Year: 1869

the net result :"-muscally of course, you mean'
But to weigh that rightly we must look az more.
Your able correspondents have given you the dseals


and impressions day by day. To see it in the right
light, the whole must be rnt together. We muse


begin by going back to see l,


l. How the Plan looked at first and ho~ "@'
'cOrked up.


At first sight certainly the project was vain-glo-
| riOus The whole style Of the announcement was


such TO commend 1t more to the noisy ana spread


eagle class of patriots than to STILL houghtfnl lovers


of their country and of peace; while, IN respect 70


music, its enormous promise, its ambition TO achleVe
"the greatest to thrust" greatness upon US, by


sheer force of numbers, aud so eclipse the musical l-


umphs of the world by saying "go to now, let us do


ten times the biggest thing that ever yet was done"


this, and the extra-musical effects, the clartrap


novelties, grotesquey mingled in its programmes


chilled the sympathies of the real the enlightened


the disinterested musc-lovers who feeling for the
honor and the mOdesty of Art, two qualities in
separable in the artistic character as they are in


woman, inevitably shTank from such grandilOquent
pretenson, as much as they infamed the imagina-
tiOn of the ignorant only seDtimentally and
vaguely musical. Twenty thousand vocesw Why
will you have many, when even the grandest of
Handeian Choruses are better sung by I,OO0G And
then will $4,000 people" under roof hear or let


hear, as well as audiences in smaller hallsf But it


shall be the Greatest Feast Of Sublime and Inspr


ing Harmony ever heard in any part of the Worldp
(sic) This is calculating greatness upon a mere
material scale Of numbers this makes your physical
giant greater man than Shakespeare; this
founds the grdHd hOmme with the hOmme grand Shall
quantity compete with qualityi Shall great in mass
be measured against great in kndS We are making
musical progress in America; in popular musical
education as well as in the support Of high-toned
concerts in of cities, we have really some-
thing to boast Of but does any one believe that
are yet so musical that we can produce musical
festival as great in quality, in kind, in spirit the
best of the Old Worlds To true musical character,
which were the godsend Ito hear, at least, if
not to see: greatest Jubilee like this, or say some
festival at Dusseldorf with seven eight hundred
performers, but with Mendelssohn for a conductor,
and such orchestra as only can be found in Ger
many and such programme mot only Handel Ora
toriOs but Passion Music MGgnifeGt of Bach,
and as it was at this last Whtsuntide, with
a Joachim to play Beethoven's Concerto, in
instead of an Ole Bull with Mothers Prayer " and
above ALL with such spirit of sincere, true art and
poetry and pety pervading the whole feast to the
exclusion of all heterogeneous nonsense, all atter-


ing of varieties catering to all tastes and no taste
startling dd captdRd claptrap substitution OF effect
for meaning TO which add decent selfrespecing ab-
stinence from the sweF style ofadvertisementf Or,
not to look far, compare with our own best ef-
forts here with the last Handel and Haydn Festival
in Boston Music Hall, where audiences of 1900 peO
pie heard three or four great Oratoros entire, with
Choral Symphony of Beethoven and admirable sym
phony concerts besides, all in week. impressyely
performed by orchestra of hardly more than 100 in
struments and chorus of 500 voices not that mu
sically, greater


Mind we are putting the case as it looked, as it
must have looked to really musical and sensible per-
sons at the outset as it would certainly have looked
to Mendelssohn, had he been living then and here.
The idea and the authorship presented the same as
pect. That the protector master-spirt, brain. and
central organizing force of the greatest musical
festival in all the ages should be, not Mendels-
sohn, Handel great musical man of any sort, or
hardly one who feowshipped with artists,
but Gilmore clever leader Of local band,
an Irishman by birth but Jealous for
the land of his adoption jealous for freedom in
truer than an Irish sense; of common educa-
tion singularly goOd-natured and doubt not,
generous an enthusiast of rathera sentimental types
chiefly known as caterer in music to the popular
street taste dispenser of military and of patriotic
airs, exceedingly fond OF demonstrations, restless.
geter up of monster concerts" in which classical
works of genius were pressed into damaging promis-
Guilty with musical mI-pckel for the million boun-



with the pressG one of the glibbest, most
and voluminous in all the wOrly ways of stunning
and sensational announcement that such n man
should be the breather of the breath of life into the
great feast of song to which al that have life and
breath" are summoned; that the grandest cOnceiva-
ble of all musical demonstrations should be iii its
spirit like unto his spirit; that our whole musical
world with all the musical of the nation,
should be set revolving round a musician of that
stamp and that at such bugles blast all the makers
of sweet sounds in all the land should rally to
Jubilee of Peace with him. in his way, was some
thing too much for the common, unsophistcated in.
teect musical or not, to take in at once, unless
took it in the nature of colossal Joke. How any
sound mind at that time couH conceive it possible
for thing started to succeed as this has done is
nconceyable to this day, after the great success.
Now. indeed, the lorgnette is turned round, and,
looking through the small instead OF tho great end,
cause and effect may not appear entirely lncommen-
suIate


But Gilmore was in earnest His fixed idea" had
vital marrow in it, and he knew how to magnetic
other efficient people to like earuostness. His great
devotion to that fixed idea only the shining end,
pressed onward. gazing steadily into the sun, using
for whatever came most readily TO hand
chiefly that cardinal lever OF all modern business en-
terprise unsorupulOus advertising, meant innOcenty
in this case, no doubt, though questionable 10
squeamsh folk like you and me, dear TRIBUNE
And had he not the example of the whole business
world to tempt him And here too, the swell mob
style, the returned Californian digger garb and
heavy watch-chain air, with which the thing
presented ITSELF was not particularly in.
vting for sincere music-overs, jealous, as we
have said, for both the honor and the modesty Of
art. The finer instincts the more suspicious oi
whatever is most loudly advertised. The qnet gen