no member of the Philharmonic Society has ever seen a Shakespeare play performed as written by Shakespeare. The dean gave Mr. Mahler credit for too little intelligence. The Bohemian Jew conductor probably was well aware of the fact that many of the grandparents of Philharmonic subscribers had assisted at the burning of witches and yet he would have been the last to advise the survival of this jolly custom. Striving to reawaken interest in music which had been heard so often, so badly performed, that it was received with apathy, he introduced careful alterations, perhaps not invariably well-advised, but never thoughtlessly, never for economic reasons, and never, I should be willing to swear, did he obscure a composer's intention. Rather he illuminated it. Permit me to continue to quote Mr. Krehbiel to show how far dull pedantry may exercise an ancillary function to blind obstinacy of opinion: "He did not know that he was doing it, or if he did he was willing wantonly to insult their intelligence and taste by such things as multiplying the voices in a Beethoven symphony (an additional kettledrum in the Pastoral, for instance), by cutting down the strings and doubling the flutes in Mozart's G minor, by fortifying the brass in Schubert's major until the sweet Vienna singer of nearly a century ago seemed a modern Malay running amuck, and—
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