theory, and for this work made a careful
selection of Chinese musical ideas, and used what little harmony they
approve of with most quaint and suggestive effect upon a splendid
background of his own. The result has not been, as is usual in such
alien mimicries, a mere success of curiosity.

The work had its first accolade of genius in the wild protests of the
music copyists, and in the downright mutiny of orchestral performers.

On the first page of the score is this note: "This should be played
with a bow unscrewed, so that the hairs hang loose--thus the bow never
leaves the string." This direction is evidently meant to secure the
effect of the Chinese violin, in which the string passes between the
hair and the wood of the bow, and is played upon the under side. But
what self-respecting violinist could endure such profanation without
striking a blow for his fanes?

The first movement of the suite is made up of themes actually learned
from Chinese musicians. It represents the "Wedding of Aladdin and the
Princess," a sort of sublimated "shivaree" in which oboes quawk, muted
trumpets bray, pizzicato strings flutter, and mandolins (loved of
Berlioz) twitter hilariously.

The second movement, "A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden," begins
with a luxurious tone-poem of moonlight and shadow, out of which,
after a preliminary tuning of the Chinese lute (or sam-yin), wails a
lyric caterwaul (alternately in 2-4 and 3-4 tempo) which the Chinese
translate as a love-song. Its amorous grotesque at length subsides
into the majestic night. A part of this altogether fascinating
movement came to Kelley in a dream.

The third chapter is devoted to the "Flight of the Genie with the
Palace," and there is a wonderfully vivid suggestion of his struggle
to wrest loose the foundations of the building. At length he heaves it
slowly in the air, and wings majestically away with it.

It has always seemed to me that the purest stroke of genius in
instrumentation ever evinced was Wagner's conceit of using tinkling
bells to suggest leaping flames. And yet quite comparable with this
seems Kelley's device to indicate the oarage of the genie's mighty
wings as he disappears into the sky: liquid _glissandos_ on the upper
harp-strings, with chromatic runs upon the elaborately divided
violins, at length changed to sustained and most ethereally fluty
harmonics. It is very ravishment.

The last movement, "The Return and Feast of the Lanterns," is on t