nduct their newest compositions. And I think it would not have been
too much to set up one of our own foremost composers to combat the glory
which these two enjoy in their own country.

M. Chevillard had been asked to conduct, not one of the works of our
recent masters, like Debussy or Dukas, whose style he renders to
perfection, but Franck's _Les Beatitudes_, a work whose spirit he does
not, to my mind, quite understand. The mystic tenderness of Franck
escapes him, and he brings out only what is dramatic. And so that
performance of _Les Beatitudes_, though in many respects fine, left an
imperfect idea of Franck's genius.

But what seemed inconceivable, and what justly annoyed M. Chevillard,
was that the whole of _Les Beatitudes_ was not given, but only a section
of them. And on this subject I shall take the liberty of recommending
that French artists who are guests at similar festivals should not in
future agree to a programme with their eyes shut, but have their own
wishes considered, or refuse their help. If French musicians are to be
given a place in German _Musikfeste_, French people must be allowed to
choose the works that are to represent them. And, above all, a French
conductor must not be brought from Paris, and find on his arrival a
mutilated score and an arbitrary choice of a few fragments that are not
even whole in themselves. For they played five out of the eight
_Beatitudes_, and cuts had been made in the third and eighth
_Beatitudes_. That showed a want of respect for art, for works should be
given as they are, or not at all.

And it would have been more seemly if in this three-day festival the
organisers had had the courteousness to devote the first day to French
music, and had set aside one whole concert for it. But, without doubt,
they had carefully sandwiched the French works in between German works
to weaken their effect, and lessen the probable (and actual) enthusiasm
with which French music would be received in the presence of the
Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine by a section of the Alsatian public. In
addition to this, and by a choice that neither myself nor anyone else in
Strasburg could believe was dictated by musical reasons, the German work
chosen to end the evening was the final scene from _Die Meistersinger_,
with its ringing couplet from Hans Sachs, in which he denounces foreign
insincerity and foreign frivolity (_Waelschen Dunst mit waelschen Tand_).
This lack of courtesy--though the words