The activities of the musical clubs all over the country include in a majority of cases the occasional performance of chamber music works. In the small towns these are usually private, social affairs; in the large cities they often succeed in reaching a wide public. There are literally thousands of such clubs in the United States and their influence in the promotion of musical appreciation is very great. Of course, many of them are namby-pamby pink tea gatherings, leaning languidly toward the Godard's Berceuse style of composition and conversational clap-trap touching art and artists. But the majority of them, we are inclined to believe, are serious in aim and accomplish an amount of good in their immediate environment. It is worthy of remark that a very large proportion of them are composed exclusively of women. W. D. D. CHAPTER IX CHORAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MUSIC FESTIVALS The Handel and Haydn and other Boston societies--Choral organizations in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere--Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago, and the Far West--Music festivals. I Unquestionably an epoch in the cultivation of choral music in America was inaugurated by the foundation of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. Whether or not there is anything in the theory that American musical organizations had their genesis in the singing classes of Massachusetts, it may scarcely be denied that the cultivation of ensemble singing received earlier and more serious attention in New England than elsewhere in this country. The reason is sufficiently obvious. The people of New England were a church-going race, and singing, even when Puritan asceticism was most intense, was an essential factor of religious services. As soon as the New England conscience was convinced that good singing was no more frivolous and immoral than bad singing the people turned with characteristic zeal to choral practice and singing societies throughout the land became as common as Sunday-schools. These societies were very distinct in character from other American musical organizations, and the distinction was entirely in their favor. They were the outgrowth of a real and widely felt popular need; they had a practical purpose in which all their members were seriously interested. On the contrary, the other early musical societies for the most part were promoted by wealthy amateurs from motives which at best were not free from suspicion of dilettantism and at worst were purely snobbish.