Arensky has given us a fine choral number--‘The Fountain of Bachtchissarai,’ after a Pushkin poem, for solo voices, chorus and orchestra; while Rachmaninoff’s spirited and plastically written choral ballad, ‘Springtide,’ after a poem by Nekrassoff, composed in 1901 for dramatic baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra, has already been heard in this country. A new choral work by Rachmaninoff, set to E. A. Poe’s poem ‘The Bells,’ was given at Petrograd in the recent past with great success. Glière has to his credit a choral suite for female voices, with the four seasons as its textual basis; Ippolitoff-Ivanoff has written three cantatas, Oriental in coloring, each in memory of a Russian poet; Akimenko has composed choruses for mixed voices; Georges Catoire for female voices; and Alexander Tanejew has set two groups of twelve poems each, for four and five-part chorus respectively, while his better-known nephew, Sergius Ivanovitch, who died this year in Petrograd (1915), is the composer of a cantata, ‘St. John of Damascus’ (1884). Stravinsky, too, has a cantata to his credit, composed in 1911, and this practically completes the tale of contemporary Russian choral composition. In concluding this study of contemporary choral music there only remain to be mentioned, in Poland, Felix Nowowiejski, author of several ‘concert-dramas,’ ‘The Prodigal Son’ (1901), ‘The Discovery of the Holy Cross’ (1906) and _Quo Vadis_ (1907)--rich in theatrical effect; and in Hungary, Mauritius Vavrineoz, with an oratorio, _Christus_. In Spain and Portugal choral music, in the modern sense of the word, is hardly written. Felipe Pedrell’s dramatic cantata _Comte Arnau_, a score distinctly modern in style and treatment, and Grignón’s _La Nit de Nadal_, for chorus, solos and orchestra, are about the only ones that come to mind. FOOTNOTES: [90] Schering: _Geschichte des Oratoriums_, p. 546. [91] Romain Rolland: _Musiciens d’Aujourd’hui_, Paris. CHAPTER XIV THE ORGAN FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT