With to-day's instalment, we think that the correspondence on M. Paci's failure to do his duty by conducting the open air concerts may suitably be closed.
K." hits the nail on the head when he says that the whole point is, What do the ratepayers spend so much money on the band for? The full amount, by the way, is now Tls. 69,720, estimated, not Tls. 50,000. Presumably the idea. is to get the best possible music, summer as well as winter. "And to that end riders—otherwise conductors—dearly hired." Obviously we do not get the best music by putting up with subordinate bands-men (no offence is meant to them) who are not even officially assistant conductors. We hope we shall always justify Mr. Wolfe's confidence in not descending to yellow journalism. But there is no analogy between that and light music. For music is not necessarily bad because it is light—as witness the work of Sullivan, Offenbach, Audran, ete. And surely it is part of M. Paci's business to choose programmes for the summer which shall be both light and good. A tremendous to do has been made by those who want to keep M. Paci in cotton wool all through the summer (much like the Genoese Municipality conderaning Paganini's Guarnerius to perpetual silence in a glass case as being too precious for use) over the bad conditions of the Public Garden. They carefully omit to mention that only two concerts take place there weekly and these could easily be moved elsewhere, if conditions are irremediable. It is perfectly true that Prof. Buck disliked conducting open air concerts, on race days or at volunteer parades. But he did it, because, German or no German, he was a conscientious man and realized what he was paid to do. No valid argument has yet been adduced for expecting less of M. Paci.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.