Page:The Cornhill Magazine - 1901-04 - Volume 10, Issue 58.djvu/1



life was experience—when it was curiosity, hope, speculation, all those desires with which existence begins—the writer was sent by her father to some musical meetings, which are now so long over that the very rooms in which they first originated do not exist any more. They were Willis's Rooms, out of St. James's Street. The Musical Union was the name given to the concerts, which were an admirable invention of Mr. Ella's to try to raise the standard of music from certain shallow depths to which it seemed to be gradually sinking. There used to be an encouraging picture of a lyre on the programme, and a pretty little sentence—'Il più gran omaggio alla musica sta nel silenzio'—printed in coloured letters at the end of it. This, alas! is not yet the universal opinion; promiscuous clap-trap applause and boisterous encores, often before the last notes have died away, being still in fashion.

I believe the Musical Union eventually migrated to St. James's Hall, but it was in Willis's cool and stately halls, with the faded velvet seats, that the writer for the first time heard those familiar and delightful strains of Joachim's violin, which have so happily sounded on through the latter half of a century of change and perplexity, ever bringing truth and strength and tranquillity along with them.

Rh