If the right composer had been at hand French song literature in the nineteenth century might have equalled the German, for the conditions seemed to be ripe. But the French musical tradition for many decades was extraordinarily emasculated, and in no department of musical activity did this show so plainly as in the songs. With a few exceptions the French songs from 1830 to 1890 show very few qualities of creative vigor. The ideal was suavity and facility. Doubtless there was beneath the smooth melodies a subtlety of suggestion that gave them a certain artistic value, but this quality is peculiarly French, and without other elements of interest the French songs could hardly attain any great international vogue. It is astonishing--the sameness of these songs which appear in volumes, with eternal repetition and rigid convention. The sentimentalism of the period dominates the whole song output. The composers were extraordinarily timid; the melodies followed the same suave line, and the harmonies were the same eternal succession. The tradition of good taste became little better than a worship of the accredited and commonplace. The one composer who was markedly free of this fault was, of course, Hector Berlioz, one of the most powerful geniuses in all French music. There is little to connect his work with that of other French composers: in many ways he was their polar opposite. A certain love for graceful and somewhat cold melody (a quality he derived from Gluck and not from his contemporaries), a certain clinging to established forms (with very revolutionary content), and here ends the list of similarities. For the rest he carried into his vocal music the qualities which made his symphonies seem so wild and so anarchic to his countrymen. His harmonies were daring in the extreme. His vocal parts were irregular, without balanced phrases, without regular succession and contrast of similar sections, without any of the clearness of outline which is almost the sole virtue in most of his contemporaries. He modulated through any number of keys, introduced dissonance in unheard of quantity, and filled his accompaniment with rich detail to an extent which to the taste of his time was nothing short of vulgar. Throughout his work he followed his own whim where other men would have followed iron convention. But, though his songs are few in number and though they contain peculiar difficulties which have prevented their extensive use in concert programs, they have held their place in the estimation of musicians far better than any other French songs of the period. There are no waste places in these songs. Throughout it is the creative musician who is speaking. The conventional melodic phrases and harmonic sequences, when they are used, have a fine sincerity. When the music is unconventional it is stimulating and suggestive. The impression one gets is that of a vigorous, even violent, brain ceaselessly creating, willing to experiment, willing to make mistakes,