y of these noble art patrons may have been,
there were not wanting some who cultivated music with a purer spirit.
Some of the best bands were those of the Princes D. Radziwill, Adam
Czartoryski, F. Sulkowski, Michael Lubomirski, Counts Ilinski, Oginski,
and Wielhorski. Our inquiry into the cultivation of music at the courts
of the Polish magnates has carried us beyond the point we had reached in
our historical survey. Let us now retrace our steps.

The progress of music above spoken of was arrested by the anarchy and
the civil and other wars that began to rage in Poland with such fury in
the middle of the last century. King Stanislas Poniatowski (1764-1795)
is credited with having exercised great influence on the music of
Poland; at any rate, he patronised the arts and sciences right royally.
The Italian opera at Warsaw cannot have been of mean standing, seeing
that artists such as the composers Paisiello and Cimarosa, and the great
violinist, composer, and conductor Pugnani, with his pupil Viotti (the
latter playing second violin in the orchestra), were members of the
company. And the King's band of foreign and native players has been
called one of the best in Europe. Still, all this was but the hothouse
bloom of exotics. To bring about a natural harvest of home produce
something else was wanted than royal patronage, and this something
sprang from the series of disasters that befell the nation in the latter
half of the last century, and by shaking it to its very heart's core
stirred up its nobler self. As in literature, so in music, the national
element came now more and more into action and prominence.

Up to 1778 there had been heard in Poland only Italian and French
operas; in this year, for the first time, a Polish opera was put on
the stage. It is true the beginning was very modest. The early attempts
contained few ensemble pieces, no choruses, and no complex finales. But
a new art does not rise from the mind of a nation as Minerva is said to
have risen from the head of Jupiter. Nay, even the fact that the first
three composers of Polish operas (Kamienski, Weynert, and Kajetani) were
not Poles, but foreigners endeavouring to write in the Polish style,
does not destroy the significance of the movement. The following
statistics will, no doubt, take the reader by surprise:--From the
foundation of the national Polish opera in 1778 till April 20, 1859,
5,917 performances of 285 different operas with Polish words took p