But it would necessarily have been embodied in a form in which the chorus could have its full value as a musical factor, in a broadly worked-out composition with a text of somewhat greater extent. The dramatic composer would have given it the utmost brevity, since it stands midway in the critical development of an event. He would have to consider the progress of the action as well as the expression of feeling. A sudden roar of the excited populace--thronging tumultuously about the governor--a sudden roar and brief turmoil of voices would be the effect best suited to his purpose. Bach, composing a devotional Passion, makes the whole choir groan out the name 'Barabbas' once only, on the chord of the minor seventh approached by a false close." Dr. Spitta's point is that Bach's music interprets the feeling of devout Christians, neither subordinating the purport of the text to a musical poem, like a conventional oratorio composer, nor entering into the point of view of the actor, like any other kind of dramatic composer. Dr. Spitta's arguments on this point are quite convincing; and we do not follow his practice of calling the work a "mystery" instead of an oratorio, only because the former word would not be generally intelligible, and because, in this country, we call any work of sacred art for voices and instruments an oratorio, if it is not a Mass, and if it is on too grand a scale to be called a cantata. [Sidenote: =A Minor Concerto.= _March 14, 1902._] Anyone who knows his interpretation of Bach's A minor Concerto can scarcely help associating Dr. Brodsky with that work very much as one associates Joachim with Beethoven's, and Sarasate with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. There is no other work that gives us so much of Bach's musical individuality within the scope of a clear, simple, and widely intelligible scheme. Bach made no music for the theatre, the casino, or the fashionable ballroom. He seems to have written almost exclusively for the church and for innocent, paternally safeguarded merry-making. He was a good old patriarch who composed either to praise God or to help the young people enjoy themselves--for if anyone imagines that Bach's gigues, gavottes, sarabandes, and so forth were not meant for actual dancing he is greatly mistaken. In such works as the Concertos one may still trace the twofold impulse clearly enough, though all is idealised, structurally elaborated, and otherwise adapted to a purely artistic purpose. For in the first movement of the A minor Concerto--Dr. Brodsky's special piece--we have something that brings the spirit into the proper atmosphere. Bach takes us, as it were, to church, composing our minds, as we go, with strong and able talk about subjects appropriate to the religious season and the service that we are to attend. The second movement is the service, and the Finale is the afternoon walk or dance; Bach would probably have approved of Sunday dancing. Dr. Brodsky is unsurpassable in the andante, where the