Annual Report (Volume 35-41); With an Appendix and the Rules of the Society (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868. Excerpt: ... around London, was made up of country choralists. The latter was composed almost entirely of London amateurs. These being thus brought into union and association with most successful musical results, it was only natural they should desire to perpetuate those results by combining together, and thus the Sacred Harmonic Society received an accession of musical strength which has gone on increasing as years have rolled on. It was a fundamental principle of the Society that all services rendered to it by its members should be purely voluntary and honorary. It therefore had no professional members. It did not owe its establishment either to any disruption of, or discord in, any existing musical institution. It rose into existence to satisfy a public want. Its steady lengthened progress has justified the anticipations formed by its promoters; and its freedom from professional jealousies and intrigues has been as marked as its path was clear and defined. This is shown by the following extract from its original prospectus: --"This Society has been formed in consequence of its appearing to several amateur practitioners of music to be desirable to establish, in a central part of London, a Society whose object should be, the cultivation of a just taste for the higher class of compositions in sacred harmony, and the improvement of its members in execution, united with a desire to aid in establishing for the London amateurs of music the reputation, which has repeatedly been denied to them, of being able to perform the sublime compositions of Handel, Haydn, and other eminent sacred composers, with that degree of precision and effect which their worth entitles them to, and which the developement of their inherent beauties requires. "In thus announcing the object of this S...