HBH 1892 Nov 4 2 MUSIN Ovide Ovide MUSIN, the violinist, contrived to play a rather cruel trick upon the omniscient critics of the Melbourne morning papers. His first concert was rather thinly attended, and each of those clever persons assured him through the medium of the organs of public opinion which they enliven that the reason of public apathy was that he did not play the so-called "classical" music, for which, according to their account, the concert-goers hunger and thirst. So he put up a job one night, a "Caprice de Concert" of his own composition, a showy, tuneful thing, intended merely to display the rapidity of his fingering. This he repeated the next night, credititing it to Wieniawaki, and calling it a mazurka. The critics did not recognise it, but they accepted it as a good specimen of that composer's style, and discoursed learnedly about its characteristic peculiarities. The third night he passed off the same piece as the work of Raff, and the fourth night put it down to Leonard, and so on throughout the whole of his seven concerts, each night playing the same piece without the slightest alteration, and each night changing its name and giving it a new technical appellation. The result proved than none of the critics knew a cavatina from a mazurka, and when Musin's agent, M. Fabien FERRAUD, told them plainly how they had been fooled, after his principal had left, their despair and outrage were pretty to behold.