general grace and symmetry, these works have succeeded in maintaining a place among living music. They are most satisfactory examples of the kind of composition produced in the classic period, the period of pure beauty in music. It is difficult to discuss the work of Mozart with judicial calm, even at this distance from the time of its performance. Contemporaneous records all bear such enthusiastic testimony as to the extraordinary genius of the wonderful boy that it is difficult to avoid injustice to his works. We must remember that in Mozart's boyhood, when he wrote his first symphonies, the form of the sonata was still uncertain, and we must, therefore, be satisfied with finding in his precocious compositions a keen perception of the value of balance and continuity. It was after writing his first three symphonies that Mozart began to hear operas, and this greatly improved his style. His Parisian symphony, opus 297, produced in 1778, shows the results of his operatic study as well as his attention to the Mannheim band. The first movement is decidedly irregular in form, abounding in different melodies and striking harmonies. The subjects are dramatic in feeling, but in construction are essentially orchestral. In his last three symphonies he shows a complete mastery of the organization of the orchestral sonata in its then stage of development, which was chiefly his work. A peculiarity of Mozart's style was its generous employment of free counterpoint,--that is, polyphonic writing in which the different voices occasionally intone different melodies (or parts of them) at the same time, without adherence to canonic law. This kind of counterpoint is common in modern orchestral composition. Otto Jahn, the authoritative biographer of Mozart, says:--