New Britain herald., 1929-05-15

the nrst tims That cenesrts wsrs siv. sa upon . subscription hasla oaly in the ease of the third and final cen- cert of the seasen-in which the Choral society partieipatsd-did non- subscribers have access to the event. The choral society concert. by the way. was far above the general average given in concert courses in cities of this size.
 Financially the situation is one that evidently requires careful study. The choral concerts cost much more to provide than the artists concerts. It ii possible to rive artists concerts alone. or 1t is possible to include the choral concerts under the patronage of those public-spirited citizens who believe the city is, entitled to have them. These are among the policies that will be discussed in further de- tail.
 It will always be q question as to the total of actual music lovers in this city. Assuming the city has . population of s0,ooo. and that there are co,ooo additional roundabout to draw upon. there would be 100, ,000 people to appeal to. The music asso- ciation had less than 1000 mem bsrs. and it is hoped that during the com ing year it will have that total. As suming that it will, this would amount to one person out of every 100 hereabouts q member of the aa. sociation. Certainly double this num- Der ought to be found willing to at- tend first class concert.
 How conditions are elsewhere is worthy of comparison. New York is regarded as . musical city. We have always doubted whether it is aa musical as it is cracked up to be. Greater New York brides itself upon having a population of more than $, 6,000.000. Now, if one out of every 100 citizens there is a music lover and that certainly is the case here abouts-there would be SC. 900 music lovers prepared to attend concerts on any one day. weekdays or Sun. days, in the metropolis. Nothing like that ever happsna If 1t did there would be need for | dosen Carnegie halls to hold the crowds.
 As . matter of fact, audiences of :,ooo people have been known to at- tend concerts here, which would be one in 50 of the population, local and surrounding. On the same basis Of two per cent of the population this would produce an audience of l2o, 900 in Greater New York. Moth. ing like this is likely to occur in tho great musical center on the Hudson. Not that many people attend con- certs during an entire week in that city, including those jealous music lovers who attend them in . row.
 There is evidence all over the country that most smaller cities and towns are more musical per ratio of population than the great cities; but the latter have the best concerts and in the largest number merely be- cause of their taryS populations. If only one per cent of the popula. ton of any large city attends con- certs during a week the total of peo. ple trying to gain entrance into the auditoriums defies the accommo oda- tions. But it doesn't necessarily fol. low that there are more music lovers to the block than in the small placss The figures would prove the con. trary. It merely happens that when cities lack the population from which to extract one per cent of music lovers willing to listen to offer tngs that there is undue trouble for concert promoters. Such a city, man for man and woman for woman. will show . vastly greater proportion of music lovers than the metropolitan cities. It seems to us to assume that New Britain posse sses a fair ra- tIo of music lovers to its population. although that does not solve the problem of concert promotion. If it were not for the high ratio of mu. sic lovers in the smaller cities con- certs in such places would be i'm. possible. New Britain aims to re- main on the musical map, and if only one per cent of the populat ton of the city and environs join in the effort the finest of musical events would be possible.