pretations. Each of the great sonatas revealed itself to him as a tragedy or a comedy, Shakespearian in grandeur or subtlety. Schumann, then scarcely known to the average amateur musician, was also especially appreciated by Rubinstein. He caught all this composer's grotesque, fantastic humor, his alternate melancholy, tenderness, or playfulness. His giant grasp was perhaps almost too rough and rude for Chopin's most delicate, ethereal moods. And yet, no sooner has one made this statement than one wishes to contradict it. For there comes back to one a remembrance of Rubinstein's entrancing rendering of the Chopin berceuse, op. 57, of which he made a veritable lullaby for Titania's fairy slumbers. And what dramatic and fascinating tone-poems he could create out of the oft-maligned Liszt transcriptions. When, for instance, he played the Schubert-Liszt Erlkönig fantasia every shade of meaning in Goethe's ballad seemed to vibrate through the listener-the dense, dark forest, the tempestuous wind howling through the trees, the ghostly, supernatural atmosphere evoked by the Erlkönig and his seductions, the fearsome state of agony of the child, the soothing calm evinced by the father-compared to Rubinstein's wonderful conception of this composition its rendition by other pianists is little more than a clever study in octaves. Rubinstein was decidedly influenced by Chopin in placing the piano higher even than the human voice or the orchestra as a medium of musical expression. "It alone of all musical instruments," he remarked, "is a musical entirety; all the others are but musical fractions." He made an intimate study of the whole range of its possibilities, particularly of the uses of the pedals, which he was wont to graphically describe as the "soul of the piano." There exists a brochure of some pages in which he

pointed out the hundred-and-one different effects obtainable by a skilful use of the pedals. He was also the first musician to take a comprehensive view of the whole course of pianoforte literature, the earliest evolution of which he traced back to Elizabethan England. His seven historical recitals, repeated in different countries, were a monumental record of his intimate knowledge of his subject, so was the great series of thirty-two lecture-recitals upon the development of pianoforte music and virtuosity, first given at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire in the years 1888-1889. Before Rubinstein died, the present-day commis voyageur pianists, travelling hurriedly from place to place with a stereotyped programme to be repeated hundreds of times, were already active in their labors. He once undertook the "business" himself in America, and afterwards pronounced his experience to have been positively one of the most humiliating and irksome of his whole life. Nothing would induce him to repeat the experiment, not even a genuine offer of £25,000 for one tour. He used a common Russian simile when he remarked that he could never bring himself to regard art as "Merely the COW that supplies the milk." Innumerable anecdotes and reminiscences of his playing remain, some ludicrous, others pathetic. None is pleasanter or more truly typical of the great artist than the following story, related by a Russian biographer. Rubinstein was already sixty-two, and a dream of his life remained unfulfilled, a keen desire, namely, to visit the Caucasus, the pearl of Russia's possessions, with its wild scenery of mountain and sea; truly a land of poetry and romance. At last, during the summer of 1892, the pianist had an opportunity of making a prolonged visit to some friends who possessed an estate in the mountains near Tiflis. A piano was placed in an

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.'

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 governess; 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