his giantship the
great Beethoven himself--are fading visibly and rapidly. Far be it from
the academics to undervalue the great significance of "modernity." Our
musical palette, the orchestra, has in our own time been enriched by the
addition of many brilliant colors. Music has become, if possible, still
more closely allied with and indebted for inspiration to each and all of
the sister arts: while the peremptory and ever-increasing demand upon
the dexterity as well as the intellectual grasp of the executant has
brought into the field such an array of splendid artist interpreters as
possibly the world has never before seen. ["Hear! Hear!"] What the
effect produced by audible performance of the works of the great
past-masters in music may be upon the ricketty understandings is
difficult even to guess at. The healthily trained student, however, to
whom the preservation of the history of his art is still of some
consequence, shows that the word "perishable" has positively no meaning
to him so long as tough paper and honest leather hold together. To him
those noble scores can never become dumb, sealed, or silent books; he
has only to reach them down and, reading, hear them speak--each master
in the language of his own time--in living notes, as glowing now as when
they were first penned.

It is not without some diffidence, sir, that I allude before sitting
down to that time when our own English music had a high and most
honorable place among the arts of the nations--because, alas! that
recollection necessarily compels the remembrance of a subsequent and too
prolonged period of decayed fortunes. But I must allow myself to say a
few words in recognition of the efforts of the three of our native
contemporary composers, who never tire in the endeavor to reclaim the
lost ground. For, within very recent years, much has been achieved which
has been helpful towards the recapture of the position, towards the
recovery of the old-time renown. That "artist corps" may perhaps not be
a very numerous company and besides it is without doubt, in the words of
a popular lyrical humorist, a somewhat "nervous, shy, low-spoken" little
band, which is content to wait and work incessantly in the service of
its national music. Generous in acknowledgment of the efforts of all
who assist its onward progress, it has already done much, can and will
do more. I said advisedly "national music" because its members, hailing
as they do from all the subdivisio