as it was before." Dr. Muck in Boston does not agree with me. He even brings his men to New York to perform Schumann's Rhenish Symphony and Rimsky-Korsakoff's Scheherazade and calls the result a program. This strikes me as insolence, but it is an efficient kind of insolence. The concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall are always sold out, and Dr. Muck could, if he so desired (I am expecting something of the sort), make up a program consisting of the Beautiful Blue Danube waltz and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without any appreciable effect on the box office.
There is, of course, the necessity (at least it is so regarded) of educating the children. They must, according to the accepted theory of education, hear what has been done before they hear what is being done, but it does not seem necessary on this account to convert the best orchestra in America (one of the best anywhere) into a primary school. It is disheartening to realize, as some of us must, that this band, which one might hope to find exploiting new tonal combinations for our delectation, is fast becoming a museum where celebrated old bits of tune may be inspected and reheard.
Hope has appeared, however, in an unexpected quarter. The extreme popularity of the cinema theatres was not to be guessed at a few
