furthermore, that the "tired business man" would not object so strenuously to attending the serious musical performances to which his wife urges him to go if some of these matters were considered more carefully by the artist in planning the program! But here again, of course, we have a matter which depends altogether upon the kind of music presented, whether the entire program is given by one artist or whether there are several performers, whether the whole program is of one kind of music or whether there is variety of voice and instrument, whether the performers are amateurs or professionals, and upon whether the performer is an artist of the first rank and is able by his perfection of technique, his beauty of tone, and his emotional verve, to hold his audience spellbound for an indefinite length of time, or whether he belongs to the second or third rank of performers and is able to arouse only an average amount of interest. Our purpose in including a discussion of the matter is principally in order that we may have an opportunity of warning the amateur conductor not to cause an audience which would probably give favorable consideration to a short program, to become weary and critical by compelling them to sit through too long a performance. This is particularly true in the case of amateur performance; and since this book is written chiefly for the amateur director, it may not be out of order to advise him at this point to plan programs not more than an hour or an hour and a quarter long, at first. It is far better to have the audience leaving the auditorium wishing the program had been longer than to have them grumbling because it is too long.
ADAPTABILITY TO AUDIENCESOur fourth problem has already been presented in discussing the other three, for it is because of the necessity of adapting the performance to the audience that we have
