The highest test of the discipline of a band is in playing “piano,” and in attacking points of imitation and fugue with vigour. Whatever constitutes the test of the excellence of a band, in execution and effect, applies also to the individual performers.—The coarse, vulgar, pantomime fiddler would make sad havoc in accompanying a trio of Beethoven’s, where the most delicately subdued tone, and the most vigorous expression, are alternately required. It must never be forgotten, that the utmost strictness of subordination is an essential requisite in an orchestra. In fact, it is one of the principal merits of a good orchestra-player to practise uniformly this quality of subordination, whereby the perfection of the whole is importantly promoted. Dramatic music is the most difficult to give effect to; whether it be orchestral, for the action of a ballet, or as an accompaniment to the voice—the license shewn in the numerous changes of a movement, and of time, rendering this species of music by far the most embarrassing to both Professor and Amateur. The attention of the performer must here be divided between his instrument, and the singer, or the director; whilst, in other music, his whole soul is wrapt up in his own performance. Hence it follows that, on his first attempt to play opera-music, he is embarrassed at every page! This difficulty is only conquered, like every other, by habitual practice. In the more advanced stage of his progress, there is nothing so beneficial to the Amateur as to listen, “arrectis auribus,” to the performance of genuine classical _quartetts_ by accomplished masters of the bow. This will do him far more good than all the _Capriccios_ and _Fantasias_ with which the most brilliant of the solo-players, or single-handed exhibitors at concerts, can dazzle his discernment. It will exalt his standard of taste, and enlarge his sense of the beautiful—fully directing his perception, at the same time, to the legitimate powers of the violin and its cognate instruments. The remark has been well made by Spohr, that perfect _quartett-playing_, while it requires perhaps less of mechanical skill than is called for in a _concerto_, yet demands more of refined sentiment, taste, and knowledge. No opportunity (adds the same great Master) of joining a good quartett-party, ought to be lost. The occasions afforded for such mode of improvement were for a long while, however, in our English metropolis, as rare as they _might_ have been advantageous. The experiments of the London _Concerti da Camera_, and “Quartett Concerts,” happily occurred, at length, to test the feeling of our musical circles, and open a new path to the career of the art in this country. Following that new path, and developing further resources to which it led, the “Beethoven Quartett Society,” originated and managed by a Committee of enlightened Amateurs, with the Earl of Falmouth for their President, came into honourable existence in 1845, to render the justice of a too