seeming to emanate from a higher world; then the reawakening of pain in the consciousness that had been hushed and charmed. Here the music, passing up the chord with each note preceded by the semitone above, sounds like a series of broken sighs. And presently we encounter something quite new. A plaintive theme on the clarinet, answered by a single viola, symbolises the vision of feminine companionship. Hope reawakens, and the strength of Faust's nature asserts itself in the splendid E major theme for full orchestra, destined to play the leading part throughout the work. The movement is long, thoughtful, and no less apt in invention than rich and glowing in tone-colour. In the second movement, headed "Gretchen," we encounter quite a different atmosphere. It is a worthy counterpart to the Gretchen episode in Goethe's poem--no doubt the best picture of a girl, from the man's point of view, that exists in literature. Inexpressibly beautiful is the contrast between the fancy-free and the loving Gretchen. There is nothing in all music more rich and rapturous than the ensuing love-scene, which reminds one of the point in the first act of "Die Walküre" where the doors swing open and reveals to the enchanted gaze of the lovers the spring landscape bathed in moonlight. But Liszt is here more to the point than Wagner. Then comes Mephisto with his diabolical dance, turning everything into derision, till a light shines down from heaven, where the soul of Margaret appears among the angels, and the "spirit that denies," with his mask torn off, shrinks away, trembling and baffled. Here the "chorus mysticus" gives utterance to the crowning idea of the "Faust" drama--"The woman-soul draweth us upward and on." Such a work as the "Faust" Symphony departs from the classical model inasmuch as it is unified altogether by dramatic and characteristic and not at all by architectural principles. It may also be regarded as three character-sketches, which, with the help of some cross-reference, together tell a story. Any person well versed in modern music, on hearing this composition for the first time, cannot but be astonished at the number of ideas, afterwards used by other composers, that it contains. The most glaring case is the transformation music just before the entry of the "chorus mysticus," which has been conveyed bodily by Wagner, with only quite unimportant changes, into the third act of "Die Walküre," after the words--"So streif' ich dir die Gottheit ab." But dozens of other ideas in Wagner's "Tristan" and "Siegfried" and Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" one here finds in embryo. [Sidenote: =Pianoforte Concerto in E Flat.= _November 13, 1903._]