OBITUARY.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7265, 26 January 1889, Page 5

OBITUARY.

fpXB FBKSS ASSOCIATION.! Received January 25th, 12.40 pan.

London, January 24. Francis Hueffer, the famous musical critic and Pelligrini, the Vanity Fair caricaturist, are dead.

M. Pelligrini was probably the most gifted caricaturist of modern times. His caricatures of public men, which were signed " Ape," and reproduced in chromolithograph, made the fortune of Vanity Fair. '• He was wonderfully successful in seizing on individual peculiarities in his "subjects," but although these were duly accentuated, none of his caricatures were ever in the slightest degree overdrawn, so as to become grotesque. It was in this that hie excellence as an artist consisted. It was generally admitted that a drawing by ** Ape "gave a far more vivid likeness of the subject than any photograph could nave done.

Francis Hueffer, Ph.D., was born in 1845, and devoted himself to the study of modern philology and music in London, Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig. Bis first publication (1869) was a critical edition of the works of Guillem de Cabestanh, a troubadour of the twelfth century, for which the University of Gottingen conferred upon him the degree of FhJD. A more extensive work on the same subject, entitled " The Troubadours: a History of Provencal life and literature in the Middle Ages," was published in 1878; and in the same year Mr Hueffer was appointed musical critic of the Times. In 1880 be delivered a series of lectures on the Troubadours at the Royal Institution. As a writer on music and a mueical critic, Mr Hueffer has been the first in England to advocate the claims of Richard Wagner. Hie first work on the subject, "Bicnard Wagner, and the Music of the Future," was published in 1874; a more comprehensive biography of the master from his pen appeared as the first volume of a series of lives of " The Great Musicians," 1881. A collection of •' Musical Studies," reprinted from the Times, the FortntgMly Review, and other periodicals, appeared Iα 1880. The work has been translated Into Italian by Signor Alberto Visetti, and published at Milan in 1883. In his critical writings Mr Hueffer warmly espoused the cause of a national English opera, and he wrote the libretto of a musical drama, "Colombo " (music by Mr A. C. Mackenzie) for the English opera season at Drury ! Lane in 1883. His volume of essays, entitled "Italian and other Studies, ,, also appeared in 1883. In 1886 he produced a second opera in conjunction with Mr Mackenzie. It is entitled " The Troubadour," and Guillem de Cabestanh, the Provencal poet previously mentioned, is the hero. i The first performance took place at Drury Lane Theatre, June Bth, 1886, and was very favorably received.