With the organ, as in the orchestra, precision must rule; the perfect ensemble of feet and hands is absolutely necessary, whether in attacking or leaving the keyboard. All notes placed in the same perpendicular by the composer must be made to speak and to cease speaking at the same time, obedient to the _bâton_ of a single conductor. Here and there are still seen unfortunates who suffer their feet to trail along the pedals, and who forget them and leave them there, although the piece is long since finished. It reminds us of the old viola player at the Opéra, who regularly went to sleep during the fourth act, to be charitably wakened by his comrades at the end of the evening. It was a tradition. But one fine day the management changed hands; tradition had to change, too, and it was forbidden to waken the sleeper. They were giving "The Prophet." Neither the crash of the introduction, the collapse of the Palace blown up with dynamite, the din of the orchestra, nor the tumult of players and audience leaving the theatre, could cut short his dreams. When he finally opened his eyes in the profound darkness, he believed himself, like Orpheus, in the infernal regions, and on attempting to make his exit pitched head-foremost into the kettledrums, which collapsed. The next day his eligibility to retirement was recognized. I should like to know what an orchestral conductor would say, after having given the last stroke of his _bâton_, if his third trombone player should permit himself tranquilly to continue to prolong his note? From what savage cave can such a barbarous custom have emerged? Yet some years ago it was a generally prevailing fashion, a veritable epidemic. Culpable are the organists who do not play the four parts of the polyphony with a rigorous _legato_, tenor as well as soprano, the alto like the bass. Examine Bach's gigantic series of works; in them all you will find but two or three passages, but two or three measures exceeding the limitations of the hand. But admire the skill of the great man; an instant before, a second after, pauses are cleverly inserted; that is, opportunities to withdraw and then again to add the 16-foot registers of the pedal, in order that in the interim the notes which cannot be played smoothly by the hands may be performed by the pedals, coupled to the manuals. Save for these two or three exceptions, which themselves are fully justified by the progression of the parts, all of Bach's works are admirably written, from this point of view as well as from others. * * * * * Here begins a parenthesis; it concerns the Phrasing.