ROYAL SOCIETY OF MUSICIANS.
IN conformity with the injunction or wish of his late Majesty, the yearly performance of the Messiah, for the benefit of this excellent charity, took place on Tuesday morning, at the Hanover Square Rooms. With all due respect for the good intentions of GEORGE the Third, and with the most profound veneration for this oratorio, we cannot regard the Hanover Square, or any other concert-room of similar dimensions, the appropriate place for such an exhi- bition. HANDEL was fitly designated "a giant." His musical conceptions are vast, his outlines broad and deep, and they demand a space and numbers for their display. The Messiah, in the puny orchestra of the Hanover Square Rooms, is something like an en-. graving of the Cartoons fourteen inches by twelve : it reminds you of the original, but the original it is not. One improvement marked the performance—the introduction of MOZART'S accompaniments. Prejudice, or ignorance, at first led the managers of this concert to forbid their adoption ; pride afterwards prompted a perseverance in the same foolish exclusion ; till, at length, the Royal Society of Musicians, who ought to have had the honour of first paying this tribute to the genius of MOZART, have been literally compelled, after his accompaniments to this oratorio have been heard at every festival throughout the kingdom for the last fourteen years, to submit to their adoption. But we ought not to blame the Mana- ging Committee of the Society, except for subserviency—subser. viency to a piece of Ancient Concert direction, appropriately paralleled by the exclusion of BRAHAM and other first-rate singers from the orchestra. Why do riot the Committee of the Society take the management of this concert into their own hands ? or if they dare not do this, let them at least announce who are the managers, and not continue to labour under the disgrace of having any thing to do with such an exhibition of the Messiah as took place on Tuesday. MALIBRAN was announced, but did not sing:- may we be allowed to ask why ?
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