A Birthday Celebration

The Musical Times of London, which many Britishers like to think is the most important of the English musical publications, celebrates its seventy-fifth birthday this year—surely a proud and venerable age. In the anniversary issue there is an extremely modest editorial noting that the paper has naturally inclined more toward the field of choral music of the popular type—that is, the better class of choral music for the people. Perhaps it may be allowable for an American contemporary to point out that The Musical Times and its publishers (Novello and Company, Ltd.) have done more to advance choral music in Great Britain than any other similar factor. There can be no question that the impetus given by the Tonic Sol Fa notation and its promoters also had most stimulating effects, but The Musical Times has left nothing undone to develop the best, with the result that Choral Singing among English-speaking people is possibly more popular than among any other people. Hearty Birthday congratulations to The Musical Times!