"Ratepayer" has certainly done a service not only to 2 cause which this paper has long had at heart but also to Maestro Paci in indulging in a gentle criticism of the programmes offered by the Municipal Orchestra. For his outburst has immediately placed at the disposal of these columns some delightful and powerful expositions of the whole case which Maestro Paci and, through him, the Council endeavour to expound. There has been some discussion of late om the subject of commercialized gambling, which is said to have a sinister Alliance with crime. No correspondent has the hardihood to suggest that municipalized music in Shanghai has any criminal tendencies; merely objected that it sometimes creates a vacuum inthe Grand Theatre and at others throws the second or third row of the stalls into an abyss of sleep. The topic is not new, There are grounds for the belief that it surges in the bosoms of many inhabitants of Shanghai at regular intervals. It develops in some the fervent desire to die at the stake for the sacred faith of frank philistinism. In others it breeds an intense yearning to vindicate the beauty of the musician's art by stern and ruthless massacre of anyone who does not instantly pay homage to the wonders of symphonies in C. minor or attempts gracelessly to justify belief in the excellence of "popular" music.
Therein lies the battle. The platoons of strongly-entrenched devotees of Music with a capital M callously mow down with their machine guns the reckless advance of the battalions of philistines. Yet should there be this dispute? Is that correspondent right who to-day round-! ly asserts that it would be a! great humiliation for M. Paci! and his orchestra to be called! upon to play "popular music?" Is the populace so entirely devoid of musical sense? Musical taste perhaps it cannot claim; that is the pure product of the applied brain and ear. Is not there, however, a danger in insisting too fiercely on the esotoric to the entire exclusion of the more general appeal? There are such creatures as snobs in music as in other arts. Are they not difficult to repress if the way to acquire the merit of the true believer is too easily shown? May it not be that the frankness of the man who sings only in his bath is more credit able in the musical sense than the preciosity of him who shudders at the word Wagner and goes into paroxysms of ecstasy at some modern discord hopefully labelled with one "of them Russian names."
It is possible that if M. Paci were to retain his programme for next Sunday as decided upon and only to change the names on the printed sheet to plain descriptions, the unsuspecting citizen might be jured to the Grand Theatre and, being there, to listen attentively and applaud. Yet the suggestion would be unfair both to M. Paci, and to Shanghi There is' a love of culture in Shanghai; it is strong enough to convince the most adamantine box office, Maestro Paci is moreover by no means so befogged in his vision that he would prefer to pander to the weakness of the musical snobs. W.ILK. is on far sounder ground when he defends last Sunday's programme in detail. It emphatically does minister to the despised "popular" audience and, at the same time, provides a feast of which no true musi¢ lover need be ashamed of having been a devourer. The conclu sion is that Shanghai and its municipalized music will be all the better for being left to work out their own salvation in the ce rse of what, it is to be hoped; il be a successful season, The snobs on the one hand and the over-sensitive philistines on th other should hold their peace, let themselves be merged in. the crowd of honest lovers of good music well played and, in that pleasant obscurity,. give themselves up to. unfeigned enjoyment regardless of labels, tend" endes and schools. The tolerance of the well-instructed, in fact, should give way to the unaffected enjoyment of the well-educated,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.