97 o- • ' — By Professor Frandescci Beige - kr It
cannot be said that Prof. Franceteo -Berger'S bodk, " 97" (Purnell, 3s. 6d.), will delight his contemporaries, because he has none ; but it will sive an hour's pleashre and amusement to a great-number of-young musical people who want to knovi what was done and thought and said in the musical world in the days of their fathers and grrindfathers • and even 'great-grandfathers. The writer is ninety-seven, and he has known practically all the musicians of note, composers, executants, singers or conductors who have appeared in England during the best part of a hundred years. He depicts an artistic society -long passed away, and he depicts it on its non-Bohemian side, ,a fact which gives a
freshness to his reminiscences. Professor of pianoforte at the Guildhall School of Music for nearly half a century, for twenty- five years at the Royal Academy of Music, and for still longer Hon. Sec. of the Royal Philharmonic Society, he has had every opportunity of acquiring musical gossip. Here is an entertaining scrap taken from the minute-books of the latter . society :
"April 19th, 1840. Letter read from Wagner. Resolved that the score of his Overture be returned with an apology for having kept it so long, and explaining that, being written upon a theme which is hero very commonplace, it precludes its performance at the Philharmonic Society.
"I believe the work here in question was founded on Rule Britannia,' and somehow was missing for a number of years, and was not recovered until after the composer's death.. But I um somewhat uncertain about these details.'
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