The Jubilee of the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Choral Society

The Jubilee of the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Choral Society. II. The Period of Experiment and Non-Success (Continued) Author(s): Herman Klein Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 62, No. 939 (May 1, 1921), pp. 313-320 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/910562 Accessed: 25-06-2016 05:16 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Times This content downloaded from 104.239.165.217 on Sat, 25 Jun 2016 05:16:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE MUSICAL TIMES-MAY I 1921 313 sideration--was in too many instances found wanting. It will now be our business to follow, E1e iusical Eimes as briefly as may be, the course of this singular AND SINGING-CLASS CIRCULAR and instructive record of endeavour. MAY I 1921 THE MISTAKES OF THE OPENING YEAR In the year of the opening very little was done, THE JUBILEE OF and that little was unsatisfactory. Things went badly from the start. People did not take kindly THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL to the new building, much less to the music they AND THE heard in it when they visited the International Exhibition in the adjacent grounds. Her Majesty's ROYAL CHORAL SOCIETY Commissioners had put up a huge and imposing BY HERMAN KLEIN edifice, but neither they nor the Executive Council of the Hall seemed at first to know what to do (Continued from Afril number, fage 235) with it. The opening of the Exhibition in June,. [871, provided the initial opportunity; and a II.-THE PERIOD OF EXPERIMENT AND beautiful thing they made of it. The Franco- NON-SUCCESS Prussian war was just ending, and among the French refugees in London was the musician who It will be convenient for the purposes of this wrote 'Faust.' Since the death of Mendelssohn narrative to divide the Jubilee period (187 [-192I) he had been the Queen's favourite composer. broadly into, say, two unequal parts-the first, Why not associate Gounod with the beginning those thirty years of strenuous effort and struggle of a new dawn for British music ? Accordingly, which brought the chequered history of the Gounod completed his cantata, 'Gallia,' and, Royal Albert Hall down to the beginning of the having formed a large choir, conducted it in the present century; the second, two pleasant decades Albert Hall on the opening day in the presence of of smooth, easy working and comparative all-round Her Majesty; while, just to show there was no success. The story of an uphill fight generally ill-feeling on the part of a neutral State, a ' Grand provides the most interesting reading, and it will Triumphal March' by the German professor, not be the writer's fault should the climax be Ferdinand Hiller, and a new cantata, entitled followed by a rather lengthy diminuendo. 'On Shore and Sea,' by Arthur Sullivan (also But the Albert Hall is an exceptional case. Its conducted by their composers), were included in story, like the place itself, is somewhat akin to the the programme. tales of fairy palaces in the 'Arabian Nights.' The choir just referred to was to supply the It was mysterious from the beginning. Few nucleus for the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society, people could tell you off-hand how or whence it which was duly formed in the following season came, what kept it 'going,' or precisely what it and gave altogether four concerts-the first on was there for. Nor did its mysteriousness end May 8, 1872-under the direction of Gounod, altogether when the institution had escaped from these being part of the ambitious scheme (for the dangers of an impecunious childhood, and eighteen concerts from May to July, I 872) already grown strong (as it was certainly big) enough to detailed in our earlier article. But all of that was support itself. From first to last its fifty years after the initial bad impression had been created- have furnished more or less exciting examples of an impression whereof the Press was not slow to the unexpected; and now has come the present take notice. For music at the new Hall in i87I Jubilee celebration, with its remarkable testimonies was obviously an afterthought, a minor attraction of national pride in a national institution which tacked on to the others; in short, as one journal has achieved a destiny and a success rather different described it, a 'Daily Exhibition of Musical Art, from what the original designer had imagined. chiefly represented by well-worn overtures, arrange- E pur si muove, as Galileo remarked of ments of songs [mostly those of Gounod], and something even bigger than the Albert Hall. But scraps from the popular operas, performed by if the affairs of the latter are moving to-day, it is military bands to a few stragglers.' And among precisely because they are not being carried on the more youthful stragglers on one occasion, just according to plan '--the original plan. The dropping in to 'listen to the band,' was the writer magnificent scheme described last month in of these lines. On July I8, the last touches these columns was in reality too Utopian for having been put to the new organ, the huge the advancing mid-Victorian age in which it was instrument was formally inaugurated by William T. launched. It was well-meant; nay, it was even Best, the official organist of the Hall, with a recital grandiose, noble, superb in intention. But it was that was really worthy of its object. not feasible-it could not be successfully worked. And we know this, because the whole of the SOME RESULTS OF THE GOUNOD REGIME vast experiment, practically every feature of which To the 'errors and omissions'of that opening was tried - tried faithfully, conscientiously, year many unlucky consequences may be laid; but perseveringly, regardless of every commercial con- among the temporary beneficial results was the spate This content downloaded from 104.239.165.217 on Sat, 25 Jun 2016 05:16:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 314 THE MUSICAL TIMES-MAY I 1921 of rather more decent music that came in 1872, being better and better filled each time.* The of which, nevertheless, only six operatic concerts audiences would join in the chorales, and with no (out of eighteen) proved financially successful. little spirit, being considerably aided in their H.M. Commissioners were now becoming slightly efforts by the support of a trumpet played at each alarmed. They had guaranteed the Hall against entrance to the amphitheatre stalls. loss, and here was a deficit of ?3,140, due Its excessive beauties were so thoroughly revealed mainly to the heavy expenses incurred by the to the audience at the Albert Hall that we have every formation and management of the new Choral hope, considering the aristocratic nature of the assembly, Society. Gounod's appointment as conductor was of real and lasting benefit to the art accruing from its openly criticized in strong terms. Said the performance.-Musical Times, March, 1873. Mflzsi'cal Times, June, 1872 : Later on, in April,'The Messiah 'was given, and That M. Gounod should have been appointed after that an interesting revival of Handel's director of an English choir in a building under Royal ' Belshazzar.' patronage is of itself a sufficient grievance to those who That was not all. The Exhibition of 1873 was seearound them a number of native professors thoroughly qualified by talent and experience for the task. devoted not only to Inventions, Industries, and Art, but in a special degree to Music. It opened And such programmes !-nearly every piece on Easter Monday, and from the first there began harmonized or arranged by the conductor; miscel- a series of daily concerts, orchestral and vocal, laneous selections from the works of Palestrina, with Barnby as conductor, quite different in Bach, Mozart, and others, including a Te Deum by character from those of two years previously. The Gounod himself-all performed without orchestra, programmes contained a goodly proportion of to the accompaniment of the pianoforte and organ, 'classical ' items, and improved in quality as the ' played by Mr. William Carter and his son George.' season went on. Altogether, between April and No wonder there were small audiences. October, no less than two hundred concerts were Obviously this kind of thing could not last long. given, with an orchestra of at least fifty, and With the departing summer Gounod 'went' sometimes more. When Barnby did not conduct, too; not as yet to his native land, but to the his place was taken by Mr. Deichmann, a well- retirement of Tavistock Square, whence he emerged known and respected orchestral player; and only to give some choral subscription concerts Mr. Oliver King was the official accompanist at St. James's Hall, in 1873, before finally returning throughout. to Paris. Meanwhile, 'struggling against its Here, again, as in the organization of the new acoustical defects and its amateur management,' choir, we trace the valuable influence of Alfred the scene of his labours at South Kensington Littleton, to whose firm the whole of the arrange- happily came under artistic direction of a better ments for these concerts had been entrusted.

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