ROYAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL.
THE managers of this affair begin to discover that it is not a play- thing, with which they can amuse themselves and gratify their own predilections and fancies, but an arduous undertaking, for the conduct of which they are deeply responsible: and they ale also beginning to see, that the priding and vaunting in which they so needlessly indulged, has already produced its necessary result— disappointment. The facts which we have stated have opened the eyes of the public, and we now hear exclamations on all sides —" So, there are to be only five hundred performers in the Abbey, instead of a thousand, as was originally given out !" Had the managers, originally, placed before their eyes the simple ad- measurements which appeared in our last article, they would have bethought them that even a royal command could not expand the walls of the Abbey, and make it capable of containing a band as large as York Minster. We have said, from the first, that an orchestra of about five hundred performers was as large as ought to be placed in that building ; and beyond this it is folly as well as extravagance to go. The following, which is something like the scale on which the Band should be formed, it would have been unnecessary to print, but that we have heard of the engagement of twenty-two Trumpets! Now if this be true, and if our scale of proportion (for which we have tolerable authority, as well as some experience) be correct, the Orchestra ought to number at least Me thousand performers!
Violins 80 Trombones 9 Violas 30 Serpents 4 Violoncellos 30 Drums 3 Double Basses
.25
Organ 1 Flutes 6 Sopranos 80 Oboes 8 Altos 60 Clarinets 8 Tenors .... ........ ... 70 Bas-soons . 10 Basses 80 Horns 10
520 Trumpets 6 Some alarm, we are told, exists as to the expense at which the Festival will be conducted ; which, it appears, will far outrun the sum at first contemplated. The expenses of the Commemora- tion in 1784, rather exceeded 50001.; and they need not, ought not, to have been much larger on the present occasion. But if the managers proceed as they have begun, by engaging eight persons to do the duty of one, the increase is easily accounted for.
The object of the Festival is to render music tributary to charity. This is proclaimed in adveriisements, and announced in circulars ; and pei formers are invited to promote it by a reduction in their terms. But they ask, and the public ask—" How is this appeal to the charitable and humane feelings of the Band consistent with the senseless and jobbing extravagance of engaging eight Organists?" The very unusual step, too, of making an institution wholly unconnected with charity a joint partaker in the receipts of this Festival, has excited universal wonder and just discontent. The Royal Academy of Music is to share with the Royal Society of Musicians in the anticipated profits of the undertaking. Now what claim, it is justly said, has the former institution on public regard ; and especially, on what pretence can the charitable sym- pathies of the Orchestra be appealed to in its favour ? It is a mere speculation of a few noblemen and gentlemen, for their own indi- vidual amusement or advaniage; and any portion of the profits of the Festival will go towards easing their pockets. This part of the scheme is a very foul and scandalous job, concocted in the same spirit and for the same purpose as the shabbiest part of the Pension-list—a mean attempt to relieve certain patrician pockets under the false pretence of charity.
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