doning herself entirely to her inspiration, she impresses on the music that she sings, a stamp of originality, that is irresistible. With an inexorable rigor towards herself, she punishes the slightest imperfection, which she thinks she has discovered in her execution, by a redoubled, tripled labor. But then, when by sufficient trials she has enriched her repertoire with a new piece; when in the plenitude of her means she gives free scope to the resources of her genius so rich and various, who can remain cold and insensible? The sacred flame communicates itself to her audience, a thrill runs through the seats, a profound emotion is engraved upon all countenances, and when at last the solemn silence is replaced by universal acclamations, when we try to account for the impression we have experienced, and ask why we have been seized with admiration and astonishment, the answer is: That we have heard an artist, who MAKES A CONSCIENCE OF HER ART!"

Correspondence.

[From our New York Correspondent.].

Music in New York.

The golden gates of the opera are closed golden, that is, to all but the manager. The experiment of a democratic opera has been tried, and it has succeeded. At least on the democratic nights when the price was fifty centsthe house was overfull. "It did not pay," the manager said. But when did managers ever say anything else?

After the quarrel in the early winter the three capital B's withdrew to Niblo's, and we had two admirable operas. SALVI, STEFFANONE and

MARINI sang at the Astor Place; BADIALI, Bosio and BETTINI at Niblo's. The latter troupe you have heard, and have doubtless made your own notes upon theirs. They filled their house nightly, here, and among the other operas, they sang Don Giovanni. The orchestra was inefficient, which is a fatal fault in an opera depending so much upon it, and the whole time was taken too fast, so that Ole Bull went one evening behind the scenes, exasperated, to protest against such murder of Mozart - nor was the opera well sung, except by Bosio.

Her Zerlina

is by far the best of her rôles. Nature fits her for it. She is arch and of a winning charm in action. She has a sparkling beauty, with extreme feminineness of voice and manner, and she has the ladylikeness that lurks in the gay Spanish peasant and attracted the Don.

Badiali, as Don Giovanni, was wooden and cumbrous, and indulged in unpardonable liberties with the music. To bring down the house - for one can hardly suppose ignorance of the scorehe concluded both La ci darem and the Serenade with the most commonplace Italian phrases - nor had he the slightest trace of the irresistible gentleman, which imagination demands in the character. Sanquirico's Leporello is broad buffoonery, sometimes pushed quite beyond patience.

But with every defect it was still pleasant to hear. Music so sweet and rare enchants the eye and the ear. The puppets move upon the stage, but the fair and stately figures of the music throng imagination with their magical and pen

sive play. As if the music expressed only the sad undertone of life, it flows seriously on, while all the bubbles of evanescent gayety in the plot, break andg leam along its surface. Thus where Leporello is discovered, what is more pathetic than the musical movement? or where before was a minuet made a love-tale teeming with passion?

They sang also Maria di Rohan at Niblo's. In this, Bosio was good, because there were no foregone conclusions about the character, as there are in Lucrezia and Lucia. The heroine is an injured and passionate Italian woman, and that Bosio could represent. But the imperial Lucrezia or the lyrical Lucia are too distinctively attired in imagination to admit any other than a certain style of figure. It is a great defect of the Italian opera, that it persists in selecting historical images, which are already pronounced in the world of fact, and cannot be recreated, except absurdly as in Verdi's Macbetto, in the realm of music. When Charles Lamb said that the scene of Wycherly's and Congreve's dramas lies beyond the pale of conscience, he made one of his most delicate criticisms. In the same way it is, that the world of opera lies beyond that of fact. If you regard an opera as a scene of actual life set to music, it is unmitigatedly ludicrous.

The music of Maria di Rohan is poor enough. It is surprising that artists can hold it in their memories, there seems such want of melody or method. I by no means share the enthusiasm for Badiali. He has a fine baritone voice, and sings well. But his performance is to me like an academic picture, unimpeachably correct and uninteresting. As an actor, he has the gentlemanliness of tranquility, but he is a mere Beneventano when it comes to high passion. Roaring and slashing and hair tearing are effective, but they require profound discrimination. Only an artist of the very highest genius can tear his hair properly.

Against all this we have had Robert le Diable and La Gazza Ladra as the novelties at Astor Place, and to "interpret" them, Steffanone, Salvi, and Marini

"Was willst Du mehr?"

Steffanone is incomparably the finest lyrical artist we have recently had in America. She is whimsical and uncertain and indolent, and she is always better than she does. There is that fine consciousness of reserved strength in the impression she makes, which is the certificate of genius. I did not see her Norma, which is so warmly described by those who did. But as Alice, in Robert, she was most successful. She was all the simple country girl, safe and strong in her simplicity, and in the very last scene, when she defies Bertram and waves him back, she struck a higher note of the genuine lyrical drama than I have ever seen in America, and which is rarely surpassed in Europe. Whenever Steffanone played, we were sure of our evening. Perhaps she would be out of humor, uninterested, not great in performance, that evening; but it would not be the result of incapacity. We should not be obliged to sit and listen, and while the straining artist was displaying every possible resource of skill and force, be excusing her to ourselves, and saying deprecatingly: "She is doing as well as she can ; that is a kind of doing, which exhausts the listener through his sympathy, almost as much as it does the singer.

Salvi is past his prime. I do not mean vocally, alone, for I doubt if he ever had much more voice than he has had for the last three years, during which he has been heard in New York. But his physique is unequal to the parts he has undertaken. The one drawback to his singing, is the sense of effort. The quality of voice is sweet and sympathetic, and the cultivation quite unsurpassed; but you perceive the manner too clearly. I say that Salvi could hardly have ever had more voice than now, for with such quality and cultivation he must needs have taken higher rank among distinguished tenors. But he secures to the listener the same pleasure in hearing that Steffanone does. You are sure that what is done will be first-rate, and not second-rate.

I am gossiping beyond all limits. But, although I cannot steal enough of your space to say what should be said of the Philharmonic concerts and Eisfeldt's soirées, I must squeeze in a word of ANNA THILLON, who is now singing Auber's operas at Niblo's. If you go to hear moving music, and to be touched with genius or feeling, you will be sadly disappointed. Madame Thillon's beauty and singing and general impression are as cold and unsympathetic as frost-work. It is all artificiality. Every movement, tone, and look, is painfully elaborated by a very commonplace standard. We have no feeling for the woman, no hearty sympathy with her singing, and no permanent emotion from the performance.

men

But with all that, it is thoroughly French. It is an evening at the Opera Comique to hear her in Auber's rôles. Your employment is Parisian. employment. Instead of light you have sparkle, instead of bloom you have paint, instead of grace you have conventional posing. But if you go to hear Madame Thillon, you must not go as to Grisi or to Bosio or Steffanone. It is a ball at the Chateau rouge. Colored lamps - pretty wo- spangled dresses a musical whirl - that is all. Quarrel with it, if you please. I enjoy it. No I will not undertake the Philharmonic, at this point of my paper. Be assured that the concerts of this Society are the first in America, and that they are securely based now upon the appreciation of those who intelligently enjoyof those, I mean, to whom music is not a tickling sensation, but a genuine delight, like the happily married thought and cadence of a great poem. Eisfeldt's soirées are of the same character, and attract a similar audience. In the security of the best music so perfectly performed,

Calm as a Summer's morning, we
Can all the Madame Thillons see,

nor fear that the meretricious French fascination

As a large number of those, who will have the first look at the first issue of your new journal, are interested as stockholders or patrons of art, or both, in the new Music Hall now in process of erection, I make no hesitation in offering you a short history of the enterprise.

You yourself will remember the occasion on which the multiform projects and plans of a few of us, (so long entertained with hopes growing fainter) finally found expression in a distinct proposal. It was at the annual supper of our little" Harvard Musical Association," Jan. 1851. The new child was born into a genial atmosphere, though the season was mid-winter, and was embraced with a sympathy as generous as it was unanimous. They "of little faith" have since hinted that the ardor of the first embrace smothered the bantling - but they knew not the depth nor the cunning of the maternal instinct!

Six

A committee was drafted on the spot to report a location — with a general plan, estimates, &c.at an early day. Their action was prompt and vigorous. Within four weeks a meeting of the Society was called to hear the Report. localities were presented, with full descriptions, price of land, advantages, and drawbacks, &c. &c. Four were at once rejected on various grounds; the remaining two (the Bumstead estate, and the Apthorp estate, on Tremont, in the rear of Boylston street) were briefly discussed. The former was, however, unanimously adopted, and a new committee charged with obtaining subscriptions and forming a Anssociation, with a view to incorporation. "The baby" had now left off swaddling clothes, and was launched into a somewhat colder climate, and had she been delicate, would probably have succumbed under the successive chills she encountered. But she now exhibited a high degree of vitality and health (traceable, we think, to the circumstances attending her birth and baptism) destined soon to result in an excellent constitution. Triumphing over all obstacles, she at length found favor with the public, money came forward most liberally, and an act of incorporation was obtained; the ground-plans were decided on, the foundations were contracted for and commenced late last autumn, and are now nearly finished, and the building will go steadily and rapidly forward to completion.

The entrances will be very commodious, the Association having recently purchased from Mr. William Phillips a strip of the estate next adjoining their premises on the north-west, and giving them a superb entrance to their west corridor, at the foot of Bumstead place, of about twenty-five feet in width.

a

Description: ·- The Music Hall is to be 130 feet long, 78 wide, and 65 high. The lower floor level, and 78 feet square. The orchestra rises from one extremity, and at the opposite, rises a wall supporting an upper floor, or end gallery. At the back of this rises another wall, supporting second floor, and, from the ends of these, two balconies are carried along the sides of the Hall, projecting 8 feet 6 inches from the walls. The front stage of the orchestra rises 4 feet from the floor, and, from this level, continues rising rear-ward in successive platforms to the extremity of the Hall in that direction, the upper platform being on a level with the lower balcony. The

whole orchestra is 30 feet deep and 63 long, and is so connected with the lower balcony that a portion of the latter might, if required, be easily connected with it and occupied by choral singers. The walls of the Hall have a series of piers which support the balconies, and which are formed, above the upper one, into Corinthian pilasters supporting the cornice of the wall and coving of the ceiling. This coving is circular and is groined; semi-circular lights are placed in the walls under the groins, and ventilators in the ceilings of the same. The Hall will be lighted at night by a series of gas-jets along the top of the cornice, which, being placed under the ventilators, will perform the ventilation as well as the illumination of the Hall. Corridors are carried, on the level of the floors and balconies, all around the building, communicating with the Hall by doors in the side walls at intervals of not more than 15 feet. It is estimated that nearly 3,000 persons can be comfortably accommodated in this Hall- none of whom will be so placed that they cannot both hear and see the orchestra, or easily leave the Hall by some adjacent door leading into the corridors.

The drawings for the contractors are now finished and the estimates going on. In a few weeks the architect will also have completed a set of drawings, showing the design of the interior as it will appear when finished.

We will give notice in this Journal where these drawings may be seen by the public.

The Drama.-Mrs. Mowatt.

E.

This accomplished lady, extensively known both as an actress and an authoress, has but lately concluded an engagement at the Howard Athenæum. Although she suffered from a severe cold during most of the time, she never, in many important respects, acted better. Some of her finer tones, it is true, were clouded by hoarseness, and on a few evenings her voice was seriously affected; but generally she never exhibited greater vigor and refinement in the conception of her parts, and felicity in their representation. In the play of Ingomar, she appeared in a character wholly new, and one demanding more than ordinary subtlety of sentiment, and she succeeded in popularizing it. Her Armand, Marianne, Juliana, Juliet, were as beautiful as ever, and improved in ease and energy of movement and gesture.

Rosalind and Ion, however, seemed to us her masterpieces. The clear, lark-like merriment of Rosalind was given with inimitable sweetness and grace; and Ion, as an ideal embodiment of moral beauty, we never saw exceeded. It was the thought of the poet taking form and movement before the eye, and it evinced a power and a refinement of imagination rarely witnessed on the stage.

We understand that Mrs. Mowatt is recovering slowly from the severe accident she lately met with, though she will probably not be able to act for some weeks.

X.

THE DUSSELDORF GALLERY. We are happy to learn that this most interesting collection of German paintings, which for several years has been a favorite resort of all lovers of Art in New York, will in a few weeks be exhibited in Boston.

ARY SCHEFFER'S "DEAD CHRIST" is again exposed for sale at our friend Cotton's, in Tremont Row. It cost originally $4,000, and was drawn as a prize in the International Art Union by a gentleman in Providence, who had no place for it, and can well afford to offer it at the present very low price.

New Publications.

The Piano Forte Sonatas of BEETHOVEN, a complete Edition. O. Ditson, 115 Washington St., Boston.

This publication, when completed, will form the most valuable contribution, that could possibly be made, to the studies of our young pianists, as well as to the libraries of all true lovers of classical music. Beethoven's Sonatas are the noblest compositions in their kind, the noblest music ever written for the instrument. They are more than thirty in number. Masterly in style, they are at the same time monuments, each in a distinct and characteristic way, of that great tone-poet's purest inspiration. Many of them are in every cultivated home in Germany as familiar as the plays of Shakspeare here; and several, like the "Sonata Pathetique," the “Moon Light" Sonata, in C sharp minor, &c. &c. are becoming indispensable to any character for musical taste and culture even here. Mr. Ditson is supplying a correct, cheap, elegant edition of them all; and the manner in which he is enabled to do it by the lively demand for such things, tells well for the progress of a serious musical interest among us. About half of the Sonatas are already issued.

CZERNY'S Method for the Piano Forte. Published by Oliver Ditson.

There is no need of recommending CZERNY, as a writer of finger exercises and illustrations for the young student of the piano. No man has had the same amount of this kind of experience, or has produced so much in this line. And his Method enjoys an almost universal popularity. He has only been objected to as too voluminous. The present reprint contains three-fourths of the original, which is in three large volumes, and the retrenchments consist wholly in reducing his five or six illustrations of some given points to three or four. Rules and scales and passages are all along well interspersed with examples, or short and attractive pieces.

PERGOLESE'S Stabat Mater.

Complete, or in Seven separate Numbers. Words, Latin and English, a new translation, by J. S. DWIGHT. pp. 35. G. P. Reed & Co., 17 Tremont Row, Boston.

A work world-famous, and yet little known among our cultivators of great sacred music. Without a rival in its kind, it ought to be as familiar among our choirs and amateurs, to say the least, as Rossini's brilliant composition of the same name and words. Rossini's has all the modern effects of the full choir and orchestra, and although grand and beautiful in parts, smacks always of the worldly, epicurean tone of the genius of modern Italian opera. PERGOLESE died a quarter of a century before HANDEL, at the early age of twenty-five. He had shown a genius for the buffo species, some quaint traces of which appear possibly in some of the strains of this remarkable sacred composition. But its pervading style and color are profoundly religious, beautiful and unique. Though written only for one or two voices, (partly soli, and partly, as in some easy fugue portions, for a choir of two parts,) with a mere quintette accompaniment, (here reduced to the piano,) it is full of musical ideas, whose interest seems inexhaustible. No two can practice it without getting more and more enamored with its spiritual beauty. To most of us, with our musical habits, it seems newer than the newest forms of genius of our own day. We would have given much to have heard some strains of it from the Italians, Bosio, &c., in one of their so-called sacred concerts.

The English version is an attempt, (so far as we know, for the first time,) to preserve almost literally the sense of the Latin rhymes, in English at the same time somewhat sing-able, and married to the music. But perfect success in a thing of this kind is of course impossible; for what English equivalent is there for that succession of long quantities in the first line: Sta-bat ma-ter do-lo-rosa?

Scena and Prayer from Der Freyschutz, by C. M. VON WEBER. pp. 11. Geo. P. Reed & Co. Every note of the Freyschutz has a mysterious charm that never quits its hold. This scena, where Agatha

sings at her window, by moonlight, looking out over the forest, in expectation of her lover, for whom she offers up a prayer, then bursts into a strain of rapture at the sound of his footsteps, yet fear still alternating with joy, was one of the most effective and transporting pieces in the concert répertoire of Jenny Lind. It is at least no harder than the florid Italian cavatinas, in which so many waste their voices and their patience, and it repays long study by a real soul satisfaction.

This is a beautiful edition, with words German, English and Italian.

We have a great assortment of new works on hand for notice, for which we have no room now.

to feeling, if not to the understanding,) has never ceased to make to us. From childhood, there was an intense interest and charm to us in all things musical; the rudest instrument and most hacknied player thereof seemed invested with a certain halo, and saving grace, as it were, from a higher, purer and more genial atmosphere than this of our cold, selfish, humdrum world. We could not sport with this, and throw it down like common recreations. It spoke a serious language to us, and seemed to challenge study of its strange important meanings, like some central oracle of oldest and still newest wisdom. And this at a

BOSTON, APRIL 10, 1852.

Introductory.

We here present, some days in advance of date, the first number of a new weekly Journal of Music and the Fine Arts; which we take the liberty of sending, as a specimen, to some thousands of persons, who may be interested in the discussion of these subjects. And yet it hardly can be called a specimen; since in a single number there is barely room to indicate, still less to treat, all sides and points of our design. Besides, it is a first number, a first attempt amid much hurry and distraction, to produce a rough sketch which may serve to give some notion of what we hope to do more perfectly

as we become more at home in the outward limitations and conditions of our work.

This time, the accidents of starting have had a large share in the composition and shaping of the number. Our news is necessarily not of the newest; and then the best that we could do was to place one musical region in the foreground and foreshorten all the rest, including Germany, "the land of real music," which another time must occupy the front space and the largest. Our review of our own concert season is diffused over too much ground to amount to much more than a brief, dry abstract. Our Correspondence is scarcely organized. Our best articles and essays, among which we number some choice contributions, have had to yield place for the present to lighter and shorter things; but they will keep. Our talk of other Arts, besides the Tone-Art (as the Germans call it) is a mere intimation that we mean to talk about them, and that we invite sincere communications thereon from the lovers and

connoisseurs in each of their departments. Of Sacred Music, as such, and of that formidable business in our land, music-teaching, we have this time not a word; but will not those texts claim their full share of us, as the annual Pentacost of psalm-book makers and Conventions comes round? Take this, then, as a sample only of the outward "form and pressure" of our journalism, of our good printer's clever way of making us "presentable," and for the rest turn to our Prospectus on the first page.

Our columns overflow, and we could barely save ourselves this little space for the unfolding of the motives and the spirit of our undertaking. Without being in any sense a thoroughly educated musician, either in theory or practice, we have found ourselves, as long as we could remember, full of the appeal which this most mystical and yet most human Art, (so perfectly intelligible

main remote from us, shooting only now and then some stray vibrations over into this western hemisphere. We felt that Music must have some most intimate connection with the social destiny of Man; and that, if we but knew it, it concerns us all.

A few years have passed, and now this is a general feeling. Music is a feature in the earnest life and culture of advanced American society. It enters into all our schemes of education. It has taken the initiative, as the popular Art par excellence, in gradually attempering this whole people to the sentiment of Art. And whoever reflects upon it, must regard it as a most important saving influence in this rapid expansion of our democratic life. Art, and especially Music, is a true conservative element, in which Liberty and Order are both fully typed and made beautifully perfect in each other. A free people must be rhythmically educated in the whole tone and temper of their daily life; must be taught the instinct of rhythm and harmony in all things, in order to be fit for freedom. And it is encouraging, amid so many dark and wild signs of the times, that this artistic sentiment is beginning to ally itself with our progressive energies and make our homes too beautiful for ruthless change.

Our motive, then, for publishing a Musical Journal lies in the fact that Music has made such rapid progress here within the last fifteen, and even the last ten years. Boston has been without such a paper, and Boston has its thousands of young people, who go regularly to hear all good performances of the best classic models in this art. Its rudiments are taught in all our schools. The daughters of not the wealthy only pursue it into the higher branches; and music teachers count up well amid the other industrial categories. Think of fifteen hundred people, listening every week to orchestral rehearsals of the great symphonies and overtures! Think of those August “Conventions," when thousands from all parts of the country spend whole weeks together in lessons and rehearsals of great Choral and Oratorio music! Think how familiarly and how exactingly we talk of the opera singers, before whom our early admirations have entirely vanished! Think of the ovations of the LIND, and our whole nation's homage paid to Art, the moment that it came to us incarnated for once in so pure a living form!

All this requires an organ, a regular bulletin of progress; something to represent the movement, and at the same time help to guide it to the true end. Very confused, crude, heterogeneous is this sudden musical activity in a young, utilitarian people. A thousand specious fashions too successfully dispute the place of true Art in the favor of each little public. It needs a faithful,

severe, friendly voice to point out steadfastly the models of the True, the ever Beautiful, the Divine.

We dare not promise to be all this; but what we promise is, at least an honest report, week by week, of what we hear and feel and in our poor way understand of this great world of Music, together with what we receive through the cars and feeling and understanding of others, whom we trust; with every side-light from the other Arts.

The tone of our criticisms will, we hope, be found impartial, independent, catholic, conciliatory; aloof from personal cliques and feuds; cordial to all good things, but not too eager to chime in with any powerful private interest of publisher, professor, concert giver, manager, &c. This paper would make itself the "Organ" of no school or class, but simply an organ of what we have called the musical movement in this country; of the growing love of deep and genuine music. It will insist much on the claims of "Classical" music, and point out its beauties and its meanings; not with a pedantic partiality, but because the enduring needs so often to be held up in contrast with the ephemeral. But it will also aim to recognize what good there is in styles more simple, popular, or modern; will give him who is Italian in his tastes an equal hearing with him who is German; and will print the articles of those opposed to the partialities or the opinions of the editor, provided they be written briefly, in good temper and to the point.

Music in Boston.

The season past affords texts for a volume of commentary, had one the time and space. It marks a period in our musical growth. No previous winter has been rich with one-third of its amount of presentations of the highest forms of Art. Evening concerts and afternoon rehearsals (for the word "rehearsal" has become almost synonymous with concert by daylight), have been thronged, the winter through, by eager listeners to the orchestral symphonies and overtures of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Gade; to Handel's and Mendelssohn's sublime oratorios; to choice Chamber Music; to the miscellaneous feasts of virtuosos coming and going; to our own finished cantatrice, BISCACCIANTI, who returned a second time from European studies, more than redeeming every promise, a refined artist now in higher senses of the word; to our young debutante, who has just sailed abroad, exciting hopes at least as high; to the classic and the modern piano-forte interpretations of musical, mercurial ALFRED JAELL, who seems at once German and Italian, of the North and of the South, a mere child of impulse and a thoughtful man. All this came ushered in most nobly, with the austere commanding beauty, and yet sparkling sunshiny humanity, of that last series of the LIND concerts, in the Melodeon, where the volume of the singer's voice and soul told as in no other hall; and where the singer, who is most queen with an orchestra, was queen enough without, giving us in each admirably chosen programme specimens from all her varied and in fact universal range of song; where too the lover, since become world-famous, then the modest young pianist, told by the fervor and the true and delicate adap

tation of his accompaniments, how blissfully he lost himself, without care for the world's applause, in that o'ershadowing beauty, of womanhood and Art, in which just then his life was hidden. That made November genial. With our rough, moody March came, for a brief finale of the season, the Italian songsters, the BOSIO-BETTINI-BADIALI troupe, to give us a touch of their warm South.

Making all this hay "while the sun shone" involved rather an excessive absorption of the music-lovers in concerts for the time being, and the reaction had to follow. We have now been for two or three mortal weeks left in a refreshing and almost unbroken repose from musical excitements.

To enter into any critical or detailed review of such a wide and crowded field, is here, of course, impossible. Yet let us allude in turn, in a quite general way, to each of the principal sources of our enjoyment.

The Musical Fund Society.

We place this first, because it is the largest combination of our best resident instrumentists, united on a permanent basis, devoted mainly to the high forms of the Symphony, Concerto and classic Overture, having also in its constitution an element of charity, or rather of mutual guaranty against the often cruel fortune of musicians. The dignity and true artistic tone of the profession is naturally at heart in such a confraternity; and every one, who is interested in good music and in the interpreters thereof, must feel sincere joy in every stage of their success.

Numbering some sixty instruments, with due preponderance of the string family, this orchestra possesses the means of presenting, in their full proportions, the gigantic symphonies of Beethoven and others. A band much larger would rather fall into the modern "monster" category. The string department has been excellent; but there has been continual complaint of want of unity, of precision, of true intonation, of musical quality of tone, &c. &c., in many of the wind instruments; and this, if we are rightly informed, is partly owing to the fact that some of the members, who are skilled in the use of one instrument, are here set to playing others, with which they are less perfectly familiar; and partly to the fact, that the various instruments have not been regulated primarily and exclusively to the sphere of this orchestra, but have been drawn from various minor orchestras and bands, acquiring, as it were, their local temperaments and habits. The evil, we believe, is understood, and will no doubt ere long be remedied, when we shall have an orchestra that may be compared with the Philharmonic orchestra in New York.

The Fund Society have labored under two other disadvantages. First, to seat a paying audience, they have been driven to the very unmusical and uninviting hall of Tremont Temple. May our new hall be ready for them in the autumn!Secondly, owing to the multifarious private occupations of the members, they have had but one rehearsal in a week, and that a public one, in the presence of 1,500 to 1,800 auditors! In fact, an afternoon concert. Now these public rehearsals are most excellent things for the public, and we would not on any account have them discontinued. They are an invaluable stimulus and education to the higher musical taste of hundreds of young men and women, of whole families. Through

them, a generation is here growing up in the love and knowledge of the noblest compositions. The general cause of music cannot dispense with them. But there is an obvious restraint upon the freedom and dry, wholesome discipline of a rehearsal, in the presence of all these witnesses. We trust that by some means the Society will contrive to secure hours both for private and for public rehearsals.

Looking over the programmes of the six subscription concerts, now completed, (together with the extra, Benefit Concert, under the direction of the Lady Associates, to which we may allude hereafter,) we can feel proud of the amount of good music that has been presented. Of symphonies, we have had the Eroica, the C minor, and the number 7, in A, (decidedly the three grandest) of BEETHOVEN; the third, in A minor (Recollections of Scotland), and the fourth (posthumous, Italian,) of MENDELSSOHN; the great "Jupiter," with four-fold fugue, of MOZART ; and the No. 11 of HAYDN. Of overtures: MoZART'S to Zauberflote and to Clemenza di Tito; BEETHOVEN'S to Leonora; BERLIOZ's to "Waverly"; a concert overture, by GADE; and several of the lighter modern schools. One night there was a fugue of BACH upon the organ, creditable in intention, but sadly misplaced. With these the usual lighter varieties were intersprinkled, which we need not particularize. But we must allude to the piano Concerto of Mendelssohn, played by ALFRED JAELL, and to the fine vocal contributions of BISCACCIANTI and of Mrs. BOSTWICK; can we add also witching ANNA THILLON, who spoiled the fugue ?

The afternoon rehearsals have afforded a still richer repertoire of symphonies and overtures. We are happy to learn that the Society contemplate giving a series of very cheap afternoon concerts, through the Spring, the music to be in about equal proportions of light and solid, so as to combine both ends of instruction and amusement.

The Mendelssohn Quintette Club. Dear especially and justly to the lovers of good classic music is this fraternity of five young artists. To them we owe our sphere of periodical communion with the great German masters in their most select and genial moods; for in his Chamber compositions each embodied, or at least outlined, a portion of his best, of his most characteristic. This little Club was first drawn together by the love of these fine creations, and now for several winters has interpreted them to an audience select and more and more appreciative, the appetite "still growing with what it fed upon," till now such music has come to be counted an indispensable item in the annual supplies of not a few.

No Society has ever given us such series of good programmes. The staple of all their bills has been genuine, solid Quatuors and Quintettes. Think how much of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, of the masters, who used to seem so far off, unapproachable to us novices in music they have this winter opened to us in their eight subscription Chamber Concerts! Of HAYDN

"father Haydn"- they have given us one regular Quartette, besides the whole seven of his Quartette arrangements of the "Seven last Words on the Cross." Of MOZART, one Quartette and three Quintettes; one of them with clarionet, a work in his loveliest and sweetest vein, which

was performed on two evenings. Of BEETHOVEN - ("deeper and deeper still")—three Quartettes and three Quintettes, including the immortal Adagio with variations. Of MENDELSSOHN, two Quartettes and two Quintettes, one posthumous (op. 87 in B flat). To these add a brilliant, and boldly elaborated Quintette by V. LACHNER, a Trio by WEBER for piano, flute and 'cello, a Trio by MENDELSSOHN, with the pianist JAELL to magnetize the whole into life; besides excellent songs and solos.

Besides their concerts, the Club have also given upon Monday afternoons public rehearsals in Cochituate Hall, in which the same classic pieces, and many more, have been repeatedly tried over. These for many persons have formed the most attractive hours of all the week; for here was good guaranty of an audience in earnest about the matter, really learning to know and love some of the best specimens of each great master's works.

In these Quintette concerts, we have watched the development of what is much the truest sign of musical taste in any public, albeit a small public. And that is, an increasing regard for the quality of the music; of the composition, rather than for mere skill and grace in the performance thereof. We have learned to be exacting in our programmes, and count all skill as idle, save as applied to the interpretation of works full of intrinsic interest and meaning. We thank the Club for taking this ground, and cultivating it so steadily.

In point of execution they have continually gained, not only in that unity and precision which long practice gives, but also in the higher respects of sentiment and style, showing the refining, spiritual influence upon themselves of the high music with which they have been holding conversation. And yet we must not let partiality carry us too far. These artists still fall short of the ideal of quartette and quintette playing. There is often a roughness of tone, a rudeness of attack in forte passages, making you feel that physical energy is a weak substitute for the electric fire of inspiration. Sometimes (not uniformly, we can truly say) a fine work has been too mechanically rendered, without light and shade, without any of that consentaneous ad libitum, to which true musical feeling can trust itself, and which is described as a characteristic of the piano-playing of Mozart, Beethoven and all great masters. We have thought they seemed sometimes to rely too much on simple downright attack, and upon carrying point after point of the music by sheer executive energy, instead of reproducing it from their feeling. The too ready applause of a halfcultivated audience is partly answerable for this. Our friends can and will, we doubt not, learn to surmount this fault entirely, as they have already done in special instances more than once.

One word more, since now is the time for it. We earnestly trust that the Messrs. FRIES, RZIIIA, RYAN and LEHMANN will not abandon the high ground they have taken, from any dismay at a momentary fluctuation in their outward success. Recent rehearsals, the programme of that last "extra concert, together with paragraphs in newspapers congratulating us that the Club were henceforth to "play more miscellaneous music," have been ominous. There is but one ground on which such a Society can stand and outlive temporary discouragements, and that is

the ground of almost strict adherence to classic chamber compositions, in their original forms. Mr. Ryan's arrangements of things like the "Invitation to the Dance," movements of piano-forte sonatas, &c., are certainly clever and creditable to him; but such things are never as satisfactory as the originals to hear, and they crowd out of the programme too many genuine works, which it seems due to our musical culture that we should have every chance to hear. Classic music is the peculiar field of this little Club; if they enter other fields, the weakness of a mere quintette enables them but poorly to compete with popular orchestras and bands.

We could not object, however, to the introduction of that "Musical Joke " of Mozart into the last concert. It was well to hear a specimen of that facile, happy humor, which formed so large an element in the inspired boy's composition. We could thus form some conception of the fine mirth of his friends, to whom he extemporized such things continually. Besides, the piece has a historical value. It bears date Vienna, 1787, the very year in which he wrote "Don Juan ;" and after the failure of the Viennese to appreciate that great work, we can imagine him with some gusto consoling himself by a burlesque on the reigning styles of composition. Perhaps more of this anon.

The Germania Musical Society. The growing taste for pure instrumental music, at so many points in our wide country, has been greatly indebted for the last three or four years to the flying visits of this model abridgment of an orchestra. Though hardly twenty-four in number, these young artists have diffused among our people something nearer than we have before had, to a true idea of German music, both in its popular and in its classic forms. They have been to us in fact a live and genuine specimen of musical Germany, traveling about in the midst of us, and at each point again and again renewing the vibration from that vital heart and centre of the tone-sphere.

The advantages of such a band are these:

1. It is well selected in the first place. All its members are artists, men well suited to each other, men in every fibre of their being as it were acclimated and attempered to the artistic sphere of music; each endowed with a fine musical temperament, and imbued from boyhood with the spirit of the great German masters; accustomed to an orchestral atmosphere, instead of to that of mere military and dance music; several of them indeed persons of general culture, reading and society.

2. They have possessed, first in Herr LENSCHOW, and latterly in Herr BERGMANN, a conductor of the true stamp; one, who not only feels and understands the music, but who by a sort of natural eloquence of look and gesture expresses the force of each musical idea as it is coming, keeps before the music, visibly anticipating each effect, and so possessing all his orchestra with the same feeling in safe season for the attack. It helps even the musical enjoyment and understanding of the audience, to watch such a conductor's baton.

3. Having no other occupation, and pledged to one another, traveling and stopping together every where, they can keep in perfect practice, in ever fresh familiarity with their large and

varied repertoire of music, trusting one another perfectly for a sympathetic ensemble in the rendering of every piece. Soon may the time come when our own local musicians may be able to do likewise!

On the other hand, their one disadvantage is, that they have not, (nor can their traveling life afford to have) the numbers and proportions of a grand symphonic orchestra. While their wind instruments are complete in number as they are choice in quality, their violins are very few. Hence we found it good policy to sit near, in order to hear them well; for to the remote auditor, the reeds and trumpets passed directly over the heads of the few violins, which in their nature could not tell so prominently; and thus in many a symphony he caught the brighter masses of coloring, while the finer outline of the musical idea, entrusted to the strings, was faintly perceptible. At the best, in forte passages, the violinists had to bear on with great energy to partly counterbalance the wind band, since even their admirably precise and pure outline was not always sufficient. Of course the disadvantage was greatest in the case of the grander class of symphonies, like the " Jupiter" of Mozart, and the C minor, the Eroica, &c., of Beethoven. Whereas, in one so light and fairy-like as Beethoven's No. 8, and in the picturesque, romantic, delicately strong overtures of Mendelssohn, they were eminently successful.

Yet it is always a pleasure and a lesson to hear this little orchestra in any kind of music. Of great symphonies, their renderings must be regarded as fine readings, or outline representations. There is no confusion, no blur, or indefiniteness about them; they show you what the composer meant; they fix each theme, each musical idea and motive clearly in the mind. We deemed it a great advantage to hear a symphony first from them, and afterwards expanded into full proportions by a larger orchestra.

In their own national waltz music (a genuine creation of the genial, rhythmic soul of Germany); in their arrangements of operatic scenes, where certain instruments take up the voice parts; and above all, in their delicately shaded accompaniments to the singer, or the concertoplayer, they are indeed a model, a charm unfailing.

Boston has been favored this time as the winter residence of the Germanians. A series of twenty subscription concerts, weekly afternoon rehearsals, and a multitude of occasional performances, have not at all blunted the appetite for their music, and they have made the rich voice and promise of Miss PHILLIPS, and the unrivalled piano-playing of ALFRED JAELL, as familiar as household words among us.

We have only room further to enumerate the important classical works, which they have given in their twenty concerts, to complete the sum of our rare opportunities the past winter in this line.

SYMPHONIES. Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, (Pastoral), and 8, of BEethoven. The_C_major, with Fugue, ("Jupiter") and op. 58, in E flat, of MoZART. The No. 11, in D, of HAYDN. The fourth (posthumous) of MENDELSSOHN. "Historica," illustrating four periods, of SPOHR; also, in the early season, his "Consecration of Tones." One by KALLIWODA, and one by

GADE.

The

OVERTURES. BEETHOVEN'S to Fidelio, to Egmont, to the Men of Prometheus, and to Coriolanus. MENDELSSOHN's to "Midsummer Night's Dream," to "Fingal's Cave" (Hebriden), to Heimkehr aus der Fremde (Return from abroad), the one called "Calm Sea and Happy Voyage" (Meeres-Stille), to Ruy Blas, to "The fair Melusina." WEBER'S, to Oberon and Freyschutz.

MOZART's, to Don Juan and Zauberflote. GADE's "Echoes from Ossian." SPOHR's, to Jessonda. A strange one by ROBT. SCHUMANN, with Scherzo and Finale. MEYERBEER'S, to Robert, to the " Huguenots," and to Struen-See. Several by ROSSINI, and other lighter kinds.

PIANO-FORTE CONCERTOS. One by BEETHOVEN and two by MENDELSSOHN, played by A. JAELL. To these add parts of the Symphony Cantata: "Song of Praise," by the latter composer; and finally the entire orchestral music (not the entire vocal, as was promised) of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," exquisitely accompanying the indifferent reading of Miss KIMBERLY.

Of the lighter varieties we need not speak, except to say that we thought they added rather too much lightness towards the end of the season. The music-lovers of our sister towns and cities also got their share of the "Germanians" during the winter, and we doubt not they will be warmly welcomed back another season.

Of our two Oratorio Societies, we have left ourselves no room this time to speak, nor of the Italian Opera; but read what "Hafiz" sings us thereof in New York.

Foreign Musical Intelligence.

Paris.

The gay city has kept all its musical fountains playing, in spite of the reign of terror. The four opera houses seem to have been in full activity and thronged; and numerous have been the lyric dramas, serious and comic, classical and light, which, since the new year came in, have had an airing and a hearing-some for the hundredth, some for the first time. But all sink into the shade before two: Rossini's William Tell, at the Grand Opera, and Beethoven's Fidelio at the Theatre Italien.

The former was given in superb style;-perhaps a little too superb, for, says the Gazette Musicale: "The placard announced a chorus of two hundred voices for the finale of the second act. Such things produce an immense effect... ..... on a placard; but in concert-halls and theatres it has long been known by experience that all force, beyond what is just enough, is lost, and that thirty good chorists are better than two hundred," &c. The singers were M. GUEYMARD for the tenor, in the part of Arnold, who seems to have not badly filled the place of the great DUPREZ; MORELLI, who "sustained his reputation" in the part of Tell; OBIN, "a good and brave" Walter; AIMES, "a little timid in the fisherman," and Madam LABORDE, known whilome of Bostonians, in Matilda. The "Prince President assisted" at the first performance! Imagine him face to face with the real live Tell.

The France Musicale goes into rhapsodies about this opera. For instance: "Eternal poesy is this of thine, O master! Guillaume Tell will survive the tomb, survive the ages. Like the Iliad, that grand and inimitable poem of Homer, shall your inspired work serve as a model. Musicians, present and to come, will respect it and admire it. The theatrical art, the lyric drama with its emotions, melodic truth, taste, form, science without tediousness, grandeur without exaggeration, pomp without noise, charm, tenderness, the love of liberty, the passion of the heart, all are there." And again: "Open this score, musicians; read it and re-read it; each page is a melody. Turn it over and over; go from the beginning to the middle, from the middle to the end, you will discover nothing in its flowery leaves but the most lovely harmonies, no thorns nor briars. The master has set his seal on this immortal work; he has signed it ROSSINI, the most glorious name in music." (!) And this when we are even now on our way over to the ITALIAN OPERA, to hear a masterpiece of quite another stamp, Fidelio!But first we must observe that Les Huguenots and Le Prophète have also had their turns at the Grand Opera. ROSSINI and MEYERBEER:- what two truer types of the musical taste of Frenchmen! the epicurean sparkle of the one, and the wild diablerie and bold effect of the other;-but both strong and genuine, and far more wholesome than the Italian music since Rossini.