In the city of Philadelphia lives a composer of unusual luck in prize-winning. That large and ancient town is not noteworthy for its activity in the manufacture of original music. In fact, some one has spoken of it as "a town where the greatest reproach to a musician is residence there." The city's one prominent music-writer is William Wallace Gilchrist; but he stands among the first of our composers. He is especially interesting as a purely native product, having never studied abroad, and yet having won among our composers a foremost place in the larger forms of composition. He was born in Jersey City, January 8, 1846; his father was a Canadian, his mother a native of this country; both were skilled in music, and his home life was full of it, especially of the old church music. After a youth of the usual school life he tried various pursuits,--photography, law, business; but music kept calling him. A good barytone voice led him to join vocal societies, and at length he made music his profession, after studying voice, organ, and composition with Dr. H.A. Clarke, of Philadelphia. He was a successful soloist in oratorio for some years, but gradually devoted himself to church work and conducting, and to composition, though none of his music was published till he was thirty-two, when he took two prizes offered by the Abt Male Singing Society of Philadelphia. Shortly after taking the Abt Society prize, he won three offered by the Mendelssohn Glee Club of New York, and in 1884 he took the $1,000 prize offered by the Cincinnati Festival Association. This last was gained by his setting of the Forty-sixth Psalm for soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra. The overture opens with a noble andante contemplatif, which deserves its epithet, but falls after a time into rather uninteresting moods, whence it breaks only at the last period. The opening chorus, "God Is Our Refuge and Strength," seems to me to be built on a rather trite and empty subject, which it plays battledore and shuttlecock with in the brave old pompous and canonic style, which stands for little beyond science and labor. It is only fair to say, however, that A.J. Goodrich, in his "Musical Analysis," praises "the strength and dignity" of this chorus; and gives a minute analysis of the whole work with liberal thematic quotation. The psalm, as a whole, though built on old lines, is built well on those lines, and the solo "God Is in the Midst of Her" is taken up with especially fine effect by the chorus. "The Heathen Raged" is a most ingeniously complicated chorus also. The cantata, "Prayer and Praise," is similarly conventional, and suffers from the sin of repetition, but contains much that is strong.