im, and revealed him
again, in a sort of cruel white light, a few functioning organs. He has
shown him a machine to which power is applied, and which labors in blind
obedience precisely like the microscopic animal that eats and parturates
and dies. The spring comes; and life replenishes itself; and man, like
seed and germ, obeys the promptings of the blind power that created him,
and accomplishes his predestined course and takes in energy and pours it
out again. But, for a moment, in "Le Sacre du printemps," we feel the
motor forces, watch the naked wheels and levers and arms at work, see
the dynamo itself.

The ballet was completed in 1913, the year Strawinsky was thirty-one
years old. It may be that the work will be succeeded by others even more
original, more powerful. Or it may be that Strawinsky has already
written his masterpiece. The works that he has composed during the war
are not, it appears, strictly new developments. Whatever enlargement of
the field of the string quartet the three little pieces which the
Flonzaleys played here in 1915 created, there is no doubt that it was
nothing at all to compare with the innovation in orchestral music
created by the great ballet. And, according to rumor, the newest of
Strawinsky's work, the music-hall ballet for eight clowns, and the work
for the orchestra, ballet and chorus entitled "Les Noces villageoises,"
are by no means as bold in style as "Le Sacre," and resemble "Petruchka"
more than the later ballet. But, whatever Strawinsky's future
accomplishment, there can be no doubt that with this one work, if not
also with "Petruchka," he has secured a place among the true musicians.
It is doubtful whether any living composer has opened new musical land
more widely than he. For he has not only minted music anew. He has
reached a point ahead of us that the world would have reached without
him. That alone shows him the genius. He has brought into music
something for which we had long been waiting, and which we knew must one
day arrive. To us, at this moment, "Le Sacre du printemps" appears one
of those compositions that mark off the musical miles.

Mahler

Almost simultaneously with the rise of Russian music and the new birth
of French music, that of Germany has deteriorated. The great line of
composers which descended from Bach and Haendel for two centuries has
wavered and diminished visibly during the last three decades. The proud
tradition seems to have reached