Kelley has two unpublished songs that show him at his best, both settings of verse by Poe,—"Eldorado," which vividly develops the persistence of the knight, and "[Israfel]." This latter poem, as you know, concerns the angel "whose heart-strings are a lute." After a rhapsody upon the cosmic spell of the angel's singing, Poe, with a brave defiance, flings an implied challenge to him. The verse marks one of the highest reaches of a genius honored abroad as a world-great lyrist. It is, perhaps, praise enough, then, to say that Kelley's music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose harmonic beauty and courage is beyond description and beyond the grasp of the mind at the first hearing. The bravery of the climax follows the weird and opiate harmonies of the middle part with tremendous effect. The song is, in my fervent belief, a masterwork of absolute genius, one of the very greatest lyrics in the world's music.
Harvey Worthington Loomis.
In the band of pupils that gathered to the standard of the invader, Antonin Dvôrák, when, in 1892, he came over here from Macedonia to help us, some of the future's best composers will probably be found.
HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS.
Of this band was Harvey Worthington Loomis, who won a three years' scholarship in Doctor Dvôrák's composition class at the National Conservatory, by submitting an excellent, but rather uncharacteristic, setting of Eichendorff's "Frühlingsnacht." Loomis evidently won Doctor Dvôrák's confidence, for among the tasks imposed on him was a piano concerto to be built on the lines of so elaborate a model as Rubinstein's in D minor. When Loomis' first sketches showed an elaboration even beyond the complex pattern, Dvôrák still advised him to go on. To any one that knows the ways of harmony teachers this will mean much.
Loomis (who was born in Brooklyn, February 5, 1865, and is now a resident of New York) pursued studies in harmony and piano in a desultory way until he entered Doctor Dvôrák's class. For his musical tastes he was indebted to the artistic atmosphere of his home.