THE MUSICAL WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 4113, 3 May 1876, Page 4

THE MUSICAL WORLD.

(From Enharmonia.)

An organ of remarkable structure and dimensions has just been opened at Prim-rose-hill, London. It is in if hall at the back of Mr Holme’s house. This gentleman, an engineer by profession, is an enthusiast on the subject of organs, and himself a very good performer, he has, at length, realised the desire of years, and the organ, which has been four years in building, is finished. M. Guilenant, of Paris, Mr Beat, and Mr Leinmeus, played at the ope ing performances, when Air Holmes invited his friends to hear his new instrument. Among the novelties of the instrument area carillon of sixty-one bells, and an ech organ at the opposite end of the hall, played from the same key-board by electric action. The performer faces the audience, and the wind is supplied to the pipes by a steam-engine of eleven-horse power. There are four manuals, sixty-live speaking stops, nine couplers, twenty-one adjusting pedals, and 4,209 pipes.

In the United States, Mdme. Titiens was offered Ll,ooo to sing live songs at a concert, but was obliged, from illness, to refuse. Dr Strainer has been presented with a handsome batdn of ivory and gold, by the gentlemen of the evening service choir, at St Paul's, London, together with an address, congratulating him on his recovery from an accident.

The tonic sol-fa method of teaching to sing is now far more extensively used in schools than any other method. Professor Blakie has written, with characteristic energy and humor, on the way in which preaching monopolises the time of public worship in the Presbyterian Church. He proposes that each church shall have its pastor in the true sense of the word, the preaching to be done by itinerant evangelists, who shall not have to prepare more than one sermon a mouth. Under the new system he hopes that church music will assert that place, and significance in Divine worship, which is now so often denied it in Presbyiteriau churches.