enjoy to-day,
might have been avoided. He discovered a method, peculiarly his own, of
writing choruses. His manner has never been imitated, but it is
ingenious and has many advantages. The only trouble about it is that the
singers have to take care of details and shadings which is too often
the least of their worries. The German societies, where the members sing
for pleasure, and not for a salary, are car