the "Seven Ages of Man." The problems attending the
putting to music of Shakespeare's text are severe; but the plays are
gold mines of treasure for the properly equipped musician.

A vivid example of the difficulties in the way of American composers'
securing an orchestral hearing is seen in the experience of Howard
Brockway, who had a symphony performed in 1895 by the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, and has been unable to get a hearing or get
the work performed in America during the five years following, in
spite of the brilliancy of the composition. The scoring of the work is
so mature that one can see its skill by a mere glance at the page from
a distance. When the work was performed in Germany, it was received
with pronounced favor by the Berlin critics, who found in it a
conspicuous absence of all those qualities which the youth of the
composer would have made natural.

Brockway was born in Brooklyn, November 22, 1870, and studied piano
with H.O.C. Kortheuer from 1887 to 1889. He went to Berlin at the
age of twenty and studied the piano with Barth, and composition with
O.B. Boise, the transplanted American. Boise gave Brockway so
thorough a training that he may be counted one of the most fluent and
completely equipped American composers. At the age of twenty-four he
had finished his symphony (op. 12), a ballade for orchestra (op. 11),
and a violin and piano sonata (op. 9), as well as a cavatina for
violin and orchestra. These, with certain piano solos, were given at a
concert of Brockway's own works in February, 1895, at the
Sing-Akademie. His works were accepted as singularly mature, and
promising as well. A few months later, Brockway returned to New York,
where he has since lived as a teacher and performer.

His symphony, which is in D major, is so ebullient with life that its
dashing first subject cannot brook more than a few measures of slow
introduction. The second subject is simpler, but no less joyous. The
thematic work is scholarly and enthusiastic at the same time. The
different movements of the symphony are, however, not thematically
related, save that the coda of the last movement is a reminiscence of
the auxiliary theme of the first movement. The andante, in which the
'cellos are very lyrical, is a tender and musing mood. The presto is
flashing with life and has a trio of rollicking, even whooping,
jubilation. The finale begins gloomily and martially, and it is
succeeded by a period of beauty and grac