In the autumn of this year one of the few remaining figures linked with the most cherished associations of Brahms' early youth passed away. Marxsen died on November 17, 1887, at the age of eighty-one, having retained to the end almost unimpaired vigour of his mental faculties. The last great pleasure of his life was associated with his beloved art. In spite of great bodily weakness, he managed to be present a week before his death at a concert of the Hamburg Philharmonic Society to hear a performance of the 'ninth' Symphony. 'I am here for the last time,' he said, pressing Sittard's hand; and he passed peacefully away fourteen days later. A few years previously his artistic jubilee had been celebrated in Hamburg, and his dear Johannes had surprised him with the proof-sheets of a set of one hundred Variations composed long ago by Marxsen, not with a view to publication, but as a practical illustration of the inexhaustible possibilities contained in the art of thematic development. Brahms, who happened to see the manuscript in Marxsen's room during one of his subsequent visits to Hamburg, was so strongly interested in it that in the end Marxsen gave it him, with leave to do as he should like with it after his death. The parcel of proof-sheets was accompanied by an affectionate letter, in which Brahms begged forgiveness for having anticipated this permission and yielded to his desire of placing the work within general reach during his master's lifetime; and perhaps no jubilee honour of which the old musician was the recipient filled him with such lively joy as was caused by this tribute. Marxsen's name as a composer is, indeed, now forgotten without chance of revival, but his memory will live gloriously in the way he would have chosen, carried through the years by the hand that wrote the great composer's acknowledgment to his teacher on the title-page of the Concerto in B flat. Four more performances from the manuscript of the double concerto of interest in our narrative remain to be chronicled--those of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, under Brahms, on January 1, 1888; of the Berlin Philharmonic Society, under Bülow, of February 6; and of the London Symphony Concerts, under Henschel, on February 15 and 21. The work, published in time for the autumn season, was given in Vienna at the Philharmonic concert of December 23 under Richter. On all these occasions the solos were played, as before, by Joachim and Hausmann.