‘The Light of Asia’ was written in 1886, published in London and performed there for the first time in St. James’s Hall, March 19, 1889. The well-known poem by Sir Edwin Arnold naturally lends itself to elaborate treatment and the composer has done it full justice, constructing on its strong lines a work that approaches the dimensions and character of an oratorio. The initial fugal chorus (‘Below the highest sphere four regents sit’), foretelling the birth of the child Buddha who ‘shall deliver men from ignorance,’ establishes at once the broad massive outlines of the work. After the King has conferred with his ministers as to a remedy for the seriousness of Prince Siddârtha and, on their advice, has summoned a court of pleasure at which the most beautiful maidens are to teach him love, there follows a lovely duet describing the meeting and recognition of the Prince and the fair Yasôdhara, and the part closes with a jubilant wedding chorus, ‘Enter, thrice happy!’ The second part--‘The Renunciation’--describes the sensuous life of the Orient, the awakening of Siddârtha from this life of love and joy to his mission, his six long years of wandering, his victorious struggles with the varied temptations of ‘the fiends who war with Wisdom and the Light.’ The third part--‘The Return’--relates the sorrows of the lonely Yasôdhara and the return of the wandering Siddârtha as a Buddha, dressed in the yellow garb of a hermit, begging alms, yet greeted by his people with glad acclaim. The epilogue and final chorus (‘Before beginning and without an end’) is the choral climax of the whole work, constructed with fine musicianship and majestic in its effect. Important solo duties are assigned to the Prince, his wife Yasôdhara and his father, the King. Dr. Leopold Damrosch (1832-1885), who occupied a position of great influence in the musical life of New York City, wrote two important choral works that were published in this country--‘Ruth and Naomi’ (1870), a Scriptural idyl, and ‘Sulamith’ (The Song of Songs), which was performed for the first time by the Oratorio Society, New York, in April, 1882. Other short choral works written by Americans in the period now under consideration were ‘Prayer and Praise,’ the Forty-sixth Psalm (Cincinnati Festival prize, 1882), and ‘The Rose,’ by William Wallace Gilchrist (born 1846); ‘The Culprit Fay’ (1879) and ‘Praise of Harmony’ (1886) by Frederick Grant Gleason (1848-1903); ‘Phœbus Arise’ (1882), ‘The Nativity’ (1883) and ‘The Realm of Fancy’ (1884) by John Knowles Paine (1839-1906); ‘The Tale of the Viking’ (1879) and ‘Henry of Navarre’ (1885) by George Elbridge Whiting (born 1842).