It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_. As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders and pianists must do the best they can with them. In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz, _Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos. On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_; a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians; Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage, _O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted, has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.