68 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY. 



The approaching hundredth annual season of the 

 Philharmonic Society leads S. L. Bensusan in the 

 December IVim/sor to tell its story. It was formed 

 by Messrs. J. B. Cramer, P. Corri, and VV. Dance, 

 " to promote the performance in the most perfect 

 manner possible of the best and most approved 

 instrumental music."' It was to consist of thirty 

 members and a limited number of associates. 

 Members were to elect seven directors. No member 

 was to receive any emoluments, all moneys received 

 being reserved for the public purposes of the Society. 

 It was intended that concerts should be given by 

 the members themselves. The first was given on 

 March 8th, 1813, at the old Argyll Rooms. In 1820 

 Spohr came and conducted. In 1825 Beethoven's 

 Choral Symphony was performed, which was written 

 in return for j£ciO paid in advance. In 1827 the 

 Society sent ^100 as a gift to the dying Beethoven. 

 In 1829 Mendelssohn, only fourteen years of age, 

 conducted. Joachim appeared first in 1844. 



In the early years the Philharmonic Society knew 

 no rivals. Now there are many. Nevertheless, the 

 invitation it extends to soloist or conductor is still 

 the highest honour within the musical gift of this 

 country, and is greatly sought by Continental musicians. 

 The list of composers who have either written works 

 for the Society, or have conducted them, or have had 

 their works first performed by the Society, includes 

 almost all tire greatest names in music. .A.t present 

 the Society is under the patronage of their Majesties 

 the King and Queen and her Majesty the Queen- 

 Mother. There are si.xty members and two hundred 

 and eighty associates, of whom nearly a hundred are 

 ladies. The Society entered the world before the era 

 of advertisement, and it " has never acquired the 

 dubious gift." Curiously reticent and dignified, it 

 moves to-day along its appointed road, doing its best 

 10 present the masterpieces of music in the most 

 effective fashion, and to bring forward the soloists 

 whose claims to recognition are clearest. It is in a 

 sense " the trustee of the music-loving public." 



Women as Jurors. 



AN amendment to tiie Constitution of California 

 recently gave to women the right of suffrage and 

 made them eligible for jury duty. In a case tried in 

 I.os Angeles before a jury composed entirely of 

 women, the judge instructed the jury to find the 

 defendant Not (luilty on a technicality. The jury 

 left the box and shortly returned bringing in a verdict 

 of Guilty as charged. The judge refused to accept 

 the verdict, and again instructed the jury to retire 

 ynd to bring in a verdict of Not (iuilty, which they 

 finally did, although they protested vehenrently 

 aiainst the "interference" of the court and wanted 

 to know what was the use of having a jury if ihey had 

 to do what the judge wanted, and not what they 

 considered ought to be done. — National Reviav. 



" MUSICAL INDIGESTION." 



Under this heading Mr. R. H. Schaufifier in the 

 Atlantic Monthly for October laments that concert pro- 

 grammes are too long. This has led to a chronic com- 

 plaint of musical indigestion. It is the worst enemy of 

 the art of creative listening. He says one often notices 

 how splendidly creative an audience is for the first 

 hour, and how rapidly thereafter it grows destructive. 

 The most hopeless musical dyspeptic is, the writer 

 thinks, the musical critic of the average metropolitan 

 newspaper. Musical indigestion atrophies, or at least 

 weakens, the musical memory : — 



To be M'ithoul ,-1 musical memory ; to be for ever obliged to 

 depend on some player, or even some machine, whenever you 

 crave music, is lilce being so deaf that your only communication 

 with the sons of men must be through the mediation of the valet 

 whom you have hired simply on account of his Hull-of-Bashai» 

 voice. Or, if not as desperately situated as this, at least the 

 nuisically oblivious stands to the man with auto-music in his. 

 soul as the traveller who must depend on corporation steam 

 stands to him who fare, to the gay chug-chug of his own motor. 



JAPANESE MILLIONAIRES. 



The Oriental Rc'vic7i' for October 25th states that 

 the Tokio Jiji has compiled a list of Japanese men 

 of wealth at honre and abroad. The result appears 

 to be somewhat disappointing, for it finds that there 

 are only 1,018 who possess a quarter of a million of 

 dollars or more : — 



But if the Japanese are generally poor, some of them at least 

 are getting rich rapidly, for ten years ago there were only four 

 hundred and forty-one in the 250,000 dols. or more class. Ir> 

 that space of time the number of the wealthy has increased by 

 557, or more than doubled. The population of Japan, includ- 

 ing Formosa, exceeds 51,000,000. 



Comparing the wealth of these men, or that o! the million- 

 aires of Japan proper with the hoards of the very rich of other 

 countries, one is certainly sufficiently impressed with Japan's 

 comparative poverty. The Croesus of Japan is liaron Mitsui, 

 whose wealth is estimated as between 100.000.000 and 

 200,000,000 dollars. 



What Britain has Done fop India 



India in 1911 is not only in every respect incom- 

 parably better than it was when the British entered it 

 as traders, or when their sovereign took hold of the 

 reins of its government, but it actually is on the high 

 road of progress, and is making giant strides. Impor- 

 tant as it is that the English have established peace, 

 built schools, provided transportation and com- 

 munication facilities, modernised old irrigation canals 

 and constructed new ones, codified, revised, and im- 

 proved the laws of the land, and introduced other 

 features of a humane government, they have done 

 even greater good in kicking the .natives out of their 

 lethargy of ages, and inspiring the difterent sections 

 of the pcojile to settle their quarrels of the past, bury 

 the hatchet, and turn their attention to self-improve- 

 ment. In the long run, self-help is the best aid. — 

 .•^AiNT NiiiAL Singh, in the American Reviau o/ 

 R(vic7cs. 



