and theirs, so that they mutually absorbed and expressed each other. In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees. No doubt his firm faith in these lofty idealities gave him the power to present them to our imaginations, and thus by the aid of the higher language of Music to inspire others with that sense of beauty in which he constantly dwelt. His conception of music was not reached by an analytic study of note by note, but was intuitive and spontaneous; like a woman's reason : he felt it so, because he felt it so, and his delicate perception required no more logical form of reasoning. His playing appealed alike to the musically learned and to the unlearned-for he would magnetize the listener; but the artist felt in his performance the superiority of the momentary living inspiration to all the rules and shifts of mere technical scholarship. His art was not only the art of art, but an art above art. I will never forget the impression he made on me when he played the flute concerta of Emil Hartmann at

a Peabody symphony concert, in 1878, — his tall, handsome, manly presence, his flute breathing noble sorrows, noble joys, the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spellbound. Such distinction, such refinement! He stood, the master, the genius!

"1

He made the same impression on every other artist he ever played for. Badger called his fluteplaying "astonishing;" Wehner, the first flute in Thomas's Orchestra, sought every opportunity to play with him. Theodore Thomas planned to have him in his orchestra at the time when Lanier's health failed in 1876; Dr. Damrosch said he played "Wind-Song" like an artist, — that "he was greatly astonished and pleased with the poetry of the piece and the enthusiasm of its rendering."

His own compositions, too, appealed to men. At times the "fury of creation was upon him. During the first winter in Baltimore he wrote a midge dance, the origin of which he thus gives in a letter to his wife: "I am copying off —in order to try the publishers therewith—a ‘Danse des Moucherons' (midge dance), which I have written for flute and piano, and which I think enough of to let go forward as Op. 1. Dost thou remember one morning last summer, Charley and I were walking in the upper part of the yard, 1 Quoted in Ward's Introduction to Poems.

ん

before breakfast, and saw a swarm of gnats, of whose strange evolutions we did relate to thee a marvelous tale? I have put the grave oaks, the quiet shade, the sudden sunlight, the fantastic, contrariwise, and ever-shifting midge movements, the sweet hills afar off,. . all in the piece, and thus I like it; but I know not if others will, I have not played it for anybody. "1

During this winter and the succeeding one Lanier gave almost his entire time to music. He practiced assiduously, took every opportunity to play with the best musicians, both those of his own orchestra and of Theodore Thomas's, and often spent evenings with three or four of the choicest spirits he could command. Hamerik was of special inspiration to him, bringing to him as he did much of the spirit of music that prevailed in German cities. Lanier studied the technique of the flute, mastering his new silver Boehm, which "begins to feel me," he writes. "How much I have learned in the last two months!" he exclaims. "I am not yet an artist, though, on the flute. The technique of the instrument has many depths which I had not thought of before, and I would not call myself a virtuoso within a year." He suffers agony because he does not attain a point in harmony which the audience did not notice. Writing of 1 Letters, p. 98.