psychological variety that
runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento,
religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called "Village Fete" is
an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The
Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst;
The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous
march.

On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote:
"His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The
idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's."

CHAPTER III.

THE ACADEMICS.

_John Knowles Paine._

[Illustration: JOHN KNOWLES PAINE.]

[Illustration: Autograph of John K. Paine]

There is one thing better than modernity,--it is immortality. So while
I am a most ardent devotee of modern movements, because they are at
worst experiments, and motion is necessary to life, I fail to see why
it is necessary in picking up something new always to drop something
old, as if one were an awkward, butter-fingered parcel-carrier.

If a composer writes empty stuff in the latest styles, he is one
degree better than the purveyor of trite stuff in the old styles; but
he is nobody before the high thinker who finds himself suited by the
general methods of the classic writers.

The most classic of our composers is their venerable dean, John
Knowles Paine. It is an interesting proof of the youth of our native
school of music, that the principal symphony, "Spring," of our first
composer of importance, was written only twenty-one years ago. Before
Mr. Paine there had never been an American music writer worthy of
serious consideration in the larger forms.

By a mere coincidence Joachim Raff had written a symphony called
"Spring" in 1878, just a year before Paine finished his in America.
The first movement in both is called "Nature's Awakening;" such an
idea is inevitable in any spring composition, from poetry up--or down.
For a second movement Raff has a wild "Walpurgis Night Revel," while
Paine has a scherzo called "May Night Fantasy." Where Raff is uncanny
and fiendish, Paine is cheerful and elfin. The third movement of
Raff's symphony is called "First Blossoms of Spring," and the last is
called "The Joys of Wandering." The latter two movements of Mr.
Paine's symphony are "A Promise of Spring" and "The Glory of Nature."
The beginning of both symphonies is, of course, a slow introduction
representing the torpid gloom of wi