AUTHOR'S NOTE.

According to the original design, this work was completed with the ten chapters in which the great masterworks of the leading composers of the period from 1750 to 1850 were compared and their peculiarities and individualities emphasized.

In response to a wide-spread demand, however, it is deemed advisable to add a few programs of later masters, and a few of the leading American composers, who, although not yet to be mentioned in the same connection as those forming the subject of the original ten chapters, are, nevertheless, of more immediate interest to a large circle of students, and in demand for the use of musical clubs, lecture recitals, and the like. The selection of these later composers has been a matter of no small difficulty, but the names decided upon for the present are Grieg, Brahms, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, and a miscellaneous list of the later romantic German composers. The American names included are those of Dr. William Mason, L. Moreau Gottschalk, E. A. MacDowell, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, Arthur Foote, Ethelbert Nevin, and Wilson G. Smith, with scattering compositions from a few others of the more notable composers of the present time.

Concerning these supplementary programs, it is also to be said that only one name belongs to the high category of great immortals embraced in the first ten chapters—namely, that of Johannes Brahms. Grieg, however, is certainly a composer of rare poetry and originality; and the same is to be said of Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky—even with greater emphasis of the last mentioned. Still, the student will be wise to remember that in the works of these latest composers there is much which, as yet, is imperfectly understood, and its ultimate place in the pantheon of art unascertained. That all these have shown great originality is unmistakable; yet no one of them has written pianoforte music uniting elegance and pianoforte tact with complete originality and success. If any exception is to be made at this point, it should be in the case of Brahms, who has shown, in orchestral and vocal writing, constructive and poetic powers of the very highest order. This fact, taken in connection with his unquestioned mastery of the pianoforte and the epoch-marking originality of his technic and effects upon this instrument, should make us pause before considering anything of his as standing beyond the line of the beautiful. Schumann was condemned for many years after his death, yet at the present time no master stands higher as a pianoforte writer pure and simple. It is more than likely that Brahms will later stand as the maker of an epoch in piano playing not less significant than that established by the works of Liszt, Chopin, and Schumann.

One of our American masters also, Mr. Edward Alexander MacDowell, is held by many to belong to the very highest rank of living composers (1898). Comparisons of this kind have no proper place in a work like the present. The question which these chapters are intended to assist in solving is not as to the highest, the broadest, the most pleasing, but the characteristic individuality of certain composers, of ability so high that they have gained the ears of their own generation and have been found of lasting interest.

"What have these men done?" And "What is the new note which they have sounded in the pantheon of art?" These are the two questions which this little essay is meant to discuss.

Moreover, we may remember that it is one of the laws of gravitation that it increases in proportion to the "square of the proximity," as they say in social science. Composers near to us, and the outgrowth of our own conditions of life and our national heredity, can hardly escape bringing to expression in their works something of the American character and turn of thought. This inner something may well give their works a transient interest for us which better works wanting these national traits might fail to awaken. The programs in these supplementary chapters, therefore, should be taken up after those of the first ten have been fully mastered.

If a word of regret is needed that so little of American matter has been included, the explanation must be that the scope of this work and the present resources of the writer do not afford him the means of treating American music in the broad and comprehensive way possible to epochs in art the works of which are fully finished and catalogued. In the nature of the case the treatment of American writers herein is tentative and incomplete. Later on, additions will be made, as occasion may arise.