We cannot speak with so much satisfaction of the performance of the orchestra. The instrumentation of "St. Peter" is remarkably fine. But this instrumentation was rather clumsily rendered by the orchestra, whose doings constituted the least enjoyable part of the performance. There was too much blare of brass, whine of hautboy, and scraping of strings. But in condonation of this serious defect, one must admit that the requisite amount of rehearsal is out of the question when one's choir is in Portland and one's orchestra in Boston; besides which the parts had been inaccurately copied. For a moment, at the beginning of the orchestral lament, there was risk of disaster, the wind instruments failing to come in at the right time, when Mr. Paine, with fortunate presence of mind, stopped the players, and the movement was begun over again,--the whole occurring so quickly and quietly as hardly to attract attention. In conclusion we would say a few words suggested by a recent critical notice of Mr. Paine's work in the "Nation." While acknowledging the importance of the publication of this oratorio, as an event in the art-history of America, the writer betrays manifest disappointment that this work should not rather have been a symphony, [63] and thus have belonged to what he calls the "domain of absolute music." Now with regard to the assumption that the oratorio is not so high a form of music as the symphony, or, in other words, that vocal music in general is artistically inferior to instrumental music, we may observe, first, that Ambros and Dommer--two of the most profound musical critics now living--do not sustain it. It is Beanquier, we think, who suggests that instrumental music should rank above vocal, because it is "pure music," bereft of the fictitious aids of language and of the emotional associations which are grouped about the peculiar timbre of the human voice. [64] At first the suggestion seems plausible; but on analogous grounds we might set the piano above the orchestra, because the piano gives us pure harmony and counterpoint, without the adventitious aid of variety in timbre. And it is indeed true that, for some such reason as this, musicians delight in piano-sonatas, which are above all things tedious and unintelligible to the mind untrained in music. Nevertheless, in spite of its great and peculiar prerogatives, it would be absurd to prefer the piano to the orchestra; and there is a kindred absurdity involved in setting the orchestra above that mighty union of orchestra, organ, and voices which we get in the oratorio. When the reason alleged for ranking the symphony above the oratorio leads us likewise to rank the sonata above the symphony, we seem to have reached a reductio ad absurdum. [63] Now within two years, Mr. Paine's C-minor symphony has followed the completion of his oratorio.