ful and frequently
artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where
it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only
conscientious, but really graceful and captivating. It received the
most glowing encomiums from people of musical culture, and largely
enhanced Kelley's musical reputation in its run of something over a
year. On its tour Kelley was also the musical conductor, in which
capacity he has frequently served elsewhere.

Kelley plainly deserves preeminence among American composers for his
devotion to, and skill in, the finer sorts of humorous music. No other
American has written so artfully, so happily, or so ambitiously in
this field. A humorous symphony and a Chinese suite are his largest
works on this order.

The symphony follows the life of "Gulliver in Lilliput." In
development and intertwining of themes and in brilliance of
orchestration, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy,
suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious
with wit. Gulliver himself is richly characterized with a burly,
blustering English theme. The storm that throws him on the shores of
Lilliput is handled with complete mastery, certain phrases picturing
the toss of the billows, another the great roll of the boat, others
the rattle of the rigging and the panic of the crew; and all wrought
up to a demoniac climax at the wreck. As the stranded Gulliver falls
asleep, the music hints his nodding off graphically. The entrance of
the Lilliputians is perhaps the happiest bit of the whole delicious
work. By adroit devices in instrumentation, their tiny band toots a
minute national hymn of irresistible drollery. The sound of their wee
hammers and the rest of the ludicrous adventures are carried off in
unfailing good humor. The scene finally changes to the rescuing ship.
Here a most hilarious hornpipe is interrupted by the distant call of
Gulliver's aria, and the rescue is consummated delightfully.

In nothing has Kelley showed such wanton scholarship and such
free-reined fancy as in his Chinese suite for orchestra, "Aladdin." It
is certainly one of the most brilliant musical feats of the
generation, and rivals Richard Strauss in orchestral virtuosity.

While in San Francisco, where, as every one knows, there is a
transplanted corner of China, Kelley sat at the feet of certain
Celestial cacophonists, and made himself adept. He fathomed the, to
us, obscure laws of their