The great festivals of England are among the most important features in the musical history of the country. Their influence is for good in whatever direction you seek. They provide the composer with the most perfect means that human effort can devise, to render his ideals into actual effect. They give the soloist every incentive to the highest efforts. They create that subtle atmosphere which inspires chorus, orchestra, conductor and all, to supreme achievement.
I do not include the Handel festival among them. The peculiar characteristics that go to mark its unique position in the world of English musical history, are decidedly antagonistic to the artistic ideals that are the very life and soul
of the others. This festival cannot, I think, be, in any sense, interpreted as a sign of advance in the art of music, on the part of the English people. It certainly provides the pleasurable excitement of a week in the metropolis, interspersed with music, to the many hundreds of enthusiastic choral singers who flock to the Crystal Palace from, practically, every part of the country.
This, added to the fact that it attracts countless thousands of people, whose only musical experience it often proves to be, certainly proclaims it as an agency for good.
But, judging it solely from an artistic point of view, and with no desire to use undue emphasis, the amalgamation of a chorus numbered by thousands, and an orchestra of appalling size, the brass instruments (mostly called into requisition by Costa, and having no place in Handel's original scores), and those of percussion being in terrible evidence—cannot, as it seems to me, be regarded in any other light than the simple glorification of noise.
That there was an element of genius in the original conception of the idea is not to be denied, and the picturesque combination of such masses of people would naturally appeal to the imagination of such a man as Sir Michael Costa, gifted as he was, with a sense of things on a grand and imposing scale.
Of the success that attended the festivals from the beginning, and has been conspicuous to the present day, it is only a matter of justice to relate, and to the great conductor who was
for so many years its embodiment, such a tribute as the fact involves, is unquestionably due.
Indeed, after his death, many and ominous were the doubts openly expressed as to the capability of any other musician to take his place with success.
However, the late Sir August Manns, who was elected to succeed him, speedily put an end to any uneasiness on the subject. Since his decease Sir Frederick Cowen has, with equal success, carried on the traditions.