HOW TO RECITE "BERGLIOT."

It is of paramount importance to realise the dramatic situation in the opening lines. The words, "King Harald this day must hold to the truce," require to be delivered proudly, yet with a sense of misgiving and a foreboding of coming trouble. The succeeding passages are all in a tone of rising alarm, yet with an endeavour for confidence till the outburst, when the fact of a quarrel is realised-" Treacherous Harald! Thy truce invites but vultures to gather." Here the accompaniment must follow the voice absolutely.

Similarly with the lines on p. 9. The pauses marked in the music are not required; it speeds along, and the reader must not think of pausing thus as it is written.

This would be absurd. The lines, "Can this thing be! -Yes-it is he!" must, on the contrary, be gasped out word by word, so as to prepare for the stunned pause which is so eloquently filled up by the dirge following. The next speech must be taken quite freely by the reader, with as little waiting for the music as

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possible. The scornful passage, "O, were but Håkon Ivarson here!" needs to wait at each sentence until after the loud chords. Again, the speech beginning Can I seek Odin, the lord of Valhalla ?" must not be too much broken up. Here the accompanist must hurry up. Where the voice comes in during the funeral march the composer originally put little notes above the syllables of the words, to indicate how they should be spoken in time to the music. He removed these afterwards, because he probably found this kindly-meant assistance useless. But these concluding lines are well worth the practice I have suggested for Jubal, and not until the reciter is sure of the exact position of every word in the bar will she obtain the utmost effect here, for the accompaniment must keep rigid time. In the last line the concluding word "home" must drop naturally upon the first note of the bar, as indicated. I have heard many attempts to recite "Bergliot," many with which the audience has been greatly impressed, but I have yet to hear one which at all approaches the Clifford Harrison standard. And yet this particular piece seems so singularly easy and obvious to make fit, and the work bestowed upon it would be so remunera

tive.

THE DUAL ART.

18, 19, 20.-A far harder task is presented in the works lately published by Mr. Stanley Hawley. Here we have this difficulty of making the reciter realise the importance of the music more formidable than ever. The means I have indicated for studying Jubal are here indispensable. Under the fingers of the composer the accompaniment to "The Bells" is simply exquisite, but I confess I cannot do anything with it myself. The opening bars will clearly show the kind of thing, rhythm reigning throughout.

As an experiment on the same lines, I have written. music to a ballad of Rudyard Kipling's, in which almost throughout the voice has to go as accurately with the music as in singing, but hitherto I have found the difficulty of performance quite insuperable. A short extract will serve as a typical example of the most intimate union possible between recitation and music. As such I venture to commend it to the student.