Year: 1869

The modern Colosseum has opened, and BOs-
ton has begun its enormous peace offering. The
prologue TO so much that was immense was
both prosy and unmusica for it was the speech
of a politician, excellent in his way, but
strangely out Of place in making an overture
to a mass-meeting of some ten thousand per-
formers, armed with instruments, myriad
voiced, and calculated to make eloquence for
gotten. For the rest, the programme of mus-
cal peace appears to have been as thunderOus
as the heart of the loudest chorister or the en-
ergy of the busiest player could desire. 1t is
with a sensation of amazement that we at first
hear of Luthers famous choral sung by
an army of voices large enough for
three generals of brigade, and strong enough
to do battle with any idea provoking musical
demonstration. But we expected to be told,
as we are to-day, that ten thousand voices in
Boston Common sound no better than five humid
red would in Steinway Hall. Our correspondent
observes that last year one thousand performers
sang at the Boston Festival with greater effect
than the "entre population" of yesterday. But
the details of the festival areInevertheless for
midable. What shall be said of a chorus that
is measured by the acre, so that 1t Is said
voices in the rear rank have so many hundreds
of yards to travel-of Accomplishments of four
hundred instruments with the corps darmGe
of voices


Are we invidiOus in observing that the good
Boston folk are celebrating the advantages of
peace by giving us an amiable war of sounds !
Yet we know not how that mighty strife and
unison at the Hub is to be compared save to
some military concert on II tremendous scale,
like that of the Wilderness, for instance. The
grandest victory is the truest peace ceebra-
ton, and thence the army of Boston instru-
mentalists go forth to conquer the general ear.
The great Hub experiment in the power OF
sound is to determine, even TO the satisfaction
of unmusica thinkers, whether groves of in
struments, acres of music and whole campaigns
of drumming, are better for all peaceful pur-
poses than twenty-five violns well played.
But it is better to scrape violins than charge
bayonets, to beat drums than discharge Co
lumbiads, and on the whole the cause of peace
will be served tumultuously. Peace will follow
as a matter of course, if only as a pOultice TO
what one of the wits of Boston describes as the
blows of sound.


Still. we have our private apprehensions as to
the immediate effects of monster battles whether
of instruments or of guns. Hamlet is better
than Waterloo, though the latter had 100000
actors in it, and FideliO is to he preferred
above Sadowa, albeit the needle-gun wrought
more havoc than Beethoven's supernatural
trombone. But the enterprise of the Bostonians
rebukes us. They have found the principle of
democracy in Music, and know how TO conduct
it like thousand engines-the greatest
good for the greatest number-not rs some
saturnine symphonist would observe, with a
lively memory of mammoth concerts in general
and faint grudge against the anti i-judaical
musician of the future, and his priestly apostle,
Liszt-the largest music for the largest ear.
No: We protest our respect for the great idea
of Boston. II is good music for a million ears,
terrible perhaps for one-but it will serve the
cause of free music, we doubt not, and take
rank among the great battles of the age.


Then there is the great Boston peace maker.
Everybody has heard of "the big Boston
drum" Only one thing is needed to supple
ment it, and that is the big Boston trumpet.
We doubt not that they have it somewhere in
the newspaper offices at the Hub. The con
ductOrs, the professors, the philosophers there
Of, all came together, we understand, 10 sound
the drum, and make a note of it. The next
thing for them to do is TO unite and blow the
trumpet We know that they can, and will
and then-all the Orchcstras having scraped,
all the bands having blown, all the chOruses
having roared, and the big drum having doomed
like a COlumbiad-let us have peace