[Music: To Mr. Constantin Sternberg.

ARABESQUE.

Wilson G. Smith, Op. 39.

Copyright, 1889, by O. Ditson & Co.]

Smith has gone over to the great majority,--the composers who have set
"Du bist wie eine Blume;" but he has joined those at the top. Two of
Smith's songs have a quality of their own, an appeal that is
bewitching: "Entreaty," a perfect melody, and "The Dimple in Her
Cheek," which is fairly peachy in color and flavor.

A strange place in the world of music is that held by Johann H. Beck,
whom some have not feared to call the greatest of American composers.
Yet none of his music has ever been printed. In this he resembles B.J.
Lang, of Boston, who keeps his work persistently in the dark, even
the sacred oratorio he has written.

All of Beck's works, except eight songs, are built on very large
lines, and though they have enjoyed a not infrequent public
performance, their dimensions would add panic to the usual timidity
of publishers. Believing in the grand orchestra, with its complex
possibilities, as the logical climax of music, Beck has devoted
himself chiefly to it. He feels that the activity of the modern artist
should lie in the line of "amplifying, illustrating, dissecting, and
filling in the outlines left by the great creators of music and the
drama." He foresees that the most complicated scores of to-day will be
Haydnesque in simplicity to the beginning of the next century, and he
is willing to elaborate his best and deepest learning as far as in him
lies, and wait till the popular audience grows up to him, rather than
write down to the level of the present appreciation.

The resolve and the patient isolation of such a devotee is nothing
short of heroic; but I doubt that the truest mission of the artist is
to consider the future too closely. Even the dictionaries and
encyclopaedias of one decade, are of small use to the next. The tiny
lyrics of Herrick, though, have no quarrel with time, nor has time any
grudge against the intimate figurines of Tanagra. The burdened
trellises of Richard Strauss may feel the frost long before the
slender ivy of Boccherini's minuet.

[Music: A FRAGMENT OF THE SCORE OF "SALAMMBO," BY JOHANN H. BECK.]

Science falls speedily out of date, and philosophy is soon out of
fashion. Art that uses both, is neither. When it makes crutches of
them and leans its whole weight on them, it will fall with them in
the period of their inevitable decay.

Of course, there is e