nguage, but it has strongly marked
dialects, and sometimes a national flavor untranslatable to foreign
peoples. So with these six songs, not the words alone are German. They
are based on a Teutonic, and they modulate only from Berlin to
Braunschweig and around to Leipzig. While the songs repay study, they
are rather marked by a pianistic meditation than a strictly lyric
emotion. "Aufmunterung zur Freude" is a tame allegretto; "Wehmuth" is
better; "Taeuschung" is a short elegy of passion and depth; "Ruhe in
der Geliebten" is best in its middle strain where it is full of rich
feeling and harmony. The ending is cheap. "Der gefangene Saenger" is
only a slight variant at first on the "Adieu" credited to Schubert; it
is thereafter excellent.

Converse has a large body of music in manuscript, none of which I had
the pleasure of examining save a tender sacred lullaby. There are two
symphonies, ten suites, and concert overture, three symphonic poems,
an oratorio, "The Captivity," six string quartettes, and a mass of
psalmodic and other vocal writing.

Of these works three have been produced with marked success: the
"Christmas Overture," at one of the public concerts of the Manuscript
Society, under the direction of Walter Damrosch; the overture "Im
Fruehling," at concerts in Brooklyn and New York, under the baton of
Theodore Thomas; and the American overture, "Hail Columbia!" at the
Boston Peace Jubilee under Patrick Gilmore, at the Columbian
Exposition under Thomas, and in New York under Anton Seidl.

This last overture received the distinction of publication at Paris,
by Schott et Cie. It is built on the rousing air of "Hail, Columbia!"
This is suggested in the slow minor introduction; the air itself is
indicated thematically as one of the subjects later appearing in full
swing in a coda. The instrumentation is brilliant and the climax
overwhelming.

Altogether the work is more than adroit musical composition. It is a
prairie-fire of patriotism.

_L.A. Coerne._

[Illustration: LOUIS ADOLPHE COERNE.]

A grand opera by an American on an American subject is an achievement
to look forward to. Though I have not seen this opera, called "A
Woman of Marblehead," it is safe to predict, from a study of its
composer's other works, that it is a thing of merit.

Louis Adolphe Coerne, who wrote the music for this opera, was born in
Newark, N.J., in 1870, and spent the years from six to ten in music
study abroad, at Stuttgart an