THE MUSICAL FESTIVALS.
The Provincial Music Meetings of this year will be the Birmingham and Norwich Festivals, and the meeting of the Three Choirs of Worces- er, Gloucester, and Hereford. The Festivals of Birmingham and Nor- wich, both of which are triennial, have never hitherto interfered with each other : but the Norwich Festival, which should have been held last year, having been postponed in consequence of the engrossing interest of the Great Exhibition, both of them now take place in the same season.
The arrangements of the Birmingham Festival are in a forward state. The principal performers are engaged, and the most important pieces to be executed are fixed upon. The days of the Festival are to be the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th September. The singers already engaged are Madame Viardot, Madame Castellan, Madame Clara Novello, Mademoiselle Anna Zerr, Miss Dolby, Miss Williams, Signor Tamberlik, Signor Belletti, Herr Formes, Mr. Sims Reeves, Mr. Lockey, Mr. T. Williams, Mr. Weiss, and Signor Polonini. Madame Sontag found it necessary to de- cline an engagement offered her, on account of her departure for America before the end of August. The instrumental orchestra is completely formed : it is under the direction of Costa; is 140 strong ; and its list includes every performer in the Philharmonic and Royal Italian Opera bands, besides many others of acknowledged talent.
The performances are arranged in the following order. Tuesday morn- ing—Christus, the unfinished posthumous Oratorio of Mendelssohn ; a Motett by Dr. Wesley ; and The Creation. Wednesday morning—The E%ah of Mendelssohn. Thursday morning—The Messiah. Friday morning—Handers Samson. The evening concerts, will include Men- delesohn's Walpurgie Nacht, the fragment of Lordy, the Opera left by Mendelssohn unfinished at the time of his death, and the grand Choral Symphony of Beethoven. It would be difficult to offer an entertainment more attractive to the lovers of what is great and beautiful in music.
Of the arrangements for the other Festivals we have not as yet any information.
The great Music Meetings in the Provinces have lost much of their in- terest for the Metropolitan public. The time is gone by when it was ne- cessary for a London amateur to travel to Birmingham, or Norwich, or York, to hear a great oratorio fitly performed. But their local interest is undiminished,—the last Birniingham and Norwich Festivals having been as successful as any of their precursors ; and this will probably con- tinue to be the case. Their object, in the first place, is beneficence ; an object which they accomplish on a magnificent scale, as they go far to support several of the noblest benevolent institutions in the kingdom ; and those who attend them enjoy, among other luxuries, the luxury of doing good. They are points of reunion for large circles of provincial society, promoting kindly intercourse, refined and elevated by the joint participation in a noble entertainment. They supply a great social want in the country ; a want so pressing, that, in no distant times, it made every county-town a scene of mirth and festivity, of balls and dinners, as often as the Judges of the land came to determine the fate of a prison- ful of trembling criminals. The continued prosperity of the great Mu- sical Festivals, though their interest is more strictly local than it once was, may be regarded as a sign of the increasing diffusion of good taste and good feeling throughout the country.
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