no INTRO D UCTION
have less of character than what else I have heard of Mozart's; and it was refreshing to hear after it the "Grand Hallelujah Chorus" of Handel, although the effect is much less good in the Music Hall, where it is lost in space, than in the Melodeon or the old Boylston- market Hall. To my ear, solos of all kinds grow less and less interesting, when heard in great modern buildings ; they, and above all the pianoforte, are adapted only to private rooms. In public, one desires to hear orchestral music.
It is pleasant to see a growing improvement among us in the selection and proportion of the instruments. For- merly two or three trombones were deemed essential in the smallest band, owing doubtless to a desire that people should get their money's worth in quantity, whatever might be the quality. To my ear, nothing is finer than a grand chorus, aided by a full orchestra and a fine organ, when a cloud of violins quivers in the foreground, enclos- ing within its folds the viols and violoncellos, behind which the horns, the bassoons, the orphoeleides \sic\ are heard, flanked by the flutes, the oboes, the clarinets, etc., while behind all these the shrill octave pierces the mass of trumpets, trombones, and clarions that enfold it all around. Meantime, on either side, are mingled the murmurs of hundreds of voices ; I should place the female ones be- hind, as being the shrillest. When all these are harmon- ized and brought into a mighty current by the huge waves of the organ which overwhelms from behind, like the rushing waters of the ocean, then I think one grows soon to disdain for a time all lesser sounds, and would defer even the most pleasing melody to a future occasion and to social meetings in small rooms, when the sense of weight and volume in sounds had gone out of the ears. I should
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