Is this a reproach? The context would seem to indicate that it is. If so it seems a late date in which to hurl anathema at programme music. One would have fancied that that battle had already been fought and won by Ernest Newman, Frederick Niecks, and Lawrence Gilman, to name a few of the gladiators for the cause. Why Mr. Aldrich, having swallowed whole, so to speak, the tendency of music during a century of its development, should suddenly balk at music which requires explanation I cannot imagine. However, this would seem to be the point he makes in face of the fact that at least two-thirds of a symphony society’s programme is made up of programme music. Berlioz said in the preface to his _Symphonie Fantastique_, “The plan of an instrumental drama, being without words, requires to be explained beforehand. The programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the dramatic plan of the work) ought therefor to be considered in the light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to ... indicate the character and expression.” Ernest Newman built up an elaborate theory on these two sentences, a theory fully expounded in an article called “Programme Music” published in “Music Studies” (1905), and touched on elsewhere in his work (at some length, of course, in his “Richard Strauss.”) He brings out the facts. Representation of natural sounds, emotions, and even objects--or attempts at it--in early music were not rare. He cites the justly famous _Bible Sonatas_ of Kuhnau, Rameau’s _Sighs_ and _Tender Plants_, Dittersdorf’s twelve programme symphonies illustrating Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and John Sebastian Bach’s _Capriccio on the Departure of my Dearly Beloved Brother_. Beethoven wrote a _Pastoral Symphony_ in which he attempted to imitate the sound of a brook and the call of a cuckoo. There is also a storm in this symphony. The fact that Beethoven denied any intention of portraying anything but “pure emotion” in this symphony is evasion and humbug as Newman very clearly points out. From what do these emotions arise? The answer is, From the contemplation of country scenes. The auditor without a programme will not find the symphony so enjoyable as the one who _knows_ what awakened the emotions in the composer. Beethoven wrote a “battle” symphony too, a particularly bad one, I believe (I have never seen it announced for performance). It is true, however, that most of the composers of the “great” period were content to number their symphonies and to call their piano pieces impromptus, sonatas, valses, and nocturnes. Nous avons changé tout cela. Schumann was one of the first of the composers of the nineteenth century to write music with titles. In the _Carneval_, for example, each piece is explained by its title. And explanations, or shadows of explanations (Cathedral, Rhenish, Spring, etc.), hover about the four symphonies. Berlioz, of course, carried the principle of programme music to a degree that was considered absurd in his own time.