and joy and happiness reign. This number is massive, full of life, vigor, and effective contrast, and furnishes a brilliant climax to the whole work. Schiller’s ‘Lay of the Bell’ has furnished inspiration to numerous composers. Romberg’s cantata has already been described and this called forth several rivals. Bruch’s is the most pretentious of them and approaches closely to the oratorio form. The poem loses in musical setting through its over-abundance of rapidly-passing scenes--there are twenty-seven numbers grouped into two parts--but the music abounds in moments of great beauty, especially in such choral numbers as the final one in the first part, ‘One blest assurance yet is granted,’ the funeral chorus in the second part (‘From the steeple, sad and slow’), the chorus, ‘Hallowed Order, child of Heaven,’ which is one of the most elaborate of the work, and the finale with preceding bass solo, ‘Heave it, brothers, heave it high!’ Near the close a charming trio for soprano, alto and tenor voices appears (‘Peace benignant, gentle Concord’) into the accompaniment of which Bruch has skilfully and effectively interwoven the melody of the familiar Christmas song, ‘Silent night, hallowed night!’ For each of his great epic cantatas Bruch chose a warrior hero--Frithjof the Viking, Arminius the German liberator, Odysseus and Achilles, the Greek chieftains. _Odysseus_ was first performed in Bremen in 1873. It was written to the poem of Wilhelm Paul Graff, which, like the ‘Frithjof,’ consists of a series of scenes or episodes. These are grouped into two parts, the first containing four scenes and the second six, drawn from the adventurous and picturesque life of the King of Ithaca. Arminius, equally epic in feeling and treatment, was written in 1875 to a poem by F. Cueppers. The scene is laid in Germany, the time being from 9 to 13 A. D. when Arminius (Latin for Hermann) laid the foundations of the political league of the Germanic tribes by uniting them for the time being against the common Roman foe and throwing off the Roman yoke. The work is in four parts--‘Introduction,’ ‘In the Sacred Forest,’ ‘The Insurrection,’ and ‘The Battle’--and closes with an inspiring patriotic hymn of stately proportions, ‘Germany’s sons shall be renowned.’ The part of Arminius (baritone) is particularly fine throughout. Both of these cantatas are equally popular and they were followed in 1885 by another on the same general lines, _Achilleus_, to the poem by H. Bulthaupt, the motives of which are drawn from Homer’s _Iliad_. This is in many respects a greater work than its predecessors; it is laid out on broader lines, the orchestral part seeks greater recognition and the composer frequently and with tremendous effect employs the double chorus in building up massive polyphonic climaxes. IV