It is not easy to estimate the exact distance which separates him whom the wisest critics call the greatest of living German composers from the master whom most of these would agree in placing nearest to him in order of artistic merit; nor is it likely that if the relative greatness of the two could be assessed, all or even the majority of those whose opinion is best worth having would measure it in the same way. They would, I think, agree in one thing: that a very great interval should be placed between Max Bruch and the rest of his German contemporaries. For my own part I should not hesitate to place Bruch midway between Brahms and the other composers of their country, and to make both intervals wide. It is especially difficult for English people to realise what -a power Bruch's music is in Germany, and how popular, in the best sense, it is, since the composer spent some time in England and was received with a coolness which we most rarely exhibit to musicians of other nations. Very little of his music has entered into what may be called the permanent repertory of English concerts, and the works that have attained to the dignity of standard compositions with us do not belong to the class in which Bruch's widest fame has been won.