Why dost thou sing? O Lady, have we ever
In thought or action done thee any wrong?
Then wherefore should'st thou visit us for ever
With thy one song?
Punch gave it up; but in 1910 he declared that "one of the finest efforts accomplished by the gramophone has been the obliteration of the inferior amateur singer."
Pioneers and Prodigies
The musical education of the million advanced apace. No more potent agency for the diffusion of a taste for orchestral music has existed in our times than the Promenade Concerts, directed since 1895 by Sir Henry Wood. The creation of this new audience is described with sympathy and delightful humour in The Promenade Ticket by the late and deeply lamented Arthur Hugh Sidgwick. While recognizing these new and beneficent activities, Punch did not forget the splendid pioneer work done by forerunners—notably Sir August Manns, whose seventieth birthday in 1895 is affectionately celebrated in punning verse. The action of the L.C.C. in 1897, which threatened to put a stop to the Queen's Hall Sunday Concerts, reawakened Punch's anti-Sabbatarian zeal. Not much account is taken of serious native composers, but the rise of Elgar's "star" is acknowledged as early as 1904 in the picture of Richter conducting The Dream of Gerontius.
A SHOW OF HANS
(Richter interprets Elgar's Dream.)