We have referred in another chapter to the neo-Russian school of composers, who worked under the influence of Mily Balakireff and based their composition largely upon the native folk-songs. It is this group that has created Russia’s musical art. Tschaikowsky and Rubinstein are, in the Russian view, out of the direct line of succession. In the direct line, which commences with Glinka, we find a distinguished company of geniuses. After Glinka comes Alexander Dargomijsky (1813-1869), one of the earliest converts to Wagnerian principles outside of Germany and a radical innovator in dramatic and harmonic method. His opera, ‘The Stone Guest,’ looks forward a quarter of a century to modern harmonic effects, whole-toned scale and all. But, in consideration of the time he was working, it is not to be expected that his songs are of a radical cast. They, however, show the innovating genius of the man and his full-blooded artistic life. Some ninety in all, they are extraordinarily varied in style and contents, some graceful and elegaic, some exotic, and some humorous. Dargomijsky took the traditional mantle of Russian genius upon his shoulders in satirizing the bureaucracy and wrote some of his finest humorous songs on the subject. Among the best of his songs we may mention ‘An Eastern Song,’ ‘I Think that Thou Wert Born for This,’ and ‘O Maid, My Rose.’ His dramatic ballads, of which ‘The Knight Errant’ and ‘The Old Corporal’ are the finest, are marked by directness and simplicity which give them a rare laconic force. [Illustration: Famous Song Interpreters. Top: Julia Culp and Elena Gerhardt Bottom: Ludwig Wüllner and David Bispham]