At that time he was also commanded to appear before the old Emperor Franz Joseph to receive a decoration. After he had been decorated, the Emperor turned to him and said very kindly: “Herr Bruckner, is there anything more I can do for you?” Bruckner answered in a trembling voice: “Won’t you please speak to Mr. Hanslick (the famous musical critic of Vienna) that he should not write such nasty criticisms about my symphonies?” In my father’s time the overture to Cherubini’s “Anacreon” had a frequent and honored place on his programmes. A modern audience would vote it too dry and old-fashioned. The music of Niels W. Gade was quite a favorite with our grandfathers and grandmothers, but he is unendurable to-day. A new orchestral composition of Carl Goldmark was eagerly waited for, forty years ago, and there was great rivalry between my father and Theodore Thomas as to which should have the privilege of performing it first. People used to revel in his “exotic and luxuriant orchestration,” but to-day his colors have faded before the greater glories of Strauss and Debussy and Ravel, and only his “Rustic Symphony” occasionally figures on our programmes. During the second year of the German opera at the Metropolitan, Goldmark’s “Queen of Sheba” made a success which equalled that of the Wagner operas. Solomon’s temple, painted in gold, the Jewish rituals, the Oriental harmonies, and the naïve surprise of the public on seeing biblical characters upon a modern operatic stage, all combined to make the work a sensational success. To-day it has disappeared completely from the repertoire of European and American opera-houses. The fate of Franz Liszt as a composer is still more tragic because it is partly undeserved. He created the form of the symphonic poem, but those who succeeded him have developed it so much farther as to leave his works somewhat submerged. I still have great admiration for his “Faust” Symphony, but neither I nor others of my colleagues who share this admiration have been able to make this work really popular with the general public. His “Dante” Symphony, “Festklänge,” and “Orpheus” receive still fewer public performances, and his “Ce qu’on entend sur les montagnes” has never been performed here to my knowledge. But “Les Préludes” and the two Piano Concertos, on the contrary, are still played _ad nauseam_.