Converse declined the honor of a Doctorship of Music from the
University of Cambridge, offered him by its professor, the well-known
English composer, Sterndale Bennett, in recognition of his mastery of
lore as evinced in a five-voiced double fugue that ends his
Psalm-Cantata on the 126th Psalm.

This scholarly work was performed under the direction of Theodore
Thomas in 1888, at Chicago.

A widely known contribution to religious music is Converse' hymn,
"What a Friend We Have in Jesus," which has been printed, so they say,
in all the tongues of Christendom, and sold to the extent of fifty
millions of copies. This tune occupied a warm place in my
Sunday-schoolboy heart, along with other singable airs of the Moody
and Sankey type, but as I hum it over in memory now, it tastes
sweetish and thin. Its popularity is appalling, musically at least.
Converse has written many other hymn-tunes, which have taken their
place among ecclesiastical soporifics. Besides, he has recently
compiled a collection of the world's best hymns into the "Standard
Hymnal." In this field Converse, though conventional,--and
conventionality may be considered inevitable here,--is mellow of
harmony and sincere in sentiment.

Numberless attempts are made to supply our uncomfortable lack of a
distinctly national air, but few of them have that first requisite, a
fiery catchiness, and most of them have been so bombastic as to pall
even upon palates that can endure Fourth of July glorification.
Recognizing that the trouble with "America" was not at all due to the
noble words written by the man whom "fate tried to conceal by naming
him Smith," Converse has written a new air to this poem.
Unfortunately, however, his method of varying the much-borrowed
original tune is too transparent. He has not discarded the idea at
all, or changed the rhythm or the spirit. He has only taken his tune
upward where "God Save the Queen" moves down, and bent his melody down
where the British soars up. This, I fancy, is the chief reason why his
national hymn has gone over to the great majority, and has been
conspicuously absent from such public occasions as torchlight parades
and ratifications.

Except the work issued under the alias "Karl Redan," or the anagrams,
"C.O. Nevers" and "C.E. Revons," his only secular musics that have
been put into print are his American Overture, published in Paris, and
a book of six songs, published in Germany.

Music is called the universal la