The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1898-12-04
Boston Municipal Music.

From the moment when the Hon. JOSIAH
QUINCY touched the Boston Democratic
machine with his persuasive fingers. a pas
sion for harmony has famed In his midst.
In his early days, five or six thousand years
ago, he performed admirably upon tho
flute, and he has never lost his taste for
music. His practice on the machine made
him a missionary Of tuneful sound. The
Boston Municipal Brass Band, thirty-eight
pieces. is q monument to his efforts to
shame the East wind with sweeter noise.
The Boston Music Commission, which
seeks to regulate and refine public music,
Is another celebrated opus OF JOSIAH. This
Commission is doing a noble work. With
out a license. only to be had after ar exam
~ination, nobody in Boston may 80 much as
pucker up his lips for q whistle. The
lame ballad singer with q lame voice is
silenced. The wandering Frenchman who
has passed his life in the Illusion that he
was singing the "Marseillaise" has been
cruelty undecelved. The jovial gentleman
with the bagpipes has been warned that
an instrument too often used to excite war
Liz passions and given to expansion cannot
be allowed in the home Of the Anti-Imperial-
list League. The honest Boston milkman
has been commanded to sing small on the
ground that excessive vibration is bad for
his cargo. At last the accordion, the hurdy-
gurdy. the hand-organ and the piano organ
have been ordered to tune themselves or
be forever silent.
Thursday was a majestic day in the mu-
steal history OF Boston. The players of the
aforementioned instruments appeared be-
fore the Commission and tried with all the
music in them to show that they were wor-
thy to discourse to Boston ears. In North
End Park the Commission reviewed the
minstrel throng. According to our poetical
contemporary, the Transcript, IAN acre of
hurdy-gurdies" was spread out, and the
catalogue Of the other music machines
would fill volumes. The arboreal ancestors
Of man climbed and capered. The police
were on hand to save life. A dozen quick
firing Italian dialects were discharged. AS
the clock struck eleven the concert began.
TIL enrmy advanced In single file. At the re-
viewing stand each soldier of harmony
stopped, presented Instruments, and played
a few selections. The Transcript says:
THE concert was somewhst fragmentary and dis.
connected, as tho Commission heard only a bar or
two each Of two or three tunss from each instru-
ment. What 1t lacked In smoothnesI, however, II
made up in poetry and IRE. for tho musicians, In the
effort to make u good impression on the Commission
ers. threw their whole souls into the performance,
and showed that. though lowly in station. they were
imbued with the true artistic spirit. The collection
In one Dody of so many instruments with substan.
tally the same rspsrtory caused 'reminiscsnoe In
the music. and the Commissioner heard the inter
mezzo from Cavaliers Rusticana' twelve hmas,
st Patrick's Day In the Morning ton times, March.
d.. III wnpnh - n
Jack and the Beanstalk' each hvs times, and We
Won't Go Home Until Morning four hmss. They
stood It with Christian %fortitude. however. and man
aged to look pleasant until the hand.organ dstach-
ment projected itself upon their notice; but no
human being could have stood without emotion the
frightful election Of sounds that followed. and at
the clos the concert tho Commissioners were
looking lingly weary"
We canoe believe that the Boston Music
Commission is capable of becoming wearyin
a sacred cause. Probably the weather had
affected the hand-organs. No maestro can
be expected to do himself justice in the
snow, and the hand-organ is a sensitive