he organ. None of these are registered with
over-elaboration.

To sacred music Parker has made important contributions. Besides a
dignified, yet impassioned, complete "Morning and Evening Service for
the Holy Communion," he has written several single songs and anthems.

It is the masterwork, "Hora Novissima," however, which lifts him above
golden mediocrity. From the three thousand lines of Bernard of Cluny's
poem, "De Contemptu Mundi," famous since the twelfth century, and made
music with the mellowness of its own Latin rhyme, Mrs. Isabella G.
Parker, the composer's mother, has translated 210 lines. The English
is hardly more than a loose paraphrase, as this random parallel
proves:

Pars mea, Rex meus, Most Mighty, most Holy,
In proprio Deus, How great is the glory,
Ipse decore. Thy throne enfolding.

Or this skilful evasion:

Tunc Jacob, Israel, All the long history,
Et Lia, tunc Rachel All the deep mystery
Efficietur. Through ages hidden.

But it is perhaps better for avoiding the Charybdis of literalness.

Those who accuse Rossini's "Stabat Mater" of a fervor more theatric
than religious, will find the same faults in Parker's work, along with
much that is purely ecclesiastical. Though his sorrow is apt to become
petulance, there is much that is as big in spirit as in handling. The
work is frequently Mendelssohnian in treatment. An archaism that might
have been spared, since so little of the poem was retained, is the sad
old Haendelian style of repeating the same words indefinitely, to all
neglect of emptiness of meaning and triteness. Thus the words "_Pars
mea, Rex meus_" are repeated by the alto exactly thirteen times!
which, any one will admit, is an unlucky number, especially since the
other voices keep tossing the same unlucky words in a musical
battledore.

The especially good numbers of the work (which was composed in 1892,
and first produced, with almost sensational success, in 1893) are: the
magnificent opening chorus; the solo for the soprano; the large and
fiery finale to Part I.; the superb tenor solo, "Golden Jerusalem,"
which is possibly the most original and thrilling of all the numbers,
is, in every way, well varied, elaborated, and intensified, and
prepares well for the massive and effective double chorus, "Stant Syon
Atria," an imposing structure whose ambition found skill sufficing; an
alto solo of original qualities; and a