Music festival

“ To a weird music they perform what is due, to a rhythm of unwearying persistence that throbs through all the festival, so that at last the whole broad earth seems to be throbbing, throbbing to the beat of it. ”

“ Barry, who takes a peculiarly serious view of all things musical, claims that Festival Sounds, Sounds of Festivity or Echoes of a Festival is the portrayal in music of scenes that illustrate some great national festival; that the introduction, with its fanfares, gives rise to strong feelings of expectation. ”

“ There is one aim—to express the music perfectly and in the most lofty spirit; therefore the festival is both a vital element in the community and a welder of the people into a social unity. The chorus is also an influence for democracy. There is a weekly rehearsal. Women sometimes walk several miles to attend this and members rarely miss a meeting. One couple came twelve miles every week for eight years. There is no expense except for music and sometimes the sum does not go over sixty cents a year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The peculiar characteristics that go to mark its unique position in the world of English musical history, are decidedly antagonistic to the artistic ideals that are the very life and soul [Pg 259] of the others. This festival cannot, I think, be, in any sense, interpreted as a sign of advance in the art of music, on the part of the English people. It certainly provides the pleasurable excitement of a week in the metropolis, interspersed with music, to the many hundreds of enthusiastic choral singers who flock to the Crystal Palace from, practically, every part of the country. ”

“ We have in mind such apparently motiveless gatherings as the majority of music festivals. Some of them, of course, have a very definite purpose, and some, such as the Bayreuth Festival and the Mozart Festival at Salzburg, have a very obvious motive. But most of them seem to have no other raison d'être than the instinctive desire of a number of people to gather into a crowd and make a big noise. Festivals of this sort are extraordinarily common in America. It is difficult to say whether the amount of labor involved in the organization of them could not be more profitably expended. ”

“ During the summer of 1880 my father conceived the idea of giving a monster music festival in May, 1881, which was to last a week and for which a chorus of one thousand two hundred, of which the Oratorio Society should be the nucleus, was to be trained in sections during the entire winter. He conferred with some of his friends, outlined his project to them, and a Music Festival Association composed of the directors of his Symphony and Oratorio Societies was formed. Other prominent New York citizens were added and a guarantee fund was provided, ample to protect the project financially. ”

“ The movement, in its activities, has assumed no particular form, but has taken a variety of forms according to the possibilities of local conditions. The 'Forest Festival,' or 'Midsummer High Jinks,' of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, while not open to the general public, has nevertheless shown the potent appeal of outdoor musical dramatic festivals to a large number of persons not commonly in touch with musical life. ”

“ The most musical communities are not those where all the music of the year is crowded into a festival of three or four days, but those where there is the most real music made at home. A German musical festival used to be the culmination of a whole year of healthy musical activity, and the occasion for the production of new works and a wide variety of old ones. ”

“ But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual degree of excitement. The affair is to be a 'festival' or a 'jubilee;' 'all the musical talent' of London is to be concentrated; the continent has been dragged for extra-ordinary executive attractions; every musical hit of the season is to be repeated ”

“ Hence that music will be the most suitable and the best which in its construction will correspond most perfectly with the peculiar spirit of each festival and with the special character of each service; which will most naturally and reverently render the sense of the words without changing, inverting, or abridging them, or marring their sense by useless and tiresome repetitions,—which, in other words, will speak as distinctly and as religiously to the ear as the altar, the vestments of the priest, and the ceremonies speak to the eye. ”

“ A hall must be prepared, the orchestra drilled, the music for the chorus selected and printed, and the whole festival lasting three days be planned, laid out, and carried into effect.
Never before has a single woman been so made a queen over an army of men, women and children. ”

“ The stimulus afforded by the periodical great provincial music Festivals—the excitement provided by the prolonged preparations that are necessary, being a healthy accessory—goes to keep the interest alive in this noble form of art, not only in the immediate vicinity, but far and wide of the cities in which they take place. ”

“ Men and women come from fifteen miles away to attend the rehearsal, and this in winter; three generations of one family sang in the chorus at the last Festival; they play and sing for the pure love and enjoyment of the music. It is altogether impossible to state in words what all this must mean to the moral and spiritual development of the region, to the binding of the hearts of the people in the community, and to the forging of those ties that will hold the young people true in their loyalty to their homes. ”

“ During these three-day festivals we would generally give five concerts, and, as we often booked two festivals in one week, the ten concerts and necessary rehearsals often proved a great strain on my vitality. But it had to be done, as the local festival committees were compelled to crowd in as many concerts as possible to make their expenses. It has always been fascinating to me to do pioneer work, either by organizing something new, introducing a new composer, or penetrating into regions where symphonic music was not yet known. ”

“ If, therefore, the organisers of these festivals prescribe second-rate works for the competitions, they simply destroy the raison d'être of these competitions. It is music as an art—not music as a sport or trade—that requires fostering. There is a danger that such concerts may degenerate into a vulgar pot-hunting business, and one would like to see everything done, both as regards the music prescribed and the conduct of the proceedings of the festival itself, to guard against that danger.' I do not claim to know much about music, but I recognise good English when I see it. ”

“ We are only beginning to understand what might be done through the festival, the street procession, the band of marching musicians, orchestral music in public squares or parks, with the magic power they all possess to formulate the sense of companionship and solidarity. ”

“ The symbolic dance and the choral chant are among the most primitive, probably the most primitive, forms of art. Out of their union came music, poetry, and dramatic action. Sculpture, painting, and architecture were stimulated if not actually created under the same auspices. “The festival,” says Prof. Baldwin Brown, “creates the artist.” [2] Festivals among primitive races, as among ancient cultured peoples, are all distinctly religious. ”

“ The next day, Friday, the chorus and the orchestra volunteered and gave her a benefit concert. Like the other concerts of the Festival it was a great success, and gave fifteen thousand people an opportunity to listen to her playing, and to testify to their admiration of her work in their behalf. With the children’s concert on Saturday afternoon the Festival week was brought to a successful close. There was not an accident to mar the pleasure of the occasion and the cause of music in California received an impulse that may be felt to this day. ”

“ Of large societies, the only one remaining now in operative force is the oldest and the largest, the Handel and Haydn Society. This set the right example last May, in that splendid three-days' Festival, of true domestic musical enterprise, organizing the whole thing on the basis of internal and domestic means, with our own permanent nucleus of orchestra and chorus, and drawing from without such other talent, such solo singers, as were needed for the right interpretation of the noble music, and not merely for their own private exhibition and profit. ”

“ At each full moon there takes place a festival in which gongs and cannons rather than musical instruments are heard. Besides these festivals which are celebrated throughout the empire, there are also local ones, which are numberless. The richest class generally keep their private troupe of musicians, whom they own almost as slaves. Often also they educate young children of both sexes, in the musical art with the utmost care, in order that when grown up they may swell the ranks of their musical retinue. ”

“ When this symphonic poem was first played in Vienna there were distributed handbills written by "Herr K.," that the hearers might find reasonable pleasure in the music. One of the sentences goes bounding through the universe as follows: "A great universal and popular festival calls within its magic circle an agitated crowd, joy on the brow, heaven in the breast." ”

“ Here he proposed to have what he called a stage festival—the singers to contribute their services gratuitously, the honor of being selected for this place, and the advantage of the experience, being regarded as ample compensation. The orchestra, likewise, in great part was to be composed of virtuosi—also to play without pay. All these expectations were realized. Leading the violins for several years was the famous [Pg 426] virtuoso, Wilhelmj, and the singers of the Bayreuth festival were the best that the German stage possessed. ”

“ In the streets are seen large Lantern Theatres, that is to say, edifices made of paper; on the inside, which is brightly illuminated, is a stage whereon actors and singers give plays and concerts. 171 Another great festival, where music plays a leading part, takes place on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon. On this evening the Chinese imagine that a hare is seen in the moon, and to the sound of many instruments, the entire population turn out to look at it. It is customary for friends to send each other cakes, on which the figure of a hare is moulded, in sugar. ”

“ We really have as much music, and as good music, as could be expected during my first winter here. To-morrow evening (Good Friday) we are to sing in church the “Last Seven Words” of Palestrina, which I found in Cologne, and a composition of Lasso, and on Sunday we give Cherubini’s Mass in C major.
The Government order prohibiting the celebration of{31} the Musical Festival on Whitsunday, is a bad business; the news came yesterday, and has inflicted such a blow on the festival that here we have no idea how it can be arranged, for on no other day can we reckon on so much support from strangers. ”

“ Conscious of the charms of music, they generally exhilarate their benefactors with some animated songs, appropriate to the occasion, and sung in excellent taste; and by these means seldom fail to return homeward with a plentiful supply of their “paste egg,” and no trivial aid in money. With these materials, a festival is got up on Easter Sunday evening. The different parties meet at the village alehouse, where “Bacchus’s blisses and Venus’s kisses,” accompany the circling bowl, and associate the village host in a universal compact of mirth and merriment. ”

“ In 55 he composed his oratorio 'Eli' for the Birmingham Festival. He conducted the Bradford Festival in 53, and the Leeds Festival in 74; and as conductor of the Sacred Harmonic Society has directed the Handel Festivals from 57 to the present date. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One thing is very certain, that the concert song, like the violin solo, is a complete musical composition in itself. One needs to know no “context” for there is none, and so none of its effect is lost. However that may be, opera and the symphony are available to only those who live in the big cities or near enough so that frequent visits are possible, and so it happens that for the majority of us a concert is about the biggest musical experience we can attain. For that reason, if for no other, concert songs mean more to the great majority than does any other form of music. ”

“ In the afternoon there is always a bazaar, an amateur concert, an exhibition, a fashionable matinée or a Society tea-party to be visited. For the evening there are dinners, and theatres, and an endless succession of dances, at which the flowers, the suppers, and the general decorations possess as much or as little variety as the conversation of those who overcrowd the rooms to an accompaniment of dance-music that may once have been new. ”