an we not tear ourselves away from that romantic suffering in
music which was begun by Beethoven? After a century of battles, of
revolutions, and of political and social strife, whose pain has found
its reflection in art, let us begin to build a new city of art, where
men may gather together in brotherly love for the same ideal. However
Utopian that hope may sound now, let us think of it as a symptom of new
directions of thought, and let us hope that Don Perosi may be one of
those who will bring into music that divine peace, that peace which
Beethoven craved for in despair at the end of his _Missa Solemnis_, that
joy that he sang about but never knew.

FRENCH AND GERMAN MUSIC

In May, 1905, the first musical festival of Alsace-Lorraine took place
at Strasburg. It was an important artistic event, and meant the bringing
together of two civilisations that for centuries had been at variance on
the soil of Alsace, more anxious for dispute than for mutual
understanding.

The official programme of the _fetes musicales_ laid stress on the
reconciliatory purpose of its organisers, and I quote these words from
the programme book, drawn up by Dr. Max Bendiner, of Strasburg:

"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond
between nations, races, and states, who are strangers to one
another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited, and bring
peace to what is hostile.... No country is more suited for her
friendly aid than Alsace-Lorraine, that old meeting-place of
people, where from time immemorial the North and South have
exchanged their material and their spiritual wealth; and no place
is readier to welcome her than Strasburg, an old town built by the
Romans, which has remained to this day a centre of spiritual life.
All great intellectual currents have left their mark on the people
of Alsace-Lorraine; and so they have been destined to play the part
of mediator between different times and different peoples; and the
East and the West, the past and the present, meet here and join
hands. In such festivals as this, it is not a matter of gaining
aesthetic victories; it is a matter of bringing together all that
is great and noble and eternal in the art of different times and
different nations."

It was a splendid ambition for Alsace--the eternal field of battle--to
wish to inaugurate these European Olympian games. But