At a London concert recently a popular English soprano broke with a long established tradition by declining, in spite of repeated and enthusiastic recalls, to sing an encore piece. Most genuine lovers of music will agree that one deserves to be complimented on her moral courage A demand for an encore 's naturally wel-j comed by many singers as a tribute to their powers. But its significance should be diminished in their eyes by the fact that the encore habit has becom? almost mechanical, so much 80, indeed, thet encores are deliberasziy lewed for in the time tah many concert programmes Where this allowance has not beea made, or where it only permits of a limited number of extras, the singer who gives a succession of encore picces is encouraging a bad. habit and pandering to a spirit of sheer greed, and at the same time is committing a breach of professional etiquette by trenching upon the time allotted to other performers.
The value of encores, like that of titles, is in inverse proportion to the number granted. The real sinners, of course, are the less intelligent but more demonstrative i members of the audience, who often contrive to dislocate a finely conceived programme and to emphasise its weakest or most hackneyed portions. They have j their appropriate reward so far the vocalist is concerned, for it is seldom that the pieces given as encores are as good as those on the programme. In orchestral concerts the scope of the irrepressible encorist is, fortunately, i-limited; but it is big enough to make many people wish that Ko-Ko had_remembered to put on his "little list" the person who always wants a second rendering of just the very pieces one least requires, and should least want, to hear again. We should be grateful to Wagner for having killed the en-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.