ning
concert. Two points are perhaps worth noting here: First, the size and
strength of the Salomon Orchestra; and second, the fact that Haydn did
not, as every conductor does now, direct his forces, baton in hand.
The orchestra numbered between thirty-five and forty performers--a very
small company compared with our Handel Festival and Richter Orchestras,
but in Haydn's time regarded as quite sufficiently strong. There were
sixteen violins, four tenors, three 'celli, four double basses, flutes,
oboes, bassoons, trumpets and drums.

Salomon played the first violin and led the orchestra, and Haydn sat
at the harpsichord, keeping the band together by an occasional chord
or two, as the practice then was. Great composers have not always
been great conductors, but Haydn had a winning way with his band, and
generally succeeded in getting what he wanted.

A Rehersal Incident

An interesting anecdote is told by Dies of his first experience with the
Salomon Orchestra. The symphony began with three single notes, which the
orchestra played much too loudly; Haydn called for less tone a second
and a third time, and still was dissatisfied. He was growing impatient.
At this point he overheard a German player whisper to a neighbour in his
own language: "If the first three notes don't please him, how shall we
get through all the rest?" Thereupon, calling for the loan of a violin,
he illustrated his meaning to such purpose that the band answered to
his requirements in the first attempt. Haydn was naturally at a great
disadvantage with an English orchestra by reason of his ignorance of
the language. It may be true, as he said, that the language of music "is
understood all over the world," but one cannot talk to an orchestra in
crotchets and semi-breves.

The Hanover Square Rooms

At length the date of the first concert arrived, and a brilliant
audience rewarded the enterprise, completely filling the Hanover Square
Rooms, at that time the principal concert hall in London. It had been
opened in 1775 by J. C. Bach, the eleventh son of the great Sebastian,
when the advertisements announced that "the ladies' tickets are red and
the gentlemen's black." It was there that, two years after the date
of which we are writing, "Master Hummel, from Vienna," gave his first
benefit; Liszt appeared in 1840, when the now familiar term "recital"
was first used; Rubinstein made his English debut in 1842; and in the
same year Mendelssohn conducted his S