(3) A String Quartett,[37] op. 15, by Alexander Kopyloff, one of the staff of the Imperial Chapel in St. Petersburg. This work is much simpler in construction than the others. It may be recommended to amateurs as a pleasant and quite practicable, if not very distinguished, composition. [Footnote 37: Most of these works and others of the Russian School are published in cheap miniature scores, similar to the well-known Payne edition.] [Sidenote: =Tschaïkovsky=] Another work which cannot be omitted in a notice of Russian chamber music is the Trio for piano and strings, op. 50, by Tschaïkovsky; a lengthy and deeply brooding work of highly impressive character, which is already well known in England. Tschaïkovsky (1840-93) was the most distinguished of the modern Russian school of composers, and a musician of remarkable originality and power. He was educated for the legal profession, and entered the Government Civil Service, but the musical impulses asserted themselves with such force that in 1866, having first seriously studied for some time, he henceforth devoted himself to the musical profession. He was deeply imbued with the national influences of his country, and did what he could to foster and develop them. “His music shows the strange and violent contrasts of mood characteristic of his race; now full of a wild and barbarous energy and fiery intensity; now of almost maiden tenderness and ingenuousness; now of a black and hopeless melancholy.”[38] [Footnote 38: _Biographical Dictionary_ (Baker).] Tschaïkovsky’s chamber music consists of a String Sextett, op. 70, three String Quartetts, the Piano Trio named above, and a number of compositions for piano and violin, piano and ’cello, and piano alone. CHAPTER IX. RICHARD STRAUSS AND ANTON BRUCKNER. Position with regard to classical form—Strauss’s chamber music—Bruckner’s character and individuality—Bruckner’s symphonies—String quintett in F major—Hanslick on Bruckner’s works—Krehbiel on Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony—Weingartner’s opinion. [Sidenote: =Position with regard to Classical Form=] Richard Strauss, born at Munich in 1864, is without doubt one of the most distinguished of living musicians, and although his recent works are written in a very advanced style, it cannot be said that he has arrived at this condition without due deliberation, for his earlier compositions are all in classical form, and his present position is therefore due to growth rather than to a wanton setting aside of the established forms in which the great masters wrought. It is only when we come to the symphonic poem “Don Juan,” op. 20, that we find him embracing the programme music ideal, and all the seven large works which have since appeared are fashioned after this kind. [Illustration: _Richard Strauss._ [signature]]