isolated pavilion in a little wood some way from the house, and here Rubinstein retired early each morning to study. He was delighted with the delicious peace and quietness of his surroundings. But one morning, so goes the tale, a stranger from Tiflis happened to walk through the wood and heard, issuing from the pavilion, strains of piano-playing such as he had never heard before. He returned the next day with a friend, and again heard the magic sounds. The wonder was noised abroad, and in a few days people began to assemble in hundreds as early as 5.30 a.m., in order to secure places near the windows. Rubinstein naturally could not long remain in ignorance of this concourse of listeners and at first was disposed to be extremely annoyed at having his muchprized privacy invaded. But, finally, his good nature and his amused appreciation of the unique situation prevailed and he actually gave a course of nine gratis concerts at 8 o'clock each morning. The windows of the pavilion were all thrown wide open, but he made no recognition of his alfresco audiences and only a few could from time to time catch a glimpse of his profile. There was very little, by the way, to betoken his Jewish blood in Rubinstein's physiognomy. On the contrary, with years it became more and more Russian, with its square-cut outline, its prominent cheek bones, short fleshy nose, and heavy brows.

did not leave a single posthumous work. To deal exhaustively with each group of his music would require a large volume. Dashed down at the fever heat of inspiration, without pause for revision or pruning, his style is a true index to the inequalities of his nature. The force of his conception so possessed him, so carried him away, that he was in mortal suffering until he transferred the idea to paper, but there he seemed to quit it once and for all. Had he, in addition to his splendid abilities, had the patience of a Beethoven or of a Tshaïkovski, there is little doubt that he might well have taken his place amongst the half dozen composers universally conceded to be the greatest masters of their art. His heart and brain seemed to throb and overflow with beautiful melody; his subjects were never commonplace; his ideas were cast in a grand, often a majestic, mould. He had at his command a fund of fine romantic feeling and a powerful imagination. And yet what a lamentable waste of good material there is in this music-absolutely typical of the man who could earn and dissipate a fortune in a day. How frequently he spoils an expressive melody, rich in undulating curves and rhythms, with slipshod, trite harmonies; or else his themes are crowded together with no regard for contrast or for proper development. Or after a tremendous working up of the listener's interest, he makes pause, and there is no proportionate climax. Just that quality of spontaneity, which was so peculiarly fascinating in his playing, in his compositions can degenerate into unfinished uncohesive improvization. In this Rubinstein resembled Liszt, but though his musical thought soared to a far higher plane than Liszt ever reached, and though he had a ring of passionate sincerity, which Liszt lacked even in his best moments, he was without the latter's acute sense of or

chestral color, nor had he Liszt's technical facility for effective instrumentation. Theoretically, Rubinstein was a staunch conservative in music. He repeatedly averred that the art is in its decadence; yet practically, albeit possibly quite unconsciously, he was a red hot revolutionary. We have seen that he was anything but conservative in his methods of approaching pianoforte literature, and in spite of the sarcasm which he often poured forth against modern "meaning," and "programmes" in music, he left many conconspicuous examples of both; the "Ocean," "The Dramatic," and the "Russian" symphonies, for instance, or the orchestral character studies, "Antony and Cleopatra," "Ivan, the Terrible," and "Don Quixote." Outside Russia, Rubinstein has often been despised and reviled because he neither appreciated nor imitated Wagner. It may yet come to be considered by foreigners as much as by his own countrymen that in reality one of his most distinctive qualities was his entire "aloofness" from Wagnerian dictates. His fifteen operas were written in such a manner that Wagner need not necessarily have ever lived. One passing strange paradox in Rubinstein's opinions was his attitude towards national mood and spirit in music. He declared that the employment of national themes and national color only indicated poverty of invention and an exhaustion of the mainsprings of musical inspiration. Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to include Glinka, the founder of the Russian school of music, amongst the "Immortals"; and as we have already noticed, his enthusiasm for Chopin was well-nigh unbounded. During his lifetime, unfortunately for his advancement as a Russian composer, his compatriots took him at his own valuation and believed his assertions that it were vain to search for national traits in any work from his

pen. Only of late years with closer study have Russians awakened to the fact that there is much that is Slav, or, to be strictly accurate, that is essentially Oriental, in Rubinstein's musical utterances. His fine opera, The Demon, founded upon Lermontov's celebrated version of a Caucasian legend, is now one of the most frequently performed works in the repertory of the Imperial Lyric Stage, and another purely Russian opera, The Merchant Kalashnikov, is revived as often as the Censor will permit. Whilst touching upon that very remarkable creation, The Demon, one would like to suggest that Rubinstein here had a subject perfectly akin to his own violently emotional individuality. In many points the principal personage of this opera is the exact counterpart of the composer's own nature, with its gusts of passion, its alluring seductiveness, its masterful strength, and also its dire weakness. If we count a revelation of character in art as a higher asset than style and polish, then, in spite of all its defects, Rubinstein's music remains an extraordinarily interesting study. Some three or four of his songs and a few only of his shorter piano pieces are frequently heard in England, but there are at least forty-five settings of Russian words by Koltsov, Lermontov, and other poets, which are probably completely unknown here.

Delightful, as illustrative of the composer's keen sense of humor, is the song-cycle upon a number of fables by the famous fabulist, Kriulov, op. 64. The vocal duets and choruses are also most of them extremely effective and eminently grateful to the voice. Out of a quantity of chamber music one would wish to secure a foremost place on concert programmes for the two 'cello sonatas; for the octett, op. 9, for pianoforte and chamber orchestra; for the greater number of the trios for pianoforte and strings; for the quin

tette for pianoforte and wood wind; or for the brilliant "Bal Costume" pianoforte duet. The "Ocean" symphony, in spite of a certain heaviness and want of contrast in its orchestration, is nevertheless undoubtedly a very remarkable piece of nature-painting in music. For, heard as an entirety, it can offer to the imagination a very subtle presentment of the sea which, with all its action and restlessness, can yet remain a symbol of eternal rest. Of his operas again there is one, which, if adequately staged and performed here, could not fail to attract and hold an English audience. This is Feramors, founded upon Moore's Lalla Rookh. The libretto of this opera is beautifully put together and the music is full of sparkling lyricism. It has much, too, of that Oriental suavity peculiar to Rubinstein in his best vein and also quite in keeping with his subject.1

One musical form with which Rubinstein, curiously enough, expected to specially succeed in this country, was staged oratorio, otherwise known as sacred opera. He found something singularly incongruous, or rather irreverent, not to say ludicrous, in the ordinary rendering of oratorio, in which the principal parts are consigned to fashionably attired singers standing stiffly on a platform. And England being the country in which this branch of music has chiefly found a home, he finally hoped to propagate his views here and delight the British public by presenting it with its beloved oratorio against a background of realistic Biblical scenery, with the vocal parts acted as well as sung. Needless to say, England is the very last country in which such an idea could flourish, and as far as English listeners are concerned, Rubinstein was doomed to disappointment; or else he had to fall

1 This work has, we believe, been once put upon the London stage.

back upon what he set out to mainly avoid, namely, a mutilated concert programme. One of these sacred operas, it is interesting to notice, is taken from Milton's Paradise Regained.

IV.

A remarkable phase in the activities of several of the greatest modern musicians has been their literary faculty. Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, were all voluminous writers. Rubinstein was also a writer, though certainly not voluminous in his literary output. There only exist some three or four booklets from his pen. But brief as they are, from beginning to end they form exceedingly good reading and are very original in their point of view. They consist mostly of haphazard reflections upon life and art, jotted down apparently exactly as they occurred to him; and scattered through them one lights repeatedly upon allusions to women and love. Were it possible to obtain the necessary data an interesting book could doubtless be written upon Rubinstein's love affairs. If hearsay is to be believed, these were very numerous. Here are a few of his random thoughts upon the opposite sex, selected here and there, both from the Russian and German originals :

God created woman. She remains the most beautiful of His creations, but full of faults. He did not remove them, being convinced that they would but enhance her charms.

The increase in the number of women interested in the art of music, in instrumental execution, as well as in composition (I exclude the art of singing, a field in which woman has always accomplished much work of preeminent quality), dates from the second half of our century. I consider this growing excess as one of the signs of the decay of our art. Women are wanting in two principal requisites, for

executive as well as creative art-subjectivity and initiative. They are wanting in conviction and cannot raise themselves as executants above objectivity (imitation). For musical creation they lack depth, concentration, power of thought, breadth of feeling, freedom of stroke. That this should be so is a constant enigma. Why should music, the most beautiful, the most refined, soulful, and heart-felt of the creations of man, be so unattainable by woman, who is a combination of all these qualities? In all other arts, even in the sciences, she has achieved much! But the true feelings most natural to herlove for her husband and tenderness to her child-have never been portrayed by her in music. I know no great loveduet composed by woman, or cradle song. I do not say that there are none in existence, but I maintain that not one composed by woman has had sufficient artistic merit to become a standard of style.

It is a fallacy to maintain that man and woman should know each other well before they marry; people engaged for years will only really know each other after the honeymoon.

I noticed that with blue-eyed women, their physical life is governed by their spiritual instincts-they have feeling; with brown-eyed women, on the contrary, the spiritual is governed by the physical-they have temperament. Thus it is much more difficult to deceive a brown-eyed than a blue-eyed woman.

Women are not fond of tobacco smoke; therefore they banish men to smoking-rooms and smoking compartments. But it never seems to occur to them to ask whether men object to the patchouli and the other so-called perfumes which so many of them affect. Oh! les femmes! After all is said and done, how good-natured we men are!

When we perceive that European women bore holes in their ears and insert rings in them, we may well ask if civilization separates our women from the savages of other lands only

in so far that the former wear rings in their ears and not in their noses?

Weakness is in need of support, therefore woman is more in need of a religion than man.

I once determined to compose a work, and call it "Love with Variations." I had to abandon the idea. When I was young, I found my theme, but had no material for variations. And now that I am older the variations come to me in plenty, but, alas! my theme fails me!

The female nude delights me in painting or sculpture much more than it does in real life; in art it excites my imagination, in reality it tends to kill

it.

Men rarely eat raw fruit, or, if they do, they are usually of the milksop type; women, on the contrary, love it. particularly raw apples.

If a man wants a wife entirely after his own mind, he should marry a girl between sixteen and seventeen; after twenty, women acquire wills of their own, and two wills in a household means discord.

It is not the woman who plays the comedy of life best who usually succeeds well as an actress; she would find the stage too impersonal.

I like a wood better than a flower garden; but yet, I prefer the society of women to that of men,

It often happens that an old man loves a young girl; it is her inexperience which attracts him. It is also possible for a young girl to fall deeply in love with an old man. In her case she is attracted by his experience.

I have the greatest pity for a gov. erness; hers is a hard and thankless existence. If she wins the love of her pupils, she immediately arouses their mother's jealousy; if she be young and pretty, the wife becomes suspicious; or, if there be an elder son in the house, the parents at once suspect her of

designs upon the youth. If she wish to steer clear of cliffs, she will change her position often, but at the best she will only meet with fresh rocks.

Man's relation to woman is much the same as woman's treatment of a flower-she admires it; she smells it; she plucks it, and wears it in her bosom, and when it is faded, she plucks another.

Paint, powder, the pencilling of their eyebrows, the smearing of their lips, the wearing of bracelets, necklaces, earrings, by women, is a token that the East was the cradle of mankind. That such frivolities are tenable in Europe in the present day is an index to woman's innate, boundless vanity. That these artifices, however, are not only suffered but even encouraged and admired by man, proves him to be, in spite of all his vaunted civilization, at heart a savage, with no conception whatever of the beauties of nature. He would have woman more beautiful than her Creator deemed necessary. What an adorer!

We name the favorite of a king his “mistress," but it is very significant of the relations of the sexes that we never dream of calling the favorite of a queen her "master."

Woman is neither a snake, a cat, nor a cow, but she possesses something of the functions of each. She can be as slippery and as poisonous as a snake; as soft, as caressing, and as feline as a cat; as patient, as useful, as resigned as a cow. But for all that she remains the most dramatic element of creation, the very poetry of life.

V.

In Russian dictionaries of music Rubinstein is described as the founder of "musical education and civilization in Russia." Nothing could express better than these terms exactly what he accomplished for the music of his country. Glinka was the founder of a

great national school of composers. Rubinstein founded a no less national school of performers, and also of listeners. Thanks to the healthy inception of the two schools, and to the beneficial influence of the one reacting upon the other, Russia, in less than a century, could take a foremost place amongst musical nations. When Rubinstein began his career there were practically no capable native teachers of music in Russia, and if there were a few good native performers these had all been trained abroad. Moreover, innately musical as has been the Russian peasantry from time immemorial, the musical taste of the cultivated classes was of a very low standard. Only the most frivolous of light Italian operas were heard with pleasure. As early as 1796 there had been a Conservatoire under royal patronage at St. Petersburg, but it remained entirely in the hands of foreigners, and these apparently devoid of energy and enterprise, since, according to a Russian contemporary, the Conservatoire existed upon paper rather than in reality. Not until 1862 was there a regular and active school of music in St. Petersburg. Rubinstein was its originator, promoter, and for many years its chief director. One of the first pupils to issue from its doors was Tshaikovski, who, in his turn, also became one of the native teachers whom Rubinstein especially aimed at producing. But the establishment of adequate Conservatoire training was only the second step in a vast scheme of national musical culture which had suggested itself to the pianist-composer whilst still in his boyhood. The first move in his plan was the formation of what is now known as the Imperial Russian Musical Society, the first branch of which was opened at St. Petersburg in 1859 and which quickly increased its sphere of influence till, in 1902, it had no less than twenty-nine affiliated branches in