reins into their own hands. The present display of musical activity in America is unprecedented. The schools, the colleges, the churches, the concert hall, the dramatic stage are all preparing the way for the ascendency of the American composer. CONCLUSION. We have now traced the history of our modern art of orchestration through five great stages of evolution. (1) Under the head of "The Cradle of Instrumental Music," musical development among primitive men was attributed to two impelling forces: emotional expression and pagan religious rites. The nature of these early attempts at musical utterance can only be conjectured, but although we have no knowledge of its tonal aspect, extant relics and representations of primitive instruments among such races as the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Jews correspond to the leading types of sound-producing apparatus belonging to civilized nations. Authentic history discloses the development of artistic music in India, in Greece and in early Rome. These efforts were essentially melodic. Rhythm was dependent upon poetic instinct, whereas the harmony of simultaneous sounds, though scientifically expounded, was put to but small practical use. Systems of harmony, notation and measure were eventually established, though circuitously devolved from the tedious experiments of the scholastic monks to the more tangible results of the troubadours and of the masters of the Netherland School. Lasso and Palestrina eventually pointed the way toward a settled tonality determined by harmonic considerations. (2) "The Dawn of Independent Instrumentation" treats of the further development of consistent tonality, of greater rhythmic freedom, of artistic structural form, and of the gradual ascendency of a secular style in connection with solo-singing and independent instrumental music. Independent instrumental music found its origin in the attempts at embellished organ accompaniment; solo singing devolved from the Miracle Plays, from the lyrics of the troubadours, and from the Florentine monody as developed by Peri and Cavalieri, whose theories contained the germ of opera and oratorio, for which instrumental accompaniment is a requisite. (3) The chapter entitled "Beginnings of Orchestration" marks the actual starting point for the nuclear thought of this book. Here the central figure is Monteverde, father of modern instrumentation. His methods were propagated by Carissimi in Italy, Schütz in Germany, Cavalli and Lulli in France. The greatest orchestral writer after Monteverde was Scarlatti. (4) The way was now prepared for the comprehensive "Classic Era," of which the central figures, as regards orchestral evolution, are Haydn, the father of modern orchestration, and Beethoven,--magnificently supported by Mozart, and to a lesser degree by Bach, Händel and Gluck. In the earlier part of this era, France owed the high standard of her indigenous music primarily to Rameau and Grétry.