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Rh that bringing together, into one focus or centre, of many teachers and many pupils, whereby breadth and soundness of general musical education are or should be attainable. Turning to the schools of music of the present day, we find the academic system very fully developed everywhere except in our own country of Scotland, whose turn is coming, we hope. The system is indeed said to be rather over-devel- oped in the great metropolis. Recently a London musician of note, in advising as to the course for a young student coming to town to one of the minor 'colleges of music,' said that there were now so many so-called colleges of music good, bad, and indifferent, that it needed a little caution and care to make a good choice. Professional musicians seem there to have been led by the prevailing fasliion and the force of circumstances into teaching combinations, which by their very numbers and mushroom growth are degenerate. • Still the abuse of a system impugns not the use thereof, and we may look with satisfaction upon the work done by the great schools — the Royal Academy, the Royal College, the College of Organists, the Guildhall School, etc. Our satisfaction is also heightened as Scotsmen by the knowledge that our countryman, the composer of the Rose of Sharon, is now at the head of the first-named institution, to guide and inspire it with his native common-sense and artistic power. Germany has long enjoyed the benefits of good schools and good teachers, which continue to attract students from our own shores, from America, and elsewhere. The names of Mendelssohn, Raff", Bralims, Rubinstein, Frau Schumann are powerful for good far and wide. As to our universities, it is a difficult task to determine the exact amount of educational work performed by the various classes of music. A university professor of music is, we fear, in Great Britain too little associated with the practical — that is, with the interpretation of the classics, whether in operatic, oratorio, orcliestral, or chamber music — to reach the people. The chair of music is one among many chairs, and does not officially include or possess the machinery for the rendition of music, if we except here and there the organ. There is however a mission which the university professor seems peculiarly called upon to fulfil. It is that of a leader in musical politics, a learned critic, a fosterer of the best scliools of composition. It is that of a musical historian, pliilosopher, and grammarian. He must be a man of light and leading, a theorist who is more than a grammarian, and who, going deeper into the mines of musical ore, can tell us what are the yet un- wrought seams, — how far, for instance, a system of improved temperament is possible or impossible. The giants, from Bach to AVagner, have apparently left so little room for newness of form or originality of expression, that we turn with eagerness to the declaration that has been made in a high quarter that elaboration of rhythms is the next musical mine. Whether from national feeling or original conception, Dvorak has in some of his music treated us to a freshness of rliythm that is undoubtedly charming, — witness The SjKcti-e"// Bride. But to return from a digression — if we have sought with a free hand to indicate the possibilities and ideals of a chair of music, let us not expect too much of the men who fill such hardly definable posts. Yet Sir Robert Stewart has for many years been the head and ornament of the musical profession in Ireland. He has kept up a school of church organ- playing and choral accompaniment, recalling the days of S. S. Wesley. He has lectured, examined, and composed — or as he himself once said: ' I have spoilt a good deal of music paper in my time.' The Rev. Sir Frederick Ouseley stands out as the greatest living British contrapuntist — the friend of all those younger musicians who have come under his fascinating and kindly influence. He, and pro- bably he alone, can extemporise a fugue on any given subject with a strictness, fertility of invention, and grandeur of effect never to be forgotten by the privileged listener. Every musician should be a theorist in order to methodise and render intellectually interesting his playing or singing. Much has been done for the teaching of the elements of music by such writers as Troutbeck, W. H. Cummings, Davenport, Hullah, Curwen and his coUaborateurs, and a host of others. There is no excuse for any one being ignorant of the rudiments of music with such a variety of excellent primers as are nowadays to be had. The whole series issued in recent years by Novello, under the editorship of Dr. Stainer, testify to the widespread interest in the study of music. These primers are marvels of condensation and of clearness of treatment.

The scientific study of harmony is of immense practical value. As to the method of study doctors differ, as might be expected. Sir George Macfarren's system of harmony is, we think, defective in respect that it gives no play or freedom to the mind of the student, but reduces a partly cEsthetical science to a cast-iron rule and an equally unyielding code of exceptions, so carefully tabulated as to overreach the mark and cripple the young composer. The Oxford professor has done better. His text-book on harmony is philosophical, clear, and interesting. The professor's theories may not in toto