TIIE APPROACHING MUSICAL FESTIVAL.
We begin to hope that it will no longer be necessary, as it has been,. for our metropolitan dilettanti to travel a hundred miles, or even two, when they want to bear good sacred music. We now have Festivals of our own, at which we may enjoy the works of HANDEL and HAYDN,. without exchanging our own firesides for the crowded hotels and lodging-houses of Birmingham and York. The approaching Festival in Exeter Hall will be the third in London within two years. It bas been set on foot, we believe, by the same parties who produced the Festival in the autumn of 1834 ; but upon a much greater scale, with more experience in management, and, there is every reason to hope, with a much more favourable result. Its proceeds are to be applied in aid of the funds of the Charing Cross Hospital. There are to be- three performances, each of which is to be preceded by what is called a " public rehearsal,"—that is to say, another performance, upon lower- terms of admission. The Festival is to continue from the 14th to the 22d of this month. We begin to hope that it will no longer be necessary, as it has been,. for our metropolitan dilettanti to travel a hundred miles, or even two, when they want to bear good sacred music. We now have Festivals of our own, at which we may enjoy the works of HANDEL and HAYDN,. without exchanging our own firesides for the crowded hotels and lodging-houses of Birmingham and York. The approaching Festival in Exeter Hall will be the third in London within two years. It bas been set on foot, we believe, by the same parties who produced the Festival in the autumn of 1834 ; but upon a much greater scale, with more experience in management, and, there is every reason to hope, with a much more favourable result. Its proceeds are to be applied in aid of the funds of the Charing Cross Hospital. There are to be- three performances, each of which is to be preceded by what is called a " public rehearsal,"—that is to say, another performance, upon lower- terms of admission. The Festival is to continue from the 14th to the 22d of this month.
The orchestra and chorus will consist of upwards of six hundred per- formers; of whom a large proportion will be amateurs, strengthened,. however, by a plentiful infusion of vocal and instrumental talent. The solo vocal parts, and the principal instrumental parts in the or- chestra, are to be sustained by the most eminent professional artists;. and the young troops are getting into discipline by a long succession of private rehearsals, which have been going on with great regularity for many weeks past. Such has been their success, that we anticipate from the choruses a grandeur that has never yet been reached by any musical performance in London. At the rehearsal of last Monday, in. the Store Street room, (not to mention other things of less difficulty,)- we heard &vim's sublime psalm, "Jehovah, Lord God of Hosts," for four solo voices and a double choir, sting by four hundred choral voices with admirable precision and effect, though without any accom- paniment save a few chords struck on the pianoforte, and though the singers, in place of being arranged in orchestral order, filled almost the- entire floor of the hall.
Three of HANDEL'S Oratorios are to be performed entire,—Solo eras, Israel in Egypt, and the Messiah. The rest of the music is se- lected, and consists (with a few exceptions) of the pieces invariably heard on all such occasions. Sir GEORGE SMART, we have occasion. to know, has taken great pains in preparing the oratorio of Solomon. It has never been heard in England since HANDEL'S own day, and pre- sents var tuns difficulties to its entire performance; one of which is,. that the part of Solomon is written for a soprano voice. We shall see- (or rather bear) how Sir GEORGE se tirera d'affaire.
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