Musical festival

“ If, therefore, we place the affairs of the Musical Festival simply on the satisfying and commercial debit and credit basis, certainly no artist, and still less any work of Art, could venture to compete with, and to offer an equal attraction to, the high and highly celebrated name of Frau Lind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ DEAREST RICHARD, I returned here yesterday from the Dusseldorf Musical Festival, tired and dull. Hiller, who conducted the whole, had invited me, and it interested me to go through the whole thing for once, to hear "Paradise and the Peri," and to applaud Jenny Lind. I need not tell YOU anything about it, and I am not much the wiser myself. Although the whole festival may be called a great success, it wanted something which, indeed, could not have been expected from it. In the art world there are very different kinds of laurels and thistles, but you need care very little about such. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know that I was director of the musical festival there, and have opportunely got settled there for two or three years to manage the church music and the singing association, and probably a new theatre that is to be founded there as well; my private reason, however, is to get an opportunity of composing in peace and for myself. I find the country and the people charming, and the “St. Paul” is to be brought out in the winter. I also had my new symphony produced in England, and people were pleased with it. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cologne, Dusseldorf, Bonn, Elberfeld, and the entire neighborhood agree with Aix-la-Chapelle that your wife made the festivity of the Musical Festival; and although success cannot as a rule be considered as a criterion of artistic worth, yet if it be attested so truly and de bon aloi as in this case, and follow that artistic worth, it has something refreshing and strengthening in which we, in trio, can fully rejoice. ”

“ Besides the operas there are concerts innumerable, in which the most skilful pianists and violinists, of whom the world knows, are ready to put forth their full strength for your amusement. One year we have a Handel Festival, when the works of the great master are given in a style which would probably have astonished their author as much as he has contrived to astonish the world with the grandeur of his musical conceptions. ”

“ A more spectacular expression of appreciation of the value of music to community life is the growing use of children's singing for musical festivals, concerts, and pageants. In many cities the performance by public school children of concerts ranging from simple unison songs to part songs, cantatas, and even light operas has become a regular feature of community life. ”

“ One hundred musicians took part in the orchestra and the choruses, and each composer conducted his own work. It was an honor to be present at this annual festival, and Italian and foreign musicians came from all over Europe to attend it. Young composers sometimes became famous over night here, for the critics were all invited and serious decisions were made as to the value of new music. Dr. Burney, a famous English musical historian of the 18th century, tells of meeting Leopold Mozart and his young son, Wolfgang Amadeus, at one of these festivals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of the leading minds whose zeal and energy directed the earlier movements of the various musical societies in this district, are yet among the living, and the natural dictates of refinement cause us to shrink from any attempts at their biographies; it is, therefore, with the deference due to real genius, which needs no praise, that we pass in silence over the names of the most earnest promoters of the growth and cultivation of music, especially as developed in the workings of the Festival Committee, and its important adjunct, the Choral Society. ”

“ But hilarious visits from various groups [Pg 268] of the prospective artists at hospital concerts, clad in their make-up of mufti and rakish top-hats, with a gait far from steady, make us wonder how much of the afternoon's programme will perforce have to be omitted!
December 30th. Our Sunday evening services are more enthusiastically attended since we organised a male voice choir, with our best pianist as president, and an erstwhile Sheffield photographer, who has sung at the musical festivals, as vice. Quite a number of undreamt-of denominations are drawn together by the bond of music. ”

“ There is more competition now-a-days; there are more provincial musical gatherings; and there are now more high-class concerts than formerly. I think I could also show that some mistakes, of more or less importance, have been made, and are still perhaps being made in the management, Nevertheless, those who have most to do with the arrangements are not lacking in energy and enterprise, and in earnest endeavour to uphold the character and reputation of the Birmingham Musical Festivals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no worse misfortune for art than a super-abundance of it. The music is drowning the musicians. Festival succeeds festival: the day after the Strasburg festival there was to be a Bach festival at Eisenach; and then, at the end of the week, a Beethoven festival at Bonn. Such a plethora of concerts, theatres, choral societies, and chamber-music societies, absorbs the whole life of the musician. When has he time to be alone to listen to the music that sings within him? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In two years the custom of Christmas trees with music, free to the people, has become almost a national movement. The 'community chorus,' such as that established in Rochester, N. Y., with a membership of nearly one thousand drawn from the people at large, and singing in the public parks and school halls, should prove a desirable form of people's musical enterprise in many places. ”

“ Never, throughout the festival, ceases the laughter of joyous voices, the clang of the castanets, the melody of guitar and tambourine. Dances, song, and music, with jovial intercourse and good fellowship, all unite to preserve unflagging the rejoicing which is cultivated at that beautiful spot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”