The journalist, critic, and peerless prose stylist was also a pianist. He regularly played chamber music with his friends in Baltimore. And in his youth, he had aspirations as a composer. Isaac Goldberg, in his 1925 biography The Man Mencken, mentions a number of early pieces: a “Two-Step” from 1892, a “March” and “Easy Waltz” from 1893, a number of other waltzes, and a setting of William Watson’s poem “April.” He reproduces the following untitled salon piece, from about 1900, when he was about 20.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)