The less convincing parts of the oratorio are sections ii. and iii., especially those parts devoted to the Beatitudes and the conversion of the Magdalene. It is obviously a work the secrets of which are to be penetrated only with the aid of many hearings and much study. At present we are disposed to regard "Gerontius" as the more perfect work of art, though the individual beauties of the "Apostles" are greater and more wonderful. Nearly everything in the later oratorio is stronger. The symbols of the Church show an advance upon the corresponding parts of "Gerontius" scarcely less remarkably than the symbols of the heavenly choir. The strange Old Testament element connected with the Temple service again shows imaginative power of quite a new kind, wonderfully enriching the background of the composition, and the tragic force of the "Passion" scenes is immensely greater than anything in "Gerontius." But with our present degree of knowledge we miss in the "Apostles" that crowning artistic unity which prompted us to describe "Gerontius" as a pearl among oratorios.
Sir Edward Elgar's most recent Overture, "In the South," has a picturesqueness, or rather a kind of graphic power, arising from far-reaching play of the imagination. In thematic invention it is perhaps more strongly stamped with Elgar's originality than any other work. Its whole tone, atmosphere, and colouring are something essentially new in music, the only hint of any other composer's influence occurring in the viola solo, which bears a faint suggestion of Berlioz's "Harold in Italy." But, being a secondary element in the latter part of the Overture, it is to be regarded merely as that kind of reference which in music is as allowable as it is in literature. The _grandioso_ theme beginning in A flat minor, which was suggested by the Roman remains of La Turbie, is so striking that it has already acquired a good many nicknames. The "steam-roller" theme, it has been called; elsewhere, the "seven-league-boot" theme, the "Jack the Giant-killer," and, among Germans, the "Siebentöter" theme. In any case it is a most extraordinary piece of musical expression, of a kind scarcely ever foreshadowed by any other composer, except once or twice by Beethoven, who first sought and found the musical symbol of great historic or cosmic forces, or of the emotion stirred in the human consciousness by the play, or after-effects, of such forces. One thing remains to be said about this Overture. The composer's procedure is a compromise between the old procedure by way of thematic development and the newer by way of dramatic suggestion, and he does not always succeed completely in the fusion of the two, as, for example, Beethoven does in his greater "Leonora"; but here and there he permits the feeling to arise that the one is interfering with the other. In particular, the composition is open to the charge of a certain weakness in thematic development; but that does not prevent it from being, as a whole, a very striking, beautiful, and original tone picture. Dr. Richter's interpretation very finely revealed all the strong points. He saved three minutes of the composer's own time by taking the _vivace_ sections at a somewhat quicker tempo. As at Covent Garden last March, Mr. Speelman played the incidental viola solo with marvellous beauty of tone.