The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-12
MUSIC IN WHITECHAPEL.
How Schumann and Brahms are Lis

|
 The Whitechape Road, of Sunday
 afternoon, when the pubs" have just
 disgorged their customers is an exhila-
 rating place. In the side streets the
 vendors of bananas and oranges have succeeded in littering the pavements
 with refuse, some of which the wind
 catches up and sends dancing along In
 miniature wreaths; the crowd keeps
 neither to the right nor to the left the street ia a kind of Rialto; alterations | between the peripatetic merchants of
 the curb claim sympathizing and vo- cable audience, and above all the noise | tinkle the bells of many trams, and tow ering above the shifting, cosmopolitan crowd stands a single policeman, blue l eyed, stalwart, philosophic of mien, tol-
 erant in his regulation of the crowd
 the finest specimen of humanity there.
 Before me, down Commercial street, staggers Corybantic group of two stunted youths with their donans, their ostrich feathers bit draggled. And so from the chaffy, noisy street I pss into the quiet quad" of Toynbee Hall.
 On the Sunday whereof I write was late, and had to wait until the first movement of Schumann's pianoforte Quintet in F flat had finished. (Schu- mann and Commercial street-Schu- mann and WhitechapelD There was quite little crowd of us waiting out side the doors. One musical enthusiast, in an overcoat yellow with age and smoke and wet, had his ear glued to a crack in the door so that he might not lose a single bar of the quintet. A wag near me exclaimed from time to time, There yer are; that's an adagio con motto expressione-what did tell yer?' And his two companions found his re- mark exceedingly witty, so that he was encouraged to repeat his joke with vari- ations. Closer to the door, near the man with the faded overcoat, stood a respec- tably dressed girl of the seamstress class; near me were dark eyed few, patiently impatient to get inside to hear the music the rest of the crowd varied by degrees from a cllrious-eyed woman of the west, possibly drawn to the con cert by friend among the performers, to the dock laborer who possibly had seen better days. The end of the move ment was punctuated by applause. and then the doors opened and we all rushed in You must not stand on ceremony, for there Is not much room in the hall. Each time l have been there every seat has been taken, although the marshals show wonderful ingenuity in squeezing in 6 late-comer.
 If you had any doubts as to the real East End character of the bulk of the audience, the smell would soon unde- ceive you. A good many of the audi ence. of course, are quite respectable and washed, and all look as if they were, for it is the etiquette to get your self up as sprucely as possible. If you do not happen to possess a clean billed rag" owing to financial complication, an overcoat buttoned up to the neck, round which you fold a handkerchief, is quite in the fashion. But some of us are more elaborately dressed. Indeed, the Hoynbee Hall audiences are inter- esting because they do not consist of one class-the well fed warehouseman,
 
 shoemaker, the hungry eyed Jew, the factory girl and the lady are all there ease and rnakeshift pover- ty sit shoulder by shoulder on the nar- row chairs, but it is the makeshift pow erty that applauds loudest. The general character of the audience, however, Is East End as even a blind ynan could tell from evidence I have already given
 I take one row of eight people as typi- cal of all the rest: A white haired man with a fine head, weak eyes dimly peer ing through spectaeles, hands which show many years work, respectfully dressed-probably a tailor or shoemaker or of other sedentary trade; next to him a close cropped, bullet headed, ruddy- faced, out of door laborer of some kind, dressed in an overcoat with a 'kerchief round his neck of the familiar blue bird s-eye pattern; then pinched old seamstress in rusty black her face yell low and anaemic, and her blue eyes fadad and tired; then a couple of Jew boys very intent on the music, but given ! to rather severe and animated criticism | In the intervals (Why are the Jews the best dressed people in the East End?); | next to them a drink soddened charwo- man in q froWsy old shawl, nodding | with maudln content; and a factory | girl, a cut above the feathered species, l the charwoman from neat ately placed near the door by one of the | marshals. That row of eight people | was typical of the rest. And this mot | ley audience listened to--what do you think? Ballads and trashy instrument Il solos? Oh dear, no! They listened l with a close attention which would have lone credit to Pop" congregation to his classical programme: Schu- nann's piano Quintet in F flat, Schu- oerts Who Is Sylvia?" Bazzini's Con- ,erto Militaire for violin, Handel's An gels Ever Bright and Fair setting of l My Love Is Like Red. Red Rose,' by | one Hastings, an American; a violon- |