DUNEDIN CHORAL SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 3816, 18 May 1875, Page 3

DUNEDIN CHORAL SOCIETY.

To the Editor. Siß,—This Society being a strictly private •ne, the columns of newspapers are not the place for arguing the question of fitness or unfitness of its committee to manage its affairs or anything relating to the Society, but as your correspondents, “Crotchet,” ”M.,” and “Three-year-old Subscriber” have, regardless of this, rushed into print, permit me a word or two in reply. They must admit that they are simply raving their own individual opinions, which, from their ignorance of the working of the Society as displayed in the their letters, and their exaggerated statements, are not worth much. The conductor is responsible for the seleetion of the best material to render the works chosen, vide rule 8. That he did this in the case of “Maritana” is true te my knowledge. If “ Crotchet” (unhappy rum de plume) is more fit than lie, and can make members sing in spite of their declining to do so, let him apply for the post. His assertions arfi a slur on the conductor alone. Granted, although I do not admit it, that Maritana ” was a work unfit for the Society, it does not necessarily follow that the Society must collapse. One unfit work in four or five seasons won’t collapse it. Oddly enough, the two bt st societies north of Dunedin have given the same work under elective committees, mark you, and they have not collapsed in consequence, nor are those committees therefore branded incapable. Honorary members, from whom we derive our funds, like a little variety. Our committee, it is true, have up to the present time sent complimentary tickets to editors of newspapers, and this privilege has been abused by some of them adopting a very discourteous and reprehensible style of criticism, to such an extent that a leading member of the orchestra has retired, and other performing members have stated their intention of following suit if it is continued. It is bad taste on the part of any newspaper to criticise any amateur performance in the manner in which “ Maritana” was criticised by the ‘ Daily Times,’ and I as one of the performers decidedly object to be told, in pretty plain words, that my rendering of such and such an air was not equal to Mr So-and-so’s, of the Opera Company, who has had nothing else to do all his life but learn it. In one breath we are told that the solo of Mr Blank (a paid professional) on the tinpot was excellent, and then that Miss Somebodyelsej one of the ablest amateur members of lie Society, was just as unhappy in her efforts; and .that Mr Minim couldn’t get as high as Mr Hallam. And all this at the hands of some type-sticker or volunteer critic who knows as much, or less, about music as my walking stick. I deny in toto that the prosperity of this or any private society depends, or has anything to do with the notice taken of it by any newspaper. If it does, then pray by which newspaper is this Society to be guided ? By the ‘ Times,’ with its imbecile critique, the ‘ Guardian ’ with its flattering notice, or the Star with its neutrality? I sincerely hope that the committee will take into their serious consideration the advisability of discontinuing these complimentary tickets to editors, or else intimate that they must agree upon some competent person outside the Society to write the critiques' for them aIL With regard to the reporter being requested to leave the room at the annual meeting, and the alleged exclusiveness of that meeting, I refer “ Three-year-old ” to rules 10 and 13, and if bad taste was shown at all it was only by the reporter^-a stranger, who forces hi* presence Into a private meeting of a private Society unasked. No expression of opinion was necessary. If reporters are to be admitted uninvited, why not the public? Why draw the line at reporters ? This kind of thing has grown so much of late that a private dinner party of a friend of mine was reported not long since in one of the daily papers. There were no “ dissentients ” to the course adopted at the meeting. If there were, their voices were not heard, and I challenge “ Three-year-old ” to prove the inaccuracy of the report of the meeting. I am amused at the quantity of “ thinks ” and irrelevant deductions of your correspondents, particularly the crotchety one, and have yet to leam that their opinions and “thinks” are worth any more than those of any other member of the Society, and therefore I do not swallow them in the wholesale manner they would have me. What are their special qualifications for predicting the collapse of the Society ? If they are members, why did they not rir their plaintive wails at the annual meeting to those who were present and interested in the subject, instead of venting them on the public, who have nothing to do with it. If they are not members, the subject doesn’t concern them. There are, it seems pretty plain, a number of performing members like your correspondents, who, instead of working for the general good of the Society, pay far too much selfish attention to their own individual tastes, and they all want to be committee-men. Notwithstanding all their crcakings, however, the Society is now on a better and more prosperous footing than any other society in the Colony—Auckland even not excepted—and this is due solely to its being managed by a permanent and not an elective committee. We had quite enough of the latter in the old society.—l am, &c., _ Music. Dunedin, May 14.