A single clap of thunder will produce more effect than all the symphonic thunderstorms that have ever been composed, with all due deference to Beethoven and Rossini. Haydn has attempted to imitate all manner of sounds in the "Creation," from the bounding of a deer to the falling of snow! These things fail to do more than provoke a smile. Music should act by suggestion rather than actual imitation. At the same time, a composer should not be denied the use of any device calculated to aid his inspiration, or to enable him to enlarge the domain of art by the employment of new or little used formulas. Beethoven and Mendelssohn have both given the sanction of their names to "programme" music, and the example shown by the composers of the "Pastoral" symphony and the "Hebrides" overture ought to be sufficient to silence the objections of the partisans _quand même_ of "absolute" music. In an admirable article upon the "Symphonic Poems" of Liszt, Saint-Saëns has dealt fully and conclusively with the matter, and I cannot do better than reproduce the French master's own words, which have the advantage also of drawing attention to the great and still imperfectly recognised merits of Liszt as a composer. After laying stress upon the fact that Liszt had dared to break with the traditions regulating the symphonic form, and had by this shown a greater amount of boldness than Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert, or Schumann, he proceeds to discuss the principle of "programme music" in the following terms: "To many people, 'programme music' is a necessarily inferior _genre_. A quantity of things have been written upon this subject that I find it impossible to understand. Is the music in itself good or bad? Everything lies there. Whether it be or not accompanied by a programme, it will be neither better nor worse. It is exactly as in painting, when the subject of a picture, which is everything for the vulgar, is nothing or is but little for the amateur. There is yet more: the reproach made against music of expressing nothing of itself, without the help of words, applies equally to paintings. A picture will never represent Adam and Eve to a spectator who does not know the Bible; it will only represent a naked man and woman in a garden. And yet the spectator, or listener, will lend themselves easily to this deception, which consists in adding to the pleasure of the eyes or ears the interest or emotion of a subject. There is no reason to refuse them this pleasure, neither is there any compelling one to grant it. The liberty in the matter is complete; the artists profit by it, and they are right. What is undeniable is that the taste of the public at the present epoch tends towards the picture with a distinct subject and towards music with a programme, and that the taste of the public, at least in France, has drawn artists in this direction. 'Programme music' is, for the artist, only a pretext to explore new tracks, and new effects require new means."