cians; Japan brings a touch of Madama Butterfly; a proposal of marriage, O Promise me; and a farewell, Tosti's Good-bye! This expedient of appealing to the emotions through the intellect bears the stamp of approval, it may be admitted, of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.
Waiting the birth of authentic moving-picture music, which a new composer must rise to invent, the safest way (not necessarily the best) is the middle course, one method for this film, another for that. One of the difficulties which arises is the necessity of arranging a score for a theatre with a large band, where the leader must plan his accompaniment, or have it planned for him, for an entire picture before his men can play a note. Music cues must be definite: twenty bars of Alexander's Ragtime Band, seventeen of The Ride of the Valkyries, ten of Vissi d'arte, etc. An ingenious young man has discovered a way by which music and action may be synchronized. I feel the impulse to quote from the vivid report of his achievement, published in one of the motion-picture weekly journals: "Here was a man-sized job—how to measure the action of the picture to the musical score, so that they would both come out equal at every part of the picture, and would be so exact that any orchestra might take the score and follow the movement of the play with absolute correctness. It was a question pri-
