The Oldest Living Composer

Wilhelm Kuhe, is still living in the city of London, England, at the advanced age of eighty-seven. Born in 1823, four years before the death of Beethoven, and with a life continually devoted to music for over eighty years, this venerable pianist, probably the oldest living composer, has seen the musical world pass by as have few other men. for six years he has been blind, but his memory furnishes him with the kind of sight which only departs at death. He sees back into the wonderful music of the past century, and his declining hours are spent withmemories which few men enjoy. In the London "Musical Observer" he says:

"My memory is phenomenal, and the number of pieces I have in my head and my feeble fingers is amazing. I can play one classical piece after another and never get tired. But since my blindness I have given up everything in the way of teaching or public playing".

"I was born in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, on December 10, 1823. I was thought musical even as a child, and I learnt from a professor who hd played in the very first performance of "Don Giovanni", in 1787. He used to tell many stories about Mozart. But I had no idea tha tI should be a professional musician until I was seventeen, when I entered the profession in earnest. I studied very hard until I was twenty, when I left my native place and gave concerts in most of the important places in Germany."

I have known all the great singers, great instrumentalists, and composers who lived during the past seventy years. There is not one whom I have not been connected with. When I am by myself I look back over the years, but all the great men have gone. I met Mendelssohn when "Elijah" was first performed in London, and I have seen Richard Wagner, but never spoke to him. I remember Chopin playing at the house of the musical critic for the Athanaeum, but he was dying even then and could not speak much. I was very intimate with Liszt, and when I was married in 1854 he invited me to spend the honeymoon at his place in Weimar."

Mr. Kuhe continued to talk of the eventful past, how he accompanied Jenny Lind in 1845 and "brought out" Adelina Patti at Brighton in 1861. For three years he was grand organist of the Grand Lodge of England, and he played before Queen Victoria in 1847.