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Show A MENDELSSOHN GLEE CLUB CONCERT. A Mendelssohn concert is one of the high-water marks of our civilization. The pretty half, admirably adapted to display a brilliant audience, is filled with a brightly dressed throng, mutually acquainted, so that, unlike the usual gathering at a public concert, there is a certain air of refined sociability. The hum of general conversation, the flitting of gentlemen from group to group, and the mingling of the singers with the audience during the interludes between the songs, pleasantly fill the eye and ear. Youth and beauty hold their evanescent court, and older eyes, touched with the sweet magic of memory, see other scenes and other forms in the bright panorama of the evening. Suddenly the conductor enters upon the platform, strikes a few chords upon the piano, and disappears. It is the summons of the chorus. The active or singing members move from every part of the hall, the audience adjusts itself, seats are resumed, eyes furtively follow a manly form, perhaps, and even hearts may flutter at a gay farewell. "Read the language of those wandering eye-beams: the heart knoweth." But the door at the side of the platform opens, and the thirty or forty gentlemen who compose the chorus enter, and range themselves in a double semicircular line, while Mosenthal, the field-marshal, who has thoroughly and severely trained these troops of tone, and whose ear no flatting or sharping, no shirking nor silence, can escape or deceive, steps quietly and firmly forward to his stand, and with a solid, forcible air, like that of the older and original Strauss, gives the warning tap, raises his baton, and when there is perfect silence in the hall, begins. For it seems that it is he with his beating arm who plays upon a rich and delicate instrument of beautifully blended voices. He has drilled them as Napoleon drilled an army, and he inspires them as Napoleon inspired. A profound and conscientious artist, thorough and accurate, and full of the manly enthusiasm for his art which is the spring and secret of successful mastery, he has produced a very remarkable result. The sound is exquisitely shaded and graded, and without losing its variety, its melodic sweetness, and its rhythmical charm, he subdues and softens it to a whisper, fine and true, almost a shadowy sound, a fairy tone by moonlight: "That strain again, it had a dying fall. Oh! came o'er my ear like the sweet ??, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor." There is a whole realm of part-songs which is revealed by such clubs and societies as the Mendelssohn, and which is exceedingly delightful. Glees and concerted pieces have always been peculiarly agreeable to the musical taste of England and Germany, and the cultivation of part-singing in this country has developed some excellent and promising composers among us. The Mendelssohn Glee Club lately offered three prizes, we understand, for such songs, and upon trying and comparing and deciding, three compositions were selected for the first, second, and third awards; and upon opening the sealed envelopes with the names of the authors the three successful compositions were found to be the work of the same composer, Mr. Gilchrist, of Philadelphia. They have all been sung by the club, to the great delight and approval of the hearers, and the eye of expectation may be shrewdly fixed upon the young composer. Part-music of this kind is fascinating, and it is very hard to believe that in any other city there is better singing than that of the Mendelssohns. The charm of it is that the skilled and patient training of chance voices so to speak, the ?? of those who are not professional singers, but who are devoted to business and to professions. Perhaps the musing listener, grateful for an enjoyment so inspiring, as he watches the quiet conduct of the leader, and observes the American faces of the singers, seems to see visibly and audibly typified the gracious influence of the German musical genius upon American life. Some future poet will say that of all the good fairies who came to the birth of the free nation none was more generous than Teutonia, who brought the refining, elevating, humanizing gift of music.-Editor's Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine. |