This external connection with music and this lack of intimacy with the thing itself naturally leads us to lay stress on the performance of it. We revel in technique and we exalt the personalities of players and singers. In our opera houses we are satisfied only when we have an “all star” cast by whom we expect to be astonished rather than delighted and elevated. Now, fine singing, as such, is of little importance save as a means of reproducing fine music. If fine singing means a sacrifice of the musical effect; if it destroys the _ensemble_; if it limits the repertoire--then it is not worth the sacrifice. Why should it ever do so? Simply because opera-goers suffer it, and for no other reason in the world. One merely needs to mention a reasonable plan of opera--such as has been carried out for generations in French, Italian, and German cities--to be laughed at by those devotees who have sat for years at the feet of magnificence warming themselves in the effulgence of gilt and jewels. So it is with solo recitals and orchestral concerts. One continually hears people discussing the technique of pianists and violinists, or the comparative merits of our various orchestras. Local pride--the last thing in the world to connect with artistic judgment--asserts itself in favor of one orchestra or another, until it would almost seem that the only purpose of having an orchestra was to excel all the others. How often, on the contrary, do we hear the music itself intelligently discussed? In short, we are trying to be musical vicariously by means of an occasional performance by other people of music the greater part of which is unfamiliar and, therefore, unintelligible to us. This is like trying to be religious through going to church once a week and, sitting passively, being preached and sung at! The most musical communities are not those where all the music of the year is crowded into a festival of three or four days, but those where there is the most real music made at home. A German musical festival used to be the culmination of a whole year of healthy musical activity, and the occasion for the production of new works and a wide variety of old ones. An English or an American festival is, first of all, an opportunity to hear “The Messiah,” and secondly, to hear a famous soloist. The attendance on those two occasions is always much larger than at any others. Is it not true that all the higher functions of the soul of a man or a woman or of a community can be preserved only by being exercised?