By Dr. HAROLD RHODES -
Relayed from COVENTRY CATHEDRAL
ONE of the most distinguished of present-day organists, Louis Vierno was a pupil of Cesar Franck and of Widor. After being Widor's assistant at Saint Sulpice for some years, ho became organist of Notre Dame in Paris, and has been tirelessly active not only as a player, but as a composer. He first played in this country in the beginning of 1924. Known to us almost solely by his organ music, earnest and solid and with those poetic qualities for which one looks in Cesar Franek 's disciples, he has written chamber music and for orchestra, too, and in Franco is regarded as taking an important place among present-day composers.
His younger brother, also an organist, was killed in the last year of the War, fighting for his native land.
LIKE many of his illustrious predecessors in the English world of music, Sir George Smart was a chorister of the Chapel Royal. Making his name first as a teacher of the harpsichord and singing, he afterwards won a foremost position as conductor and composer. He had, too, a gift but rarely possessed by artists, a considerable administrative ability, and had a big share in the English Festivals in the first half of last century. But it is probably as a teacher of singing that ho will be best remembered ; he carried on that work until he was over eighty, and counted such distinguished people as Jenny Lind among his pupils.
His father could look back on hearing Handel conduct his own oratorios, so that he was long recognized as knowing the real Handel tradition. And he himself could boast of having once had a lesson on the drums from Haydn. At one of Haydn's concerts in London he volunteered to act as deputy for tho absent drummer, but Haydn was so little satisfied with his efforts that he left his conductor's place and showed him there and then, how the drums should be played.