Concert

“ Now I have my concert before me, which is a handful, not to mention the friends who break in on me at every moment, nor the lovely weather which entices one out of doors, nor the copyists who compel one to stay at home—it is all a most pleasurable and most stormy existence. My concert has had to be put off on account of the October festival, which begins on Sunday and lasts all the week. There is the theatre and a ball every evening, no chance of an orchestra or a hall to play in. ”

“ My mind goes a few years into the future. I attend a concert given by students or by graduates of Fisk University; I listen to music of the most classical order rendered in a manner that would satisfy the most exacting critic of the art; and at the same time I am pleasantly reminded of the famous "Jubilee Singers" of days in the past by the peculiarly thrilling sweetness of voice, and the charming simplicity and soulfulness of manner, that distinguish and add to the beauty of the rendering. ”

“ They go to the concert for love of music,—negatively for its rest and refreshment, positively for its embodied delights. They take you for your enjoyment, which they permit you to compass after your own fashion. ”

“ Afterward, went to a concert in behalf of the poor—where I sat all the evening in a hard seat with a number on the back to see a woman make faces at a well-dressed audience, and sing music which I could not understand—the people all applauded when she screamed, and threw bouquets at her when she made a noise like a swamp-blackbird. ”

“ The bevy of fair creatures passed into the schoolroom, where, on a raised platform, were seats for the chorus, two pianos, a harmonium—in short, all the preparations for a concert, the one drawback to the young ladies’ absolute felicity—that is to say, those young ladies who were compelled to perform, and who now awaited the audience in a kind of cold shiver, with clammy hands and quickly pulsing hearts. ”

“ Imagine a spacious concert-hall, brightly illuminated, every one of the many seats occupied, the boxes filled to the last place, the aisles crowded, by a most variegated audience: men and women, young maidens, youths with downy beard ”

“ As one goes early to a concert-hall with a passion even for the preliminary tuning of the musicians, so my ear sits alone in the vast amphitheatre of Nature and waits for the earliest warble of the blue-bird, which seems to start up somewhere behind the heavenly curtains. ”

“ And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to brass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. ”

“ O my fair-feather'd, my red-breasted birds,
Come flie with me, I'll bring you to a choir,
Whose concert being sweeten'd with your sound,
The musick will be fuller, and each hour
The ears shall banquet with your harmony.
O! O! O! ”

“ The locality is charming, the open booths round the garden exhibiting every variety of merchandise, and the numerous tables in the open air round which little parties are sitting, talking, drinking, eating, and smoking, while others are parading up and down, present a scene of remarkable gaiety, and when the concert began all the world flocked into the magnificent rooms, where everybody ranges about from high to low without paying anything. ”

“ Compare with all this the entertainment given in concert halls and theatres, where multitudes are packed together under unnecessarily brilliant lights, where the spectators are wrought up and excited and exhausted in a hundred ways and pass out, finally, fatigued, enfeebled, nervously keyed up, and pursued by a host of sensual images. ”

“ I am perhaps imaginative and excited with the fine airs we have heard to-night, but I have an impression that I cannot dispel that something has been sitting listening to us all this time, and that now when the concert is ended it has got up and gone. ”

“ Telegraph me the date of your first concert and I'll be there and blister my hands with the biggest clap the old hall (wherever it is) ever heard. And, while I'm about it, just let me say that I don't know of any one who deserves success more than you. ”

“ Here, because long protected and beloved, they sing in the most marvellous concert, challenging and answering each other in a riot of melody more exquisite than any orchestra created by man can produce ”

“ But a court concert gives you such a supper as only a night's dancing is ordinarily supposed to entitle you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room of the palace, and are much more select than the balls. The royalties occupy very slight gilt chairs placed just before the orchestra. There they sit with grace and an appearance of comfort through the whole of it, while happier and humbler mortals may walk about and whisper, or seek the refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. ”

“ A musician goes one step further. Developing to the utmost a Bayreuth usage, he arranges a concert in a totally darkened hall, and thus delights those of the audience who find opportunity, by happily chosen juxtapositions, to augment their musical sensations by hidden enjoyment of another sort. ”

“ All the Company rising and taking off their Hats was a noble Sight, and grand, the While, to hear that majestical Anthem, till presently some most ridiculous and impertinent Variations set all the House a laughing and some hissing, and I do suspect Monsieur Jullien had a special Audience this Night, that would not away with such Tricks. Between the Parts of the Concert, I into the Pit to walk about among the Sparks, and there a great Press, and the House crammed to the Ceiling. ”

“ Last evening I played at the Casino mobile, in a very fine saloon, my concerto in the form of a scena, and a pot-pourri with pianoforte accompaniment. As the room is very favourable for music, both of these had a very sensible effect upon the audience. The remainder of the concert, consisting of symphonies and pièces d’harmonie, was not of importance. ”

“ Namely: vocal concerts, pseudo-classic dancing, the serious intellectual drama, the civic masque, the high-toned moving picture, and grand opera.
The first thing about them is that a very small percentage of those who make the bogus arts prosperous really enjoy them. I recall my own complete stultification after hearing my first concert; and the casual way in which I made it evident to all my companions that I had been to a concert is my only clue to the mystery. For at bottom there is a vast snobbery of the intellect which repays the deadly hours of boredom we spend in the pursuit of art. ”

“ There are many different ways of going to a concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. ”

“ Our feeling is therefore that there ought usually to be some comparatively light number at the beginning of the concert program in order that we may be assisted in getting into the listening mood before the heavier works are presented. On the other hand, an artist often plunges into a difficult composition at the very beginning of the concert, and by his marvelous technique or his tremendous emotional vitality sweeps his audience immediately into an attitude of rapt attention; all of which proves again that art is intangible, subtle, and ever-varying—as we stated at the beginning. ”

“ For there are times when he comes into the concert-room like some man of a former age, like some spare, knotted barbarian from the world of the sagas. There are times when he comes amongst us like one who might quite conceivably have been comrade to pelted warriors who fought with clubs and hammers, [Pg 248] like one who might have beaten out a rude music by black, smoking hearthsides quite as readily as made tone-poems for the modern concert-room. ”

“ Of course the battle in the rehearsal room had to be fought sternly inch by inch, but frequent trials, approval of the progress shown, and brilliant success at the concert won the day. It was so convincing that many said they could taste wine and smell brimstone. ”

“ I have great confidence in the power of music, especially in that which is popular and universal. Expensive concerts, with celebrated singers, are the pleasure of the rich. But a village glee-club or singing-school calls out home talent, and no concert is so like a country fête as that in which the young folks do their own singing. ”

“ A large orchestra gives a concert every evening in a very pretty concert hall, which, when we were there, contained numerous little tables for refreshments, although I have seen pictures in which the room was filled with seats in solid rows, like a theatre. ”

“ The result is for the greater part a sort of spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which, under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively called a concert in costume. ”

“ The highest popular conception of a classical concert is one in which a complete orchestra performs symphonies and extended compositions in allied [Pg 123] forms, such as overtures, symphonic poems, and concertos. Change the composition of the instrumental body, by omitting the strings and augmenting the reed and brass choirs, and you have a military band which is best employed in the open air, and whose programmes are generally made up of compositions in the simpler and more easily comprehended forms—dances, marches, fantasias on popular airs, arrangements of operatic excerpts and the like. ”

“ But what union, or what concert, can there be among persons, no one of whom will have set eyes on any other from the first moment of his entrance? Undermining walls, forcing iron bars, requires commonly a concert, always a length of time exempt from interruption. ”

“ Gain that appearance necessary to the artist by singing before public audiences everywhere, at church festivals, benefit concerts, parlor receptions, college recitals, anywhere where an audience can be entertained. Study your influence over your audience and learn how to so express your art in your voice and singing that your audiences are your subjects. Concert after concert must pass before you know your own power in song. Year after year will go bye, before it is safe to approach the critical audiences of large cities. ”

“ Concerts are an important accessory to this festival with both rich and poor; the former make every effort to secure the best singers and performers for their entertainment on this holiday; the latter, not being able to have the more delicate instruments content themselves with a clatter of basins, pots and frying-pans, and make with these a sort of burlesque concert. ”

“ Here you have the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies—the giants of the musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert for the special behoof and glorification of the bénéficiaire. Mr So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual benefit concert. There are Monday concerts, and Wednesday concerts, and Saturday concerts; there are weekly concerts, fortnightly concerts, and monthly concerts ”

“ These concerts always begin with a pianoforte solo, and the performers ought to feel very flattered at the way in which they are received. We, the audience, regard them no more than we do the mounted policemen in the Lord Mayor's Show. They are not part of the procession. They are only meant to clear the way and let us know that the concert is going to begin, and then we must leave off our chatter. Naturally, we make the most of our time, and try to get all our talking done at once. ”

“ Concert singing is the field most widely opened and most easily filled of any to which a singer can aspire. Every year the concert field broadens. The so-called "grand" concerts of the last generation have disappeared, and that is better for the singer. Concert singing is more thoroughly a business and it is one worthy the ambition of any vocal student. ”

“ The chorus in which that opera abounds gives the parterre frequent opportunities of joining in concert with the stage. This inclination of the audience to sing along with the actors so prevails with them that I have sometimes known the performer on the stage to do no more in a celebrated song than the clerk of a parish church, who serves only to raise the psalm, and is afterward drowned in the music of the congregation. Every actor that comes on the stage is a beau. ”

“ There was the evening when for our benefit the men organised an impromptu concert featuring a quartet that would succeed on any man's burlesque circuit, and a troupe of buck-and-wing dancers whose equals it would be hard to find on the Big Time. ”

“ I have sometimes, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them during the performance of a great part that was admired by the performers themselves ”

“ This company of singers, consisting of four [three] brothers and their mother, gave a concert at Ringueberg Hall last (Monday) evening; and their performance was such as to elicit the enthusiastic approval of all present. Coming among us as strangers, their merits were not generally understood; and we presume that the entire audience were agreeably disappointed in the entertainment presented. We hazard nothing in saying that we have not had in our place for years a concert which combined all the elements that please the musical ear, and satisfy the cultivated taste, as did this. ”