its surpassing
utterances of human sorrow and infinite tenderness.

In the year 1790, when Joseph Haydn had accepted an invitation to make
a professional visit to London, his young friend, Mozart, endeavored to
dissuade him from going on account of his age, but Haydn persisted,
declaring that he was still active and strong. Eight years later, at
sixty-six years of age, he wrote his celebrated oratorio "The Creation,"
with all the vigor and sparkle of youth. The rambles of years in the
beautiful grounds of Esterhazy had attuned his soul to communion with
nature, and this work plainly shows his power of putting into tones the
secrets nature revealed to him. Blissful joyousness and child-like
naivete are among its characteristic features.

The style of Beethoven as a composer of sacred music is reflected in his
single oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives," that like his single
opera stands apart, amply sufficient to prove what he was capable of
accomplishing. Mendelssohn, in his "St. Paul" and his "Elijah," embodied
a high ideal, building on his predecessors and attaining, especially in
the latter, an eclectic spirit that manifests keen discrimination. The
oratorios of Liszt, the "Christus," "St. Elizabeth" and some lesser
works, reveal high purpose and original treatment of a revelation in
tones of sacred events. In the oratorios of the Frenchman Gounod,
preeminently in his "Redemption," it is interesting to find modern
chorals based on those of the German Bach, and, in fact, as it has been
aptly said, a modernized treatment of Bach's passion form.

What may be the next step in the evolution of the oratorio it were
difficult to estimate. Whether modern efforts can ever surpass, or even
equal, the sublime productions in this field, or whether creative genius
will be turned into wholly new channels, the future alone may
determine.

[Illustration: SAINT-SAENS]

XII

Symphony and Symphonic Poem

That adventurous spirit, Claudio Monteverde, who nearly three hundred
years ago made himself responsible for the first feeble utterances of an
orchestra that tried to say something for itself, divined the
possibilities of expression in varying combinations of tone-quality and
gave vigorous impulse to the germ of the symphony already existing in
the formless instrumental preludes and interludes of his predecessors
among opera-makers. His revelation of the charm that lies in exploring
the resources of instrumentation