time organist in Stuttgart and later
in Berlin. He was one of those favorite pupils of Liszt, and played in
concerts abroad with remarkable success, winning at the age of
eighteen high critical enthusiasm. He has been more cordially
recognized abroad than here, but is assuredly one of the greatest
living pianists. It is fortunate that his patriotism keeps him at
home, where he is needed in the constant battle against the
indecencies of apathy and Philistinism.

The Yankee spirit of constructive irreverence extends to music, and in
recent years a number of unusually modern-minded theorists have worked
at the very foundations: Dr. Percy Goetschius (born here, and for long
a teacher at Stuttgart); O.B. Boise (born here, and teaching now in
Berlin); Edwin Bruce, the author of a very radical work; Homer A.
Norris; and last, and first, A.J. Goodrich, who has made himself one
of the most advanced of living writers on the theory of music, and has
made so large a contribution to the solidity of our attainments, that
he is recognized among scholars abroad as one of the leading spirits
of his time. His success is the more pleasing since he was not only
born but educated in this country.

[Illustration: A.J. GOODRICH.]

The town of Chilo, Ohio, was Goodrich' birthplace. He was born there
in 1847, of American parentage. His father taught him the rudiments of
music and the piano for one year, after which he became his own
teacher. He has had both a thorough and an independent instructor. The
fact that he has been enabled to follow his own conscience without
danger of being convinced into error by the prestige of some
influential master, is doubtless to be credited with much of the
novelty and courage of his work.

His most important book is undoubtedly his "Analytical Harmony,"
though his "Musical Analysis" and other works are serious and
important. This is not the place to discuss his technicalities, but
one must mention the real bravery it took to discard the old practice
of a figured bass, and to attack many of the theoretical fetiches
without hesitation. Almost all of the old theorists have confessed,
usually in a foot-note to the preface or in modest disclaimer lost
somewhere in the book, that the great masters would occasionally be
found violating certain of their rules. But this did not lead them to
deducing their rules from the great masters. Goodrich, however, has,
in this matter, begun where Marx ended, and has gone fu