Following the plan of his previous volume of Great Authors , the writer has here endeavoured to weave into more or less story form a few of the facts and incidents in the lives of some great musicians. It is hoped that young readers—and especially those to whom music is a subject of study—will take a greater interest in some of the masterpieces of composition when they have learnt something about the composers themselves, and the circumstances under which they wrote. The author desires to expres

hristoph, I wish you would let me have that book of manuscript music which you have in your cupboard—the one which contains pieces by Pachelbel, and Frohberger, and Buxtehude, and ever so many others—you know which I mean. I will take such care of it if you will only lend it to me for a little while.' Christoph was about to leave the room, but he turned sharply to his little brother as the latter put his request. 'No, Sebastian, I will certainly not lend you the book, and I wonder that you have

n a garret choked with lumber of various kinds, to which the dust of years had imparted the greyish hue of neglect and decay, a little fair-haired boy was seated before a spinet, fingering its yellow keys with a tenderness that betokened his fondness for the instrument. The level rays of the setting sun streaming through the dimmed casement lighted up the child's head with its clustering curls, as he bent over the keyboard. The little spinet was almost dumb, and the voice which had cheered so ma

he Cathedral of St. Stephen, standing in the central square of Vienna, looked grey and cheerless in the misty atmosphere of a November evening. Evensong had just concluded, the worshippers had dispersed, and the great square itself was silent and deserted, save for one or two hurrying pedestrians crossing it on their homeward way. One of these, however, formed an exception to the rest, for he seemed to be in no hurry to leave the square. On reaching the further side he hesitated, glanced up at t

In a small, barely-furnished apartment in the Archbishop's palace at Salzburg, in Austria-Hungary, on a winter's morning in the year 1766, a boy of ten years of age was seated at a table, his head resting upon his hand and his eyes turned towards the window. Before him were scattered a number of sheets of manuscript music-paper, several of which were covered with notes, which his childish fingers had patiently traced amidst a plentiful sprinkling of blots and smears. There was something pathetic

It was a beautiful spring morning; the sun shone in a cloudless sky, and the birds were singing blithely on the branches of the trees just outside the window, as if inviting the child who stood within to come out into the sunshine and be as free and happy as themselves. But he could not respond to their call, for he was not yet half-way through his long task. A pitiful little figure he made, mounted on a footstool in front of the pianoforte, with his head resting wearily on his hand, and his abs

f you are ever in the city of Vienna, and bend your steps to the district called the Lichtenthal, you will there find a thoroughfare, running north and south, called the Nussdorfer Strasse. This is its present name, but in former times it was known as 'Auf dem Himmelpfortgrund'—meaning 'Off the Gate of Heaven'—the 'Himmelpfortgrund' itself being a small street branching off to the west towards the fortifications. On the right-hand side of the Nussdorfer Strasse, as you face the outskirts of the

The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close, and a grey mist had already begun to blot out the canal and the trees which were studded along its banks, accentuating the prevailing cheerlessness and silence, and throwing into yet stronger relief the animated scene presented within the comfortable, well-warmed dining-room of a house standing on the further side of the broad street which ran parallel with the canal. A large company was gathered in this room for the enjoyment of music and conve