S. Coleridge-Taylor. Other concerts accompanied these in which noted
soloists took part and great composers were present and conducted their
own compositions as given by trained orchestras. So, in 1906 about
thirty-six thousand people of the region were able to hear pieces from
Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn, Vieuxtemps, Liszt, Rossini, Schumann, Strauss,
and Mendelssohn--these were the names represented in the program of
1906, while selections from Goldwork, Beethoven, Tschaikowsky,
Saint-Saens, Grieg, Mozart, and Wagner, in 1912 were heard by eight
thousand persons.

It is quite impossible to estimate the effect of such musical
opportunity or the meaning of these rehearsals from January to June to
those villages. The people become consecrated to their art, like the
Oberammergauers. Personal ambition is swept away in the success of the
song or the oratorio. As there is no entrance to the concerts except by
invitation, all mercenary and selfish desire is removed. There is one
aim--to express the music perfectly and in the most lofty spirit;
therefore the festival is both a vital element in the community and a
welder of the people into a social unity. The chorus is also an
influence for democracy. There is a weekly rehearsal. Women sometimes
walk several miles to attend this and members rarely miss a meeting. One
couple came twelve miles every week for eight years. There is no expense
except for music and sometimes the sum does not go over sixty cents a
year. The possession of a voice is the one condition for entrance, and
the land does not assign tuneful voices according to man-made
aristocracies; maid and mistress, bank president and store clerk, sing
side by side. Into many lives, otherwise inert, the music brings a
motive and an inspiration. They sing with wonderful enunciation and with
a fervor that can come only from spontaneous rapture. When in _Elijah_
the prophets of Baal cried out their prayer for "Fire!" outsiders ran,
it is said, and notified the fire department!

To have a large part of the community thus trained, to have all the
community thus interested and inspired, to have every least member of
the community honored by citizenship in a village where these nobly
cultural influences are found, is certainly a great thing. And when we
remember that this could happen or rather, could be developed, in any
town or village in the land, we can but mourn our silent roadsides, our
unsinging lips, our wicked waste of th