De Koven was born at Middletown, Conn., in 1859, and enjoyed unusual advantages for musical study abroad. At the age of eleven, he was taken to Europe, where he lived for twelve years. At Oxford he earned a degree with honors. His musical instructors include Speidel, Lebert, and Pruckner, at Stuttgart, Huff the contrapuntist at Frankfort, and Vannucini, who taught him singing, at Florence. He made also a special study of light opera under Genee and Von Suppe. He made Chicago his home in 1882, afterward moving to New York, where he served as a musical critic on one of the daily papers for many years. De Koven has been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master," "The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially as his music has always a certain elegance and freedom from vulgarity. Of his ballads, "Oh, Promise Me" has a few opening notes that remind one of "Musica Proibita," but it was a taking lyric that stuck in the public heart. His setting of Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" is a work of purest pathos and directness. His version of "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" is among the best of its countless settings, and "The Fool of Pamperlune," the "Indian Love Song," "In June," and a few others, are excellent ballad-writing. Victor Harris is one of the few that selected New York for a birthplace. He was born here April 27, 1869, and attended the College of the City of New York, class of 1888. For several of his early years he was well known as a boy-soprano, whence he graduated into what he calls the "usual career" of organist, pianist, and teacher of the voice. In 1895 and 1896 he acted as the assistant conductor to Anton Seidl in the Brighton Beach summer concerts. He learned harmony of Frederick Schilling. Harris is most widely known as an accompanist, and is one of the best in the country. But while the accompaniments he writes to his own songs are carefully polished and well colored, they lack the show of independence that one might expect from so unusual a master of their execution. Except for an unpublished one-act operetta, "Mlle. Maie et M. de Sembre," and a few piano pieces, Harris has confined himself to the writing of short songs. In his twenty-first year two of unequal merits were published, "The Fountains Mingle with the River" being a taking melody, but without distinction or originality, while "Sweetheart" has much more freedom from conventionality and inevitableness. [Music: To N.N.H. Song from Omar Khayyam. VICTOR HARRIS, Op. 16, No. 3. Oh! threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise! One thing at least is certain-- _This_ Life flies, One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies! The Flower that once has blown for ever, for ever dies. Copyright, 1898, by Edward Schuberth & Co.]