berries, her face hidden by the Shaker bonnet which she wore.

"It is Alden Holcroft," said he, making a rude sort of introduction of himself. "You heard him speak once in your meeting. Elder Isaiah came to see me afterward, and I talked with him. I live in the old Holcroft Tavern. I have been making it over to live in. But I am not satisfied. It is a selfish life, after all. One may be selfish when he fancies he has very high ideals. If the secret of a perfect life could be found it would not lie in solitude, I am sure." At this point voices were heard from the other side of the bush, and Ruth's name was called. A sudden sense of the embarrassment which would come upon her took hold of Alden, and he spoke out, "Ruth Hanway is here."

He himself stepped forward and confronted two or three girls, who looked in astonishment at him and retreated a step; but Ruth herself came from behind the bush and accosted one of them, whose face had more laughter in it than the others. "I called you, Miranda; did you not hear me?"

"Nay; I was busy picking berries," said the girl, with a roguish look.

To Alden Holcroft Miranda was the image of the laughing girlhood of which he was in mortal terror. All the shyness of the man returned with a rush which covered him with confusion, and without another word he turned and strode across the fields toward his house.

"Look, Ruth, how fast he goes! said Miranda. "He is afraid of me. What was he saying to you? I wish I had heard you call, and had come up behind the bush in time to catch some of his words."

"Will he be a Shaker?" asked one of the other girls.

"Yea," said Miranda, who took it upon her to answer. "He will be a Shaker, so as to pick berries with Ruth here."

"For shame, Miranda!" said the young girl, indignantly. "You heard

him in the meeting, and you know he is an honest man. He needs the light."

"And he comes to you for it," pursued Miranda, mischievously. Ruth was silent, and refused to talk further with her companions.

When they had finished their task and were jogging home again, they drew near the Holcroft Tavern, and Miranda, who sat next to Ruth, whispered,

"Look, Ruth! here is his house, and I think I see him behind the window." But Ruth turned the other way, vexed at her companion, yet curious to look again at the house of which the owner had spoken to her. "There are red curtains to the window," continued Miranda. "What a queer idea! I should think they would fade. There! he has left the window, and the door is open." By a sudden impulse Ruth turned and looked at the house. The hall door stood open, and the light which came from an opening at the farther end revealed, in a shadowy way, the rich cabinets and stately stairway which one entering the house would first notice as characterizing the interior.

Pictures

hung upon the walls, and sculptured basreliefs projected from the surface. It was a glimpse only, and Holcroft himself did not cross her vision, but she turned back with a shrinking sense of having rudely forced her way into the house.

"What a queer place!" said Miranda, still chattering. "I'd like to go in there. But what a place to take care of! My! there's more than one girl could look after. Did you see the staircase? It was wide enough for an oxteam to go up. I should n't wonder if Sister Abigail could go straight up; she has to go sideways, 'most, in our house. I've a mind to get Isaac to sell him some melons, and then he'll come back and tell us all about the house. If you'd go, Ruth, he'd welcome you."

"Hush!" said Ruth, indignantly. "Oh, you need n't be so mighty about it. Of course, I meant you should go with Elder Isaiah, next time he goes.' Horace E. Scudder.

"Der Stoff gewinnt erst seinen Werth
Durch künstlerische Gestaltung."

HEINRICH HEINE: Schöpfungslieder.

Ir is both fortunate and unfortunate that people in general have got into the habit of regarding Bach and Händel with a rather careless admiration. Those great names are too often treated with mere after-dinner-speech complacency. This is fortunate in so far as the admiration, if careless and of somewhat second-hand quality, is after all of a respectful character, and offers no opposition to whatever serious attempts may be made towards doing real honor to the great composers' works; but unfortunate as it tends to induce a too lukewarm interest in the painstaking study of what is most to be cherished in the rich legacy of music bequeathed to the world by Bach and Händel, without which study our appreciation of its full worth is unintelligent and undiscriminating. Although the astounding development which purely instrumental composition has undergone at the hands of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and others may seem to throw the instrumental works of Bach and Händel into the shade, it must be recognized that in the department of vocal composition the world has produced very little that can bear comparison with their monumental oratorios and cantatas. It seems strange, at first sight, that, while we can bring about an excellent performance of so huge a score as that of Berlioz's Requiem, with its four supplementary orchestras of brass instruments, eight pairs of kettle-drums, and all its imposing vocal and orchestral panoply, we stand utterly impotent before so apparently simple a work as Händel's Theodora. In the former case it is a mere question of good-will, orchestral resources, and money; in the latter, a question of something far more difficult to procure. In looking over the pages of a Bach or Händel score, we are NO. 251.

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surprised at the apparent meagreness of the instrumental portion. While the voices are treated with all the elaborate care that was characteristic of the composers' day, the instrumental accompaniment seems to have been unaccountably neglected. In some places the orchestral accompaniment is worked out with the same elaborateness as the vocal parts; in others we find little or nothing more than an instrumental bass to support the voices. But upon closer inspection we find that this bass is in most cases accompanied by a curious series of Arabic numerals, which were evidently not put there for nothing. In fact, both Bach and Händel were in the habit of writing a great part of their music in that species of short-hand known to the initiated as a figured bass. Wherever there seems to be a lack of instrumental accompaniment in their scores, we may feel sure that the bass contains the germ from which this is to be developed. This bass is called the continuo or basso continuo, and until it is developed into full harmony, until the frequent gaps in the score are filled out, anything like an adequate performance of the work is out of the question. In the composers' time, this filling out was in all probability done by themselves, or under their direction, on the organ or harpsichord. The organist played either directly from the continuo itself, or from an organ part prepared from it. All passages which the composer did not intend to be played in full harmony were marked tasto solo; the other portions were usually elaborately figured, that is, the harmony was indicated by figures written under the continuo. In some instances the figuring was omitted, the choice of harmony being then far more problematical. It is generally supposed that in such cases the composer intended to play the organ himself, or else that, although the figuring is not to be found in the score, it was written down

by the composer in the separate part the organist was to play from, and has been since lost. It will be easily seen that the manner in which Bach's and Handel's continuos are worked out is by no means a matter of indifference, inasmuch as a very vital and essential element in the music depends thereon. The subject has given rise to much discussion, which has to-day assumed the proportions of an actual pen-and-ink war. Musician after musician has tried his hand at working out the continuo in many scores of the old masters, with very varying success. To distinguish those parts which were actually written out by the composers themselves from the indispensable additions to the score made by other hands, the former are called “original parts;" the latter are generally known by the name of "additiona. accompaniments." The violence of the discussion on the subject of additiona. accompaniments now going on in Germany, and its direct bearing upon the all-important problem of how to insure a correct and adequate performance of Bach's and Händel's vocal works, makes it interesting to see how the two present contending parties arose.

It must be borne in mind that, as far as the familiarity of the public with Bach's works is concerned, Sebastian Bach is practically a more modern composer even than Beethoven. By this is meant that the public recognition of his works is of much more recent date. For a long period, during which the works of Haydn and Mozart had become familiar as household words, and Beethoven-yes, even Weber, Mendelssohn, and Schumann - was very generally known and admired, Sebastian Bach was known only by name except to a very few choice spirits. Organists knew his organ works, and his Well-Tempered Clavichord had been more or less studied by musicians; but his oratorios and cantatas were almost unheard of. How hard Mendelssohn and one or two other men worked to bring the public at large into direct relation with some of Bach's more important compositions is well known to every one. The task was

a severe one, as almost all of Bach's vocal works existed only in MS. Mendelssohn succeeded, however, in having the St. Matthew-Passion brought out in the Thomas-Kirche, in Leipzig, the very church in which Bach had held the position of organist, and in bringing one or two of his orchestral suites to a performance at the Gewandhaus. The annual performance of the Passion Music on Good Friday soon grew to be a fixed institution. A large portion of the public all over North Germany got to regard this work with peculiar veneration. The St. John-Passion was also given annually at another church, the PaulinerKirche, but it was not so generally admired as its mighty companion. The Gewandhaus orchestra continued playing the D-minor suite, more as a matter of routine than anything else, for their audiences were hugely bored by it. The fruits of Mendelssohn's strenuous endeavors in the cause of Bach were practically limited to this. Few persons knew, and still fewer cared, about the existence of some three hundred church cantatas from the pen of the great master.

Surely, very few indeed suspected the fact that these cantatas were one of the most precious mines of musical riches that the world ever possessed. It was not until some time after Mendelssohn's death that the world at large began to learn anything about them. With Handel the case was somewhat different. Although his works have never, to this day, won anything like general popularity in Germany, the few musicians and musical savants who were interested in Händel took more active measures to have his oratorios publicly performed than the Bach lovers did, on their side; witness the great preponderance of Händel's vocal works, which had been supplied with additional accompaniments, over works by Bach, for which similar things had been done, in Mendelssohn's time. Many completed scores of Händel (made by Mozart, Mosel, and others) were ready for use by choral societies, while almost nothing of Bach existed in a performable shape. The violent discussions between "Bachianer” and “Händelianer,”

about which the world has since heard a good deal, interested only the parties actively engaged in them; the outside world cared nothing about the whole question. It was indeed impossible that any general enthusiasm should have been felt on the subject at a time when new works by Mendelssohn and Schumann were continually making appeals to public interest; when Weber was exciting every one's attention, and Richard Wagner was beginning to stir up all the musical elements in Germany into astonished, chaotic strife by his music-dramas and theoretical pamphlets. Yet the true Bach and Händel lovers were not idle. Three years after Mendelssohn's death several musicians and men interested in the cause came together in Leipzig, to debate upon the practicability of publishing a complete edition of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. They decided that this undertaking could be carried out only by subscription, as the demand for such music in the market was virtually null. Accordingly the now well-known Bach Society1 was formed, the chief founders of which were C. F. Becker, the firm of Breitkopf und Härtel, Moritz Hauptmann, Otto Jahn, and Robert Schumann. The edition was to be published by Breitkopf und Härtel. The matter must have been taken up with a good deal of energy, for on the 18th of July, 1850, the centennial anniversary of Bach's death, an official circular soliciting subscriptions was sent out over Germany. Subscriptions came in quite rapidly, and among a host of names on the list we find especially prominent those of Franz Liszt, I. Moscheles, Louis Spohr, and A. B. Marx. The first volume, containing ten church cantatas in score, appeared in December, 1851. A list of the then existing subscribers was printed with the volume, classified according to their places of residence. It is interesting to note in this list, under the head "Boston," the single American name of "Herr Parker,

1 This Deutsche Bach-Gesellschaft (German Bach Society), which to-day counts among its members distinguished musicians and music-lovers all over Europe and in many parts of America, must not be

J. C. D., Tonkünstler." The society has since that time continued publishing volume after volume, and the edition has at the present date attained its twenty-fourth volume. But in spite of these labors of the Bach Society, which were, after all, prompted by an archæologicohistorical rather than a purely musical interest in Bach's works, the general love for Bach kept pretty much in statu quo. Some years after the appearance of the Bach circular, another organization was formed, namely, the Händel Society, for the purpose of publishing a complete edition of Händel's works. It was conducted on precisely the same principles as the other body, and the edition was published by the same firm. The first volume, comprising the dramatic oratorio of Susannah, appeared in October, 1858. That far more vital musical interest in its task was felt by this organization than by its fellow society is evident from the fact that, in its edition, all the orchestral scores of Händel's vocal works are accompanied by a carefully written-out part for organ or piano-forte, in which the bare places in the score are filled out according to the figured basso continuo. In the Bach edition there is nothing of the sort, but only the incomplete score, just as the composer left it. Thus, while the Bach Society gave to the world an edition of that master's works which was historically valuable, and only that in so far as the vocal scores were concerned, the Händel Society took active measures to make the vocal scores in their edition available for actual performance by choral bodies. The champion of the latter society was Friedrich Chrysander, a man who had always assumed the attitude of an almost exclusive admirer of Händel, and who, in his writings, rarely let a chance slip of saying something invidious about Bach. Chrysander had much more prestige as a musical authority than any man on the Bach side. Another man was G. G. Gervinus, who,

confounded with the Leipziger Bach-Verein (Bach Union), a totally distinct society, which was organized much later.