e. In the clash of aims he must, after all, take
sides, for it is the tendency that is momentous; and he will be excited
to greater heat the stronger the prophet that he deems false. When the
strife is over, when currents are finally settled, we may take a more
contented joy in the impersonal art that remains.

The choice from the mass of brilliant vital endeavor is a new burden and
a source almost of dismay. Why should we omit so melodious a work as
Moskowski's _Jeanne d'Arc_,--full of perhaps too facile charm? It was,
of course, impossible to treat all the wonderful music of the Glazounows
and the Kallinikows. And there is the limpid beauty of the Bohemian
_Suk_, or the heroic vigor of a _Volbach_. We should like to have
mentioned _Robert Volkmann_ as a later Romanticist; and _Gade_ has ever
seemed a true poet of the Scandinavian symphony.

Of the modern French we are loth to omit the symphonies of _Chausson_
and of _Dukas_. In our own America it is a still harder problem. There
is the masterly writing of a _Foote_; the older _Paine_ has never been
fully valued in the mad race for novelty. It would have been a joy to
include a symphony of rare charm by _Martinus van Gelder_.

A critical work on modern art cannot hope to bestow a crown of laurels
among living masters; it must be content with a view of active
tendencies. The greatest classic has often come into the world amid
least expectation. A critic in the year 1850 must need have omitted the
Unfinished Symphony, which was then buried in a long oblivion.

The present author prefers to treat the main modern lines, considering
the special work mainly as example. After all, throughout the realm of
art the idea is greater than the poet, the whole art more than the
artist,--though the particular enshrinement in enduring design may
reflect a rare personality.

PHILIP H. GOEPP.

NOTE: Especial thanks are owed to the Philadelphia Orchestra for a free
use of its library, and to Messrs. G. Schirmer Company for a like
courtesy.--P.H.G.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.--The Symphony during the Nineteenth Century

CHAPTER II.--Berlioz and Liszt

CHAPTER III.--Berlioz. "Romeo and Juliet." Dramatic Symphony

CHAPTER IV.--A Symphony to Dante's "Divina Commedia"

CHAPTER V.--The Symphonic Poems of Liszt
"Les Preludes"
"Tasso"
"Mazeppa"
"Battle of the Huns"

CHAPTER VI.--The Symphonic Poems of Saint-Saens
"Danse Macabre"
"Phaeton"
"The Youth of Hercule