more distinctly accepted, had it not been that Handel, Haydn, and, in more recent years, Mendelssohn, raised the ideal of the oratorio so high that only the very loftiest musical genius is considered fit to reign in this sphere.  The director of the Cassel theatre continued indefatigable in producing works of greater or less excellence, chamber-music, symphonies, and operas.  Among the latter, attention may be called to “Pietro Albano” and the “Alchemist,” clever but in no sense brilliant works, though, as it became the fashion in Germany to indulge in enthusiasm over Spohr, they were warmly praised at home.  The best known of his orchestral works, “Die Weihe der Tone " ("The Power of Sound"), a symphony of unquestionable greatness, was produced in 1832.  We are told that Spohr had been reading a volume of poems which his deceased friend Pfeiffer had left behind him, when he alighted on “Die Weihe der Tone,” and the words delighted him so much that he thought of using them as the basis of a cantata.  But he changed his purpose, and finally decided to delineate the subject of the poem in orchestral composition.  The finest of all Spohr’s symphonies was the outcome, a work which ranks high among compositions of this class.  His toil on the new oratorio of “Calvary” was sadly interrupted by the death of his beloved wife Dorette, who had borne him a large family, and had been his most sympathetic and devoted companion.  Spohr was so broken down by this calamity that it was several months before he could resume his labors, and it was because Dorette during her illness had felt such a deep interest in the progress of the work that the desolate husband so soon plucked heart to begin again.  When the oratorio was produced on Good Friday, 1835, Spohr records in his diary:  “The thought that my wife did not live to listen to its first performance sensibly lessened the satisfaction I felt at this my most successful work.”  This oratorio was not given in England till 1839, at the Norwich festival, Spohr being present to conduct it.  The zealous and narrow-minded clergy of the day preached bitterly against it as a desecration, and one fierce bigot hurled his diatribes against the composer, when the latter was present in the cathedral.  A journal of the day describes the scene:  “We now see the fanatical zealot in the pulpit, and sitting right opposite to him the great composer, with ears happily deaf to the English tongue, but with a demeanor so becoming, with a look so full of pure good-will, and with so much humility and mildness in the features, that his countenance alone spoke to the heart like a good sermon.  Without intending it, we make a comparison, and can not for a moment doubt in which of the two dwelt the spirit of religion which denoted the true Christian.”