of London's musical scene and remained so until the end of the century. Grove wrote the programme notes for the concerts. In 1901, a biographer wrote: The daily and weekly orchestral performances at Sydenham prompted those admirable analytical notices of musical compositions with which the name of George Grove was so long and is so favourably associated. He had always shown a great fondness for music, but had never received any technical training in the art. Entirely self-taught, his knowledge was acquired solely by 'picking up' information. "I wish it to be distinctly understood," he said, "that I have always been a mere amateur in music. I wrote about the symphonies and concertos because I wished to try to make them clear to myself and to discover the secret of the things that charmed me so; and from that sprang a wish to make other amateurs see it in the same way." Grove's musical analyses avoided all hint of technical jargon and tried to make clear to everyone who read them what, in Grove's opinion, listeners should be aware of in each piece. In a note on Mozart's Symphony No. 39, after referring to Mozart's extraordinary productivity in the year 1788, Grove wrote: The circumstances which necessitated such fearful exertion on this and many other occasions in Mozart's life we have no means of ascertaining. Whatever they were, they were in accordance with a common custom of Nature. She seems to delight in condemning her most gifted sons to an ordeal the very reverse of that which we should anticipate. It seems equally true in Art and in Morals, that it is not by indulgence and favour, but by difficulty and trouble, that the spirit is formed; and in all ages of the world our Davids, Shakspeares, Dantes, Mozarts, and Beethovens must submit to processes which none but their great spirits could survive – to a fiery trial of poverty, ill health, neglect, and misunderstanding – and be "tried as silver is tried," that they may become the teachers of their fellow-men to all time, and shine, like stars in the firmament, for ever and ever. Grove's Crystal Palace programme notes did not concentrate solely on his favourite Austro-German composers. He embraced a representative selection of composers, notably the Frenchmen Berlioz, Bizet, Delibes, Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns, and the rising generations of British composers – Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, Charles