When You Want it to appreciate their work but, unless I follow Ernest Newman's example—which I am not likely to do—and purchase a player-piano, I am dependent on the whims of the Paris Opéra or Mr. Walter Damrosch for the privilege of listening to Lully, Couperin, or Grétry. Even Ernest Newman must listen to most of this music in transcriptions—transcriptions, which he admits in his laudatory book on the subject, have been made carelessly enough, for the most part, from transcriptions already fashioned for human pianists, without reference to the orchestral scores, which the player-piano, being gifted with more than two hands, could more nearly duplicate in number of voices if not in timbres—and, in relation to such music as has not yet been cut in rolls, he would stand in precisely the same position that I stand. Could he, for instance, buy a roll of Le Désert? At this very instant I would rather hear a performance of Grétry's Richard Cœur de Lion, of which an excerpt, quoted in Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame, has haunted me ever since I heard that opera, than the complete works of Giuseppe Verdi. Nay! I think I would eschew all other pleasures, even an evening at the theatre where Delysia plays, for an opportunity to attend a performance of the rewritten version of Simone Boccanegra. I might want to hear it only once, but how very
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