The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-19
MUSIC FESTIVAL WILL
 OPEN HERE TONIGHT Great Rush for Reserve Seats
 All Day Yesterday THEATRE TO BE PACKED Crowded Houses Now Assured for all the Pcrformances-Presid HoicomDe Enthusiastic Over the Outlook.
 Tonights Programme
TO BE PACKED

at the Jefferson theater the house Will pc
 filled from bottom to top.
 I. H. Holcomb, president of the BIT
 mnigham Music Festival association was
 elated last night over the large sale or
 tickets yesterday. Early in the week the
 seat sale was not very brisk, but yester-
 day morning, with the opening of the
 Jesse French piano store on Third ave nue, where the box sheet is, a rush be-
 gan, and it kept up all day.
 We have had genuine rush. said
 MT. Holcombe. "It took five ticket sell CTS to wait on the crowd. Men and women stood in line patiently, and it was certainly gratifying to see such interest
 being manifested in the festival" The cash received for tickets now
 amounts to nearly s4OOo. The total ex-
 pense of the festival will be between
 s55OO and s6000. It is fully guaranteed
 by about 60 public-spirited citizens, and
 MT. Holcombe said that, Judging by the
 big sale yesterday, the festival would
 come out with little or no deficit.
 There are only about 15O seats left un-
 sold for tonight, and the best of these Will DG ldhtn btAoAO itSOA' AtAS
 box sheet will remain at the Jesse French
 companys until p. m., when 1t Will De
 removed to the theater.
 There are to be five concerts in alto
 night, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and matinees Wednesday and Thursday. Nearly all the matinee seats except those in the gallery have been sold, and it is safe to say that each matinee audience will be an overflow.
 The features of the festival will be Walter Damrosch and his New 4ork symphony orchestra: a distinguished solo quartet, namely, Sara Anderson, soprano; Nevada Van der Veer, contralto; Reed
 Miller, tenor, and Marcus Kellerman | basso; Mrs. Truman Aldrich, Jr., piano l Alexander Saslavsky, violin; George Bar
 rere, flute; the Treble Clef chorus, and a
 great festival chorus of 15O voices. MT. Damrosch and the orchestra will arrive this morning from Chattanooga in & special train. He will conduct rehearsals this afternoon, beginning at 2'30. The re- hearsal with the big festival chorus will begin promptly at 3:S0, and will last an | hour or more. This chorus will sing seven numbers in Tschaikowsky's opera, | Eugene Orregin," Wednesday night, and | two numbers on the grand Wagner pro- gramme Thursday night.
 Prof. Fred L. Grambs conducted a full rehearsal of the festival chorus
 at Cable hall last night. There were | only three or four absentees and those l were unavoidably prevented from be. ing present. At the close of the re
 hearsal Professor Grambs made a lit l tle speech in wh ich he thanked tho | members of the chorus for their earn est attention and for their excellent
 work in promoting the festival cause
 The executive committee which signed the contract with MT. Damrosch's agent last | fall, and which has looked after the ar engagements for the festival, is made ut | e.s follows: Mayor Frank F. O'Brien ] A. H. Ford, Otto Marx, Hill Ferguson J. B. Babb. J. H. Holcombe, Hugh Mar tin c. P. Ufford and William Ryan. | This will be tonight's programme, one of the most brilliant of the entire fes- tival:
 UAF5T I.
 Overture. "Oberon." Weber. | Chorus.
 (a) "The Nymphs of the Woods, l Delibes
 (b) .The Primrose Gavotte x l Scharwenka.
 | Two-part ch oruses (piano accompani. ment) Treble Clef club.
 Air from "Le Cid" (Massent), Mme. Anderson.
 | Variations on the Austrian National Hymn (Haydn).
 Scherzo, op. 45 (Goldmark). | PART II.
 | Concertstueck-(We Mrs. Truman | Aldrioh. Jr.. with orchestra. | Chorus. (a) "Whene'er the Sounding
 Harp is Heard; (b) 'The Death of Trenar (Brahms).
 Trios (horns and harp accompani-
 ment), Treble Clef club.
 Air from "Pagliacci" (Leoncavallo; Mir Reed Miller.
 Chorus. Song of the Norns'' GIL Hofmann). orchestra accompaniment, | Treble Clef club.
 | From "The Damnation of Faust" (a) Dance of the Sylphs." Ob "Rakoczy March," (Berlioz)
 On the above programme MT. Dam- rosch has these explanatory notes: | Weber knew that his days were num- | bered when he received an offer from | Charles Kemble, Covent Garden. London, | to write fairy opera on "Oberon." For | the sake of his children, he accepted, and | the opera was completed fin London, April lZ, lSZo The composer, WnO cOnuucteQ ID person, had an enthusiastic reception. and | from April % until May 29th the work | reached 2S performances. On June fol- | lowing he died, and thus his own proph- | ecy that he was going to London to die" was fulfilled The overture from the | first call of the elfin horn to the sylvan revels of the fairies to the jubilant close | is g. masterwork of form, and has for many years divided the honors with Wag- ner's "Tannhauser" overture. The "Concertstruck,' for plano and or- chestra, is one of the earliest examples of "pragramme music" Weber did not dis
 close the programme" of this compost ton to the public, but it has come down to us through his pupil, Benedict. a The two songs by Brahms belong to a group of four songs on death, under one opus number. They are of rare beauty. It is a noteworthy fact that the group was first given in the United States in Birmingham by the Treble Clef club, under Benjamin Guckenberger. about ten years ago. The season following tHey were sung in Berlin for the first time. and the music papers treated them as an inter esting novelty. The peculiar accompani- ment cannot fail to attract attention--a harp and two French horns; only those instruments. When MT. Guckenberger
 rave these Brahms songs, Mrs. Oliver Chalifoux, then in fine practice on the harp, was the harpist. but as there were