The symphonies of Gustav Mahler have never received genuine recognition here, although he was a very interesting apparition in the musical field. He was a profound musician and one of the best conductors of Europe, and it is possible that, in the latter capacity, he occupied himself so intensely and constantly in analyzing and interpreting the works of the great masters that he lost the power to develop himself as composer on original lines. All his life he composed, but his moments of real beauty are too rare, and the listener has to wade through pages of dreary emptiness which no artificial connection with philosophic ideas can fill with real importance. The feverish restlessness characteristic of the man reflects itself in his music, which is fragmentary in character and lacks continuity of thought and development. He could write cleverly in the style of Haydn or Berlioz or Wagner, and without forgetting Beethoven, but he was never able to write in the style of Mahler. Of all the greater composers of the last hundred years no one has been killed oftener than Mendelssohn, yet he always seems to come back again with a new renaissance. His music for “Athalie,” his “Reformation” Symphony, his overtures to “Melusine” and “Ruy Blas” are dead as a door-nail, but his Violin Concerto is still the most perfect example of its kind, his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” the best incidental music ever conceived for a Shakespearean play, his “Elijah” the most dramatic oratorio ever written, and the Scotch and Italian Symphonies still possess a delightful and eternal charm. The works of Meyerbeer, on the contrary, have deservedly disappeared even from our popular programmes. Those empty “Torchlight Dances” and the vulgar ballet music from “Le Prophète”! I confess, though, that I still have a sneaking fondness for the “Coronation March,” perhaps because I had to conduct it so many times at the Metropolitan, when I first began conducting the operas there. That the same man who penned the glorious fourth act of the “Huguenots” could have been satisfied with the empty drivel which preponderates during the rest of that opera, is one of the eternal mysteries. About thirty years ago Moritz Moszkowski was one of the most popular composers of the day, especially for the piano, but modern ears have but little use for his delicate, though evanescent, charm, and his orchestral suites are but rarely heard to-day. He has lived in Paris for many years, and during the war he suffered greatly. Advancing years and a long illness had left him very weak, and it seemed almost as if the musical world in which he had been so popular a figure had forgotten him completely.