CHAPTER II. 



CONCERT-ROOM ACOUSTICS. 



THE acoustics of public buildings are now occupying con- 

 siderable attention in London. The vast audiences which any 

 kind of sensational performance in the huge metropolis is 

 capable of attracting, is forcing the subject upon all who cater 

 for public amusement or instruction. There was probably no 

 building in London, or anywhere else, more utterly unfit for 

 musical performances than the Crystal Palace in its original 

 condition ; but, nevertheless, the Handel Festival of last week 

 was a great success. I attended the first of these immense 

 gatherings, and this last ; but nothing of the kind interme- 

 diate, and, therefore, am the better able to make comparisons. 



My recollections of the first were so very unsatisfactory that 

 I gladly evaded the grand rehearsal of Friday week, and went to 

 the " Messiah" on Monday with an astronomical treatise in 

 my pocket, in order that my time should not be altogether 

 wasted. Being seated at the further end of the transept, in a 

 gallery above the level of the general ridge-and-f urrow roof of 

 the nave, the plump little Birmingham tenor, who rose to sing 

 the first solo, appeared, under the combined optical conditions 

 of distance and vertical foreshortening, like a chubby cheese- 

 mite viewed through a binocular microscope. Taking it for 

 granted that his message of comfort could not possibly reach 

 my ear, I determined to anticipate the exhortation by settling 

 down for a comfortable reading of a chapter or two, but was 

 surprised to find I could hear every note, both of recitative and 

 air. 



It thus became obvious that the alterations that have gradu- 

 ally grown since the time when Clara Novello's voice was the 

 only one that could be heard across the transept are worthy of 

 study ; that the advertised success of the " velarium" is 

 something more than mere, puffery. I accordingly used my 

 eyes as well as my ears, and made a few notes which may be 

 interesting to musical and architectural, as well as to scientific 

 readers. 



Sound, like light, heat, and all other radiations, loses its 



