I find that it is advisable amongst musicians to speak the truth at the outset, otherwise they are liable to mistake fiction for fact; so let me say at once that this short paper contains no matter that has not already been sifted and probed, no criticisms that have not been adequately capped, and no suggestions that are not practically commonplaces to all present in this room. For if, as has been said with unction, there is nothing new in art, then obviously there is nothing new to be said about it, though million pens splutter and a myriad tongues wag. Always the same music rises to the same accompaniment of chatter, and indeed we are so inured to reading and talking about it in preference to hearing it, that we are often enabled to combine the three functions simultaneously, digesting as we do our analytical programmes and forming our considered judgments therefrom, actually during the performance of the music to which they refer. So what tones of quality can be superimposed on this bedrock of sound to season the appearance of the new in music, which as we are told is but the reappearance of the old, bidding us the prima donna's everlasting farewell?