a brief andante proclaims his
collapse, the following march, introduced by trumpet fanfares and
increasing to the noblest triumph, his elevation and coronation.

Camille Saint-Saens, without doubt the most original and intellectual
modern French composer, who at sixty-seven years of age is still in the
midst of his activity, and who has made his own the spirit of the
classic composers, owes to the symphonic poem a great part of his
reputation, and has also written symphonies of great value. His
orchestration is distinguished by its clarity, power and exquisite
coloring. The orchestral music of Tschaikowsky, who died in 1893,
symphonies and symphonic poems, are saturated with the glowing Russian
spirit, are intensely dramatic, sometimes rising to tempestuous bursts
of passion that are only held in check by the composer's scholarly
control of his materials. A strong national flavor is also felt in the
work of Christian Sinding, the Norwegian, whose D minor symphony has
been styled "a piece born of the gloomy romanticism of the North."
Edward Grieg, known as the incarnation of the strong, vigorous, breezy
spirit of the land of the midnight sun, has put some of his most
characteristic work into symphonic poems and orchestral suites. The
first composer to convey a message from the North in tones to the
European world was Gade, the Dane, known as the Symphony Master of the
North, who was born in 1817 and died in 1890.

It is impossible to mention in a brief essay all the great workers in
symphonic forms. One Titanic spirit, Johannes Brahms, (1833-1897) who
succeeded in striking the dominant note of musical sublimity amid modern
unrest, is reserved for our final consideration. Of him Schumann said,
"This John is a prophet who will also write revelations," and he has
revealed to those who can read that high art is the abiding-place of
reason, that it is moreover compounded of profundity of feeling yoked
with profundity of intellectual mastery. Dr. Riemann writes of him,
"From Bach he inherited the depth, from Haydn, the humor, from Mozart,
the charm, from Beethoven, the strength, from Schubert, the intimateness
of his art. Truly a wonderfully gifted nature that was able to absorb
such a fulness of great gifts and still not lose the best of gifts--the
strong individuality which makes the master."

Wonderful is the power of instrumental music, absolute music without
words, that may convey impressions, deep and lasting, no words