Music hall performer

“ She went in, as the phrase is, for the superior programmes, and that high, dim, dignified Music Hall, which has echoed in its time to so much eloquence and so much melody, and of which the very proportions and colour seem to teach respect and attention, shed the protection of its illuminated cornice, this winter, upon no faces more intelligently upturned than those of the young women for whom Bach and Beethoven only repeated, in a myriad forms, the idea that was always with them. ”

“ Let us, if you will, go to a dimly lighted concert hall and sit with our heads bent over our scores while ladies and gentlemen, gloved and in evening dress, narrate and chant to us a tremendous drama, helped out by all the resources of modern delineative music, and we try to see the action with our mind's eye. ”

“ MR. PUNCH'S MORAL MUSIC-HALL DRAMAS. No. IV.
Our present example is pure tragedy of the most ambitious kind, and is, perhaps, a little in advance of the taste of a Music-hall audience of the present day. When the fusion between the Theatres and the Music-Halls is complete—when Miss Bessie Bellwood sings "What Cheer, 'Ria?" ”

“ The great organ of the Music Hall is a choir of nearly six thousand vocal throats. Its largest windpipes are thirty-two feet in length, and a man can crawl through them. Its finest tubes are too small for a baby's whistle. Eighty-nine stops produce the various changes and combinations of which its immense orchestra is capable, from the purest solo of a singing nun to the loudest chorus in which all its groups of voices have their part in the full flow of its harmonies. ”

“ James’s, Criterion, Wyndham’s New, Duke of York’s, Garrick, Court, and others, for comedy; the Gaiety, Daly’s, Lyric, Prince of Wales’s, Savoy, and Vaudeville for musical comedy and comic opera. The “music-hall” is equally conspicuous among London’s places of amusement, variety entertainments being given at the Alhambra, Empire, Palace, Coliseum, Hippodrome, Lyceum, and a host of others. Among the more dignified concert halls may be mentioned the Royal Albert Hall (capable of holding an audience of eight thousand persons) , Queen’s Hall, and Crystal Palace. ”

“ The pit and stage are thrown into a brilliant hall, with the orchestra in the centre; the music is divine, and the etiquette perfect liberty. There is, of course, a great deal of vulgar company, for every one is admitted who pays the ten francs at the door; but all 140 classes of people mingle in the crowd; and if one is not amused, it is because he will neither listen nor talk. I think it requires one or two masks to get one's eye so much accustomed to the sight, that he is not disgusted with the exteriors of the women. ”

“ The music was of the finest kind that could be found in France, and no person ever rendered himself celebrated, even in any remote province, for peculiar skill or taste in playing on any instrument, without being sought out and brought to play at the concerts of the King. The concert room, which was the only one where the light was kept subdued, opened into a long suite of apartments, hall beyond hall, saloon beyond saloon, where the eye was dazzled by the blaze, and fatigued by the immense variety of beautiful and precious ornaments which were seen stretching away in brilliant perspective. ”

“ Since then the society has pursued the even tenor of its way and, freed from all financial worries, has contributed much to the cause of music. The orchestra plays over a hundred symphony concerts during the winter, in New York and elsewhere. These include a series of Sunday-afternoon concerts at Æolian Hall, Thursday-afternoon and Friday-evening concerts at Carnegie Hall, and a series of young people’s concerts and another of children’s concerts. ”

“ Already, beyond the concert hall, we see opening the private chamber, holiest of all, and the chamber music, which is to the music of the stage what etching is to painting. It is the old ebb and flow. As we passed from the single instrument to the orchestra, from Beethoven’s orchestra with its travail for expression to Wagner’s stage with its world-embracing aims, so we are now passing back from the stage to undiluted music first before thousands of listeners, then before hundreds only. ”

“ As a pendant, too, to the orchestral evenings, will come cheap afternoon concerts in the Music Hall, where good symphonies and overtures, with sparkling varieties for younger tastes, will hold out weekly invitation. ”

“ The Boston Music Hall is, at best, bare and vast, and by daylight is particularly unattractive. The great organ pipes appear cold and lustreless, and the light tints on the walls are not very comforting. The orchestra of the Harvard Musical Association were upon the stage, under the leadership of Carl Zerrahn, and a few privileged subscribers, numbering a hundred or two, were gathered together at one side, as if to keep each other in countenance. Over such a wide floor it takes a thousand or more to make a comfortable and social company. ”

“ A big music hall where lovers 73 of music could find pleasure at any time, and where weekly concerts was given, most of the performers being of the musically inclined amongst the young people in the City of Justice. ”

“ The Sing-Akademie, where all the best concerts are given, is not a very large hall, but it is beautifully proportioned, and the acoustic is perfect. The frescoes are very delicate, and on the left are boxes all along, which add much to the beauty of the hall, with their scarlet and gold flutings. Clara Schumann is a great favorite here, and there was such a rush for seats that, though we went early for our tickets, all the good parquet seats were gone, and we had to get places on the estrade, or place where the chorus sits—when there is one. ”

“ She was for some time a pupil of the New-England Conservatory of Music; and on more than one occasion was chosen to represent at its quarterly concerts, before large and cultivated audiences in Music Hall, the system taught and fine progress made by the attendants of that institution. On such occasions, her naïveté, her graceful, handsome stage-appearance, and expressive rendering, with voice of bird-like purity, of some of the best cavatina music, always elicited the most enthusiastic plaudits and recalls. ”

“ But this is hardly a subject for a touring bicyclist to get warmed up over. One of the greatest attractions in the city during this month of festivities, is Gilmore’s band at Music Hall in the exposition building. The hall is truly what its name indicates. It is built without boxes, and with the stage well out into the auditorium. ”

“ Excellent performances of well-known plays are presented by the British, French, and German Amateur Dramatic Societies, and a series of classical concerts is contributed by the Konzert Verein. A well-trained band of capable instrumentalists, engaged by the Municipality, renders selections of high-class music in the Town Hall during the winter months, and plays popular music in the public gardens and the recreation ground during the summer. ”

“ Let us pass from Exeter Hall to Hanover Square. Here, in the Queen's Concert Room—a salle which once was smart, and the decorations of which were fashionable seventy years ago—we have unnumbered concerts, and chief among them the twelve annual performances of the Philharmonic Society. The 'Philharmonic,' as it is conversationally called, holds almost the rank of a national institution. The sovereign patronises it in an especial manner. It is connected with the Royal Academy of Music, and Her Majesty's private band is recruited from the ranks of its orchestra. ”

“ As the hour arrives for the commencement of the concert the hall fills up. The stream of amusement-seekers contains all qualities of people, from the society belles of the adjacent avenues214 and their escorts to the musically-inclined shop-girl from the West side, and the plump capitalist to the thrifty book-keeper or ribbon salesman. Music is the ostensible attraction for all, but it is quite as much to chat with their friends in quiet nooks and to see what the other girls are wearing that the prettily attired belles have made their appearance. ”

“ Isn't a Music Hall a place of entertainment? You've plenty of them where you come from, haven't you? They wouldn't be filled night after night, as I'm given to understand they are, if they didn't succeed in entertaining, would they, now?"
Mr. Punch felt a natural reluctance to betray the weak points of any terrestrial institution.
"Oh, our Music Halls? they are perfection, of course," he said. "The entertainments there are distinguished by humour of the most refined and intellectual order. ”

“ The men of the music hall live, as I have said, entirely in a dull convention; and, if a set of thorough artists were to portray them exactly, no one would be more surprised than the folk whose portraits were taken. The gentlemen who are resolved to regenerate the music-hall stage persist in not considering the audience; and yet, when all is said and done, the poor stupid audience should be considered a little. If we played Browning's "Strafford" for them, how much would they be "raised"? ”

“ Ralph Pulitzer has entirely maintained an excellent string quartet for the past three years, and I should like to see such excellent examples followed by others among our well-to-do, as chamber-music is essentially written for performance in the home and loses much of its charm and intimacy if given in a larger hall and before hundreds of people.
For some time to come the initiative for a more general musical education of our people will have to come from the women. ”

“ From the first violin to the big drum all demanded higher pay. It seems that theatre, music hall, and concert orchestras belong to a syndicate of Artistes Musiciens numbering some sixteen hundred members. ”

“ If New York will build a proper hall for music and other public purposes, she will do well, and the Beethoven Centennial will not be in vain. The Cooper Institute hall is large enough for political meetings, and Steinway Hall is good for many purposes; but it is not a beautiful nor imposing room, as a great hall should be. The most impressive hall in the country is still the Boston Music Hall, where the great height and the two galleries, one above the other, with the organ and imposing statue of Beethoven, give a feeling of dignity. ”

“ Under the latter gallery is a shooting hall, which is usually filled with marksmen trying their skill. On the right hand side of the room is a huge orchestrion or monster music-box, and by its side is a raised platform, occupied by the orchestra employed at the place. The floor is sanded, and is lined with plain tables, six feet by two in size, to each of which is a couple of benches. The only ornaments of the immense hall are the frescoes and the chandeliers. Everything else is plain and substantial. Between the hall and the Bowery is the bar room, with its lunch counters. ”

“ The sound vibrations seem to travel around and around and great confusion of tones is the result, especially in such music where changing harmonies succeed each other rapidly. At our little preliminary rehearsal the hall was empty with the exception of half a dozen members of the Santa Cecilia, and as we began to play through a few bars of the symphony I thought I had suddenly become deaf, as the sound of the orchestra did not reach me where I stood. But I remembered our first experience at the Grand Opera House in Paris and trusted to better conditions when the hall was full. ”

“ By this time the music had stopped, and the musicians—a fiddler, and the young lady who played the harmonium on Sundays—were hastily refreshing themselves at one corner of the supper-table which aligned its devastated pie-dishes and ice-cream saucers on the platform at the end of the hall. The guests were preparing to leave, and the tide had already set toward the passage where coats and wraps were hung, when a young man with a sprightly foot and a shock of black hair shot into the middle of the floor and clapped his hands. ”

“ I was naturally much interested in the invisible, subterranean orchestra of the Bayreuth auditorium, and as the first noble theme of the prelude literally floated into the darkened hall, the great advantage of an invisible conductor was manifest. The division of the music into bars, which are an essential of the conductor’s beat, should be seen only by the orchestra, and I still wish it were possible to educate the public to listen to music with their ears only and not with their eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its music hall is architecturally one of the finest edifices of the kind and its auditorium is acoustically one of the most satisfactory halls in Canada for chamber music and other recitals. It contains a three-manual concert organ which is a masterpiece of Canadian workmanship. The main hall is supplemented by smaller ones for lectures and recitals and by practice rooms equipped with two-manual organs. The musical equipment in general is ample and comprehensive, meeting the needs of the 2,500 pupils in attendance. ”