It may, perhaps, be unfortunate for Raff’s fame that his dramatic works are unknown in this country, though it is indisputable that none of them has achieved high repute in German. It is probable, although we in America know far less about the music of this gifted man than the Germans do, the estimate of his abilities generally accepted on this side of the Atlantic is a wise one. He is regarded as a composer who, possessing exceptional fecundity of melodic invention and rare mastery of orchestral tone-color, sought to impose upon music a definiteness of expression somewhat beyond its power. This eagerness to delineate in detail a chain of feelings or impressions led Raff into diffuseness of style and to frequent sacrifices of those formal elaborations which are regarded as essential to the construction of artistic music. He has been generally thought to lack self-criticism and a want of restraint resulting therefrom; but it has always seemed to the present writer that Raff’s errors were not in the direction of criticism, but of fundamental belief. In other words he let the beautiful vision of a genus of pictorial programme music which is to be more expressive than speech run away with his reason. The preface to his “In the Fatherland” symphony clearly exhibits his idea of the possibilities of music. Now it is neither necessary nor expedient to repeat here any of the familiar discussion as to the expressive power of music. The most serious thinkers about the art, even when they disagree in details, are generally of the opinion that music can express only the broader emotions, and requires text to make clear the cause of the feelings. We are able to get great pleasure, and at times genuine emotional exaltation from the music of Raff provided we are willing to approach it in the only fair spirit in which programme music can be approached—that of willingness to accept the composer’s premises. The first movement of the “Fatherland” symphony has strength and aspiration, and we have only to accept Raff’s explanation that he is singing of Germany to enter into the heart of his composition. In the same way we are obliged to approach the “Lenore,” the “Im Walde” and his other symphonies. The grisly story of Burger’s “Lenore” is told in detail in the finale of the symphony, but in order to follow the music we need the poem. Having that, we perceive the aptness and peculiar fitness of the composer’s rhythmic and melodic fancies. Nothing could have a more stimulating effect upon the imagination—once the key to the secret is possessed—than the inexorable persistence of the groups of a quaver and two semi-quavers by which the infernal flight of the lovers is indicated. If perchance we find an instrumental representation of a gallop not new (it having been invented by Claudio Monteverde in the beginning of the seventeenth century) we can at any rate get all the effect designed by Raff in his woodwind