“Even in a great city, with a very large public interested in orchestral music, it is scarcely possible to meet this expense by the receipts from local concerts. There is a limit to the number of concerts that can be prepared or that can find hearers in one place, so that a large fixed orchestra can hardly earn its living—unless in some great place of popular resort, like the Crystal Palace at London or the Trocadero at Paris. Boston, an exceptionally self-reliant metropolis, provides two full audiences a week for the symphony concerts in Music Hall for twenty-four weeks in the year, but it is known that this does not meet the expense of the orchestra. Experience furnishes no evidence of any such hunger for orchestral music among the general public of Philadelphia as would justify a reliance on its financial support for an orchestra of the class of that which private generosity has maintained at Boston and that has established a standard with which, as a business enterprise, it would be necessary to compete. “Clearly, therefore, such an enterprise, if undertaken here, must be undertaken either in a missionary spirit by those who regard music as an elevating influence in the community, or for their own gratification, by those who wish for greater musical opportunities for themselves. In either case, or both, the promoters must expect to pay the piper. And this being the case, we should say that those who pay have an entire right to choose their piper—to organize their orchestra in their own way and put it in charge of whom they please. “The discussion that has been going on recently upon this subject has run wide of the mark. It is not a question of the best way to organize an orchestra, but simply whether there is anybody ready to put up the money to have an orchestra at all. If there is not, the whole discussion is futile; if there is, we cannot see that the details concern anybody else. The rest of us can pay for our tickets and find fault, or we can let it alone, as we have done with so many excellent orchestra concerts, past and present. Something beside the purely musical appeal is required to attract an audience, very few of whom can know the actual difference between one band and another, except in size and in some of the more meretricious technical effects, and if this can be supplied by personal, social or fashionable interest and influence, there is that much gained.