Hymn to the Sun with choral accompaniment, the deeply expressive Song of Love and the closing chorus of celestial voices, are among the rarest gems of the work. The third part deals with ‘Francis’ Death and Glorification,’ the finest numbers of which are the angelus chorus which he hears at evening as he lies on his death-bed; the double chorus in the church scene (_Lux æterna_), in which the solemn tones of the organ join with contrasting celestial and earthly choirs; the imposingly heroic funeral march; and the final scene, in which the composer masses chorus on chorus with tremendous cumulative effect, closing with the words, ‘Triumph! Glory be to God!’ Pierre Léopold Benoît (b. 1834), a consistent propagandist for Flemish music, has been foremost in the movement to establish a national school of music distinct from French and German schools. In aiding this movement he has himself been a prolific writer in many fields. His choral works include the six oratorios--_Lucifer_ (1866), _Die Schelde_ (1869), _Prometheus_ (1868), _Der Krieg_ (1880), _Der Rhein_ (1889) and the ‘Children’s Oratorio’--a choral symphony (‘The Mowers’), and in addition many cantatas, among them one for children’s voices (‘Into the World’), of great beauty and practical value for school purposes. In style Benoît is influenced sometimes by Franck and sometimes by Schumann and the later Germans; there are few traces of a strongly individual style. _Lucifer_, Benoît’s most important composition and one of the best of its period, was written in 1865 and first performed in Brussels in 1866. The text is by Emanuel Hiel. It shows distinctly the presence of a progressive spirit in Belgium and France, though the former country welcomed the oratorio more heartily than did the latter. The subject is the thrice-attempted effort of Satan to gain victory over a divinely protected humanity; but the text is so allegorical and so unskillfully put together that it no longer takes hold of the listener’s interest. Portions of the work, especially the agitated passages, are characterized by unrestrained emotional expression. The solos are generally pleasing and lyric, though not deep--the whole affording contrasts which hold the attention. The orchestration is brilliant for the period and the choral-writing skillful. The employment of leading motives, to which the composer himself called attention (though as a whole they are not very characteristic), stamped the work as being very modern in style at the time it was written. It no doubt had a large influence on Benoît’s contemporaries, especially on Franck, whose later oratorios, though constructed with vastly greater skill and genius, show many similar traits. IV