The times., 1899-01-22

| tress Schroeder, and several of the lady's
| love letters are reprinted. OF course it is
deplorable that this love affair should have
taken place while there was Frau Haydn
| in the land of the living, but there seems
| to have been some slight justification for
the errant husband, as eighteenth century
manners went. Mr.. Krehbiel says:
| Shortly before Ha, in started for home in 1892,
he received letter from his wife. asking for
two thousand forms ont of his earnings to pay
! for a house which she wished to purchase in the
suburb OF Vienna, called Gumpendorf. 1t
IL the house known as No. 10 Haydngssse, to
which marble memorial tablet was affixed in
ls4O. In the letter asking for the purchase money
the amiahle lady described the house just the
thing for her to live in as a widow Papa
Haydn did not send the money but on his
turn he looked at the house, and, finding il
pleasantly situated and to his taste, bought it.
Nantippe died seven years later land now" said
Haydn, telling the story in ls06, Pm living in
il as widower."
The greater part of the book is given
up to anecdOte and description, but in the
last pages of the chapter on the Beet
hoven Museum at Bonn there is n bit of
reflection which is peculiarly happy in ex-
preston and characteristic of Mr.. Kreh
biel. 1t is as follows:
Unperfonned music is nothing. and with each
act of performance there goes new act OF Gre
, alton. The activities, physical, intellectual. and
emotional, which the three factors Composers,
performers ard hearers must exercise ii music
is to he at all, must touch hands; vet they can
not be identical. What is in the first case
Is purpose in the second and effect in the third.
Creation does not stop with the composer. as it
does with the painter. sculptor architect: 1t
is carried over 10 the interpreter. whose work
Is not exposition merely, but recreation. 1t is
this fact which entities the instrumental per-
former or singer 10 the name of artist He can
not bring the creations OF the composer to the
apprehension OF the nearer without blending with
IT something OF himself. Upon the hearcr, finally
dcyolves the duty of perceving with the
Judging with the intellectual and artistic facu
tics, and enjoying with all these media. plus the
emotions and this complicated activity is again
in high sense re-Creativc. II is because of this
common element in the work OF composer, per
former, and hearer that the body OF music which
one generation bequcaths to its successor Is com
para1lyeiy so small. We do not persist IN ere
ating what we do not like. Every composer is
kept in court for daily judgment until the nev
table changes in taste, which follow the equally
inevitable variations in percipiencc relegae him
to oblivion or the closed pages OF history. To
Beethoven music not only a manifestation
Of the bcautiful-an att akin TO religion.
| He felt himself to lie prophet-a seer. All the
misanthTopy engendcred by his unhappy rela-
tons with mankind could not shake his devO-
ton to this ideal, which had sprung from the
truest artistic apprehension and been nurturcd
by enforced introspection and philosophic refec-
tiOn.
1t may bc-we cannot say yet-that he went
too far; that he failed TO recognize the limita-
tiOns which the materials Of music set for the
art; but there can be no doubt that he started
it on the only path along which progress was
possible. For the conception of
Characteristic beauty, opposed to the old CON
ception OF absolute beauty, Beethoven stood
sponsor. Whittier will it lead us? We cannot
tell nor Will those be able TO answer who shall
listen to the music OF century hence The lin
its of music have not been set, and cannot be
set. Music Is the ireest mode Of expression open
to the imagination.
And with this thoughtful and suggestive
passage one may well be satisfied to close
the book, albeit there is another chapter.
tNew York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $50.
Washington: BalIantyne.)