_L’Allegro._--The full title of this work is _L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato_, Milton’s two descriptive poems, _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, supplying the text for the first two movements; but instead of being preserved as separate poems in the musical work, they are made to alternate in sixteen contrasting strophes and anti-strophes. Allegro, represented by the tenor, sings the praises of pleasure and light-heartedness; Penseroso, a soprano, following each time with the regularity of a shadow, advocates meditation and seriousness and melancholy. The Moderato was an addition supplied by Handel and his librettist, Charles Jennens, and represented chiefly by a chorus, whose purpose it was to counsel both Allegro and Penseroso to adhere to a middle course as the safest; but this third part is rarely given. The work is in Handel’s best style--the Allegro is spirited, the Penseroso serious and tender, and the Moderato calm and sedate. The music was composed in the seventeen days between January 19th and February 6th, 1740, and was first performed on February 27th of the same year at the Royal Theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. Haydn’s (1732-1809) life-work was indissolubly associated with instrumental forms. The parentage and early development of the sonata and the modern orchestra can be traced directly to him. He wrote comparatively little in choral forms and the best of this was in the field of oratorio and church music. In 1785 Haydn was commissioned to write ‘The Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross,’ sometimes called ‘The Passion,’ as music for the Good Friday service for the cathedral of Cadiz. As first written it was an instrumental work of seven slow movements, which the composer later produced in London under the name _Passione Instrumentale_. Later still he introduced numbers for solo voices and chorus and, by inserting in the middle a _largo_ movement for wind instruments, divided it into two parts. In this form it was first presented at Vienna in 1796 and was published in 1801. The work is simple in structure and a similarity of mood and character pervades the various movements. It opens with an impressive orchestral number, after which each of the Seven Words is successively stated in the form of a chorale followed by a chorus. In conclusion comes a descriptive chorus in rapid movement, ‘The Veil of the Temple was rent in twain,’ which pictures vividly the darkness, the earthquake, the rending tombs, and the raising of the saints. Haydn frequently expressed a great fondness for this work, and by many of his contemporaries it was regarded as one of his most sublime creations.