taff, and has not the masculine ring of crossed
swords.

It is hardly necessary to consider here the fantastic fashionings of
Erik Satie, the "newest" French composer. He seems to have
out-Schoenberged Schoenberg in his little piano pieces bearing the
alluring titles of Embryons desseches, preludes and pastorales. Apart
from the extravagant titles, the music itself is ludicrous qua music,
but not without subtle irony. That trio of Chopin's Funeral March
played in C and declared as a citation from the celebrated mazurka of
Schubert does touch the rib risible. There are neither time signature
nor bars. All is gentle chaos and is devoted to the celebration, in
tone, of certain sea-plants and creatures. This sounds like Futurism
or the passionate patterns of the Cubists, but I assure you I've seen
and tried to play the piano music of Satie. That he is an arch-humbug
I shall neither maintain nor deny. After Schoenberg anything is
possible in this vale of agonising dissonance. I recall with positive
satisfaction a tiny composition for piano by Rebikoff, which he calls
a setting of The Devil's Daughters, a mural design by Franz von Stuck
of Munich. To be sure, the bass is in C and the treble in D flat,
nevertheless the effect is almost piquant. The humour of the new
composers is melancholy in its originality, but Gauguin has said that
in art one must be either a plagiarist or a revolutionist. Satie is
hardly a plagiarist, though the value of his revolution is doubtful.

The influence of Verdi has been supreme among the Verdists of young
Italy, though not one has proved knee-high to a grasshopper when
compared with the composer of that incomparable Falstaffo. Ponchielli
played his part, and under his guidance such dissimilar talents as
Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo were fostered. Puccini stopped with
La Boheme, all the rest is repetition and not altogether admirable
repetition. That he has been the hero of many phonographs has nothing
to do with his intrinsic merits. Cleverness is his predominating
vice, and a marked predilection for time-serving; that is, he, like
the excellent musical journalist that he is, feels the public pulse,
spreads his sails to the breeze of popular favour, and while he is
never as banal as Humperdinck or Leoncavallo, he exhibits this quality
in suffusion. Above all, he is not original. If Mascagni had only
followed the example of Single-Speech Hamilton, he would have spared
himself many mortifi