The Finale is a halleluiah. It is on the sonata formula, without introduction (the second subject being not in the dominant of A major, but in C major, that chaste, frank key which one of the popes strangely dubbed "lascivious"). The elaboration is frenetic with strife, but the reprise is a many-hued rainbow after storm, and the coda in A major (ending a symphony begun in A minor) is swift with delight. This symphony has been played much, but not half enough. It should resist the weariness of time as immortally as Fletcher's play, "The Two Noble Kinsmen" (in which Shakespeare's hand is glorious), for it is, to quote that drama, "fresher than May, sweeter than her gold buttons on the bough, or all th'enamell'd knacks o' the mead or garden." John Knowles Paine is a name that has been held in long and high honor among American composers. He was about the earliest of native writers to convince foreign musicians that some good could come out of Nazareth. He was born in Portland, Me., January 9, 1839. He studied music first under a local teacher, Kotzschmar, making his debut as organist at the age of eighteen. A year later he was in Berlin, where for three years he studied the organ, composition, instrumentation, and singing under Haupt, Wieprecht, and others. He gave several organ concerts in Germany, and made a tour in 1865-1866. In February, 1867, his "Mass" was given at the Berlin Singakademie, Paine conducting. Then he came back to the States, and in 1872 was appointed to an instructorship of music at Harvard, whence he was promoted in 1876 to a full professorship, a chair created for him and occupied by him ever since with distinguished success. His first symphony was brought out by Theodore Thomas in 1876. This and his other orchestral works have been frequently performed at various places in this country and abroad. His only oratorio, "St. Peter," was first produced at Portland in 1873, and in Boston a year later. It is a work of great power and much dramatic strength. Upton, in his valuable work, "Standard Oratorios," calls it "from the highest standpoint the only oratorio yet produced in this country." This oratorio, while containing much of the floridity and repetition of Haendel at his worst, is also marked with the erudition and largeness of Haendel at his best. The aria for St. Peter, "O God, My God, Forsake Me Not," is especially fine.