new, undisciplined character of the music. The truth is forcibly brought home to us of M. Camille Bellaigue's assertion that every collective thought, or passion, needs not only words, but music, if we are to become completely sensible to it. The text of the opening scene of Act I. is taken almost intact from Poushkin's drama. Played as it now usually is between the strenuous animation of the Prologue and the brilliant Coronation Scene, its pervading atmosphere of dignity and monastic calm affords a welcome interlude of repose. Moussorgsky handles his ecclesiastical themes with sure knowledge. In early days Stassov tells us that he learnt from the chaplain of the Military Academy "the very essence of the old Church music, Greek and Catholic." The scene in the Inn, where Gregory and the vagabond monks, Varlaam and Missail, halt on their flight into Lithuania, is often cut out of the acting version. It contains, however, two characteristic and popular solos: a lively folk-song for the Hostess, and a rollicking drinking-song for Varlaam (bass); besides frequent touches of the rough-hewn, sardonic humour which is a distinguishing quality of Moussorgsky's genius. The unabashed "naturalism" of this scene displeased a fashionable Russian audience; although it was found possible to present it to a London audience which must have travelled much farther from the homely ribaldry of Elizabethan days than had the simple-minded "big public" of Russia to whom Moussorgsky's work was designed to appeal a generation ago. With the opening of Act II. we feel at once that Moussorgsky is treading on alien ground. This portion of the opera--for which he was his own librettist--was added in order that some conventional love interest might be given to the work. The glamour of romance is a borrowed quality in Moussorgsky's art; and, in spite of the charm of the scenic surroundings, and some moments of sincere passion, the weakness of the music proclaims the fact. He who penetrates so deeply into the psychology of his own people, finds no better characterisation of the Polish temperament than the use of the polacca or mazurka rhythms. True, he may intend by these dance measures to emphasise the boastful vanity of the Polish nobles and the light, cold nature of Marina Mnishek; but the method becomes monotonous. Marina's solo takes this form, and again in the duet by the fountain we are pursued by the eternal mazurka rhythm.