"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS."
MUSICAL NOTES.
The remarkable and altogether epoch-making article in The Times of the 16th inst., on the stimulating effect of the bath on unmusical people, has already borne notable fruit. Meetings of the Governing Bodies of all the principal Musical Colleges and Academies were held on the following day, at which it was unanimously determined, as one of the speakers put it, to effect a closer synthesis of harmony and ablution. Sir Hubert Parry, himself celebrated in his youth for his prowess in natation, has offered to present the Royal College of Music with a magnificent swimming bath; Mr. Landon Ronald has drafted a scheme for the erection of a floating bath in the Thames for the convenience of the Guildhall School, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie has offered the students of the R.A.M. an annual prize for the best vocal composition in praise of saponaceous abstergents.
Outside our musical academies the impetus given to musicians and composers has been equally remarkable. Professor Banville de Quantock, whose Oriental proclivities are well known, has at once embarked on a gigantic choral symphony, to words of his own composition, in which the whole process and procedure of the Turkish Bath is treated historically, dramatically and realistically in seventeen movements. The title has not yet been definitely fixed, but it will probably be known as the Symphonie Bathétique, to differentiate it from Tschaikovsky's hackneyed work.