ANTIENT CONCERTS, the name of a famous series of London concerts, started in 1776 and continued without a break till 1848. The founders of the concerts were a body of aristo cratic amateurs, who were supported by all the best musicians and cultivated music-lovers of the period. The programmes were devoted to the finest music, orchestral and vocal, of the day, or more strictly speaking of the past, for it was one of the rules that no music less than 20 years old was admissible. From the keen interest taken in them by George III. the concerts acquired the secondary title of "the king's concerts" and this tradition of court patronage was maintained when the Prince Consort "directed" one of them in 1847 at which Mendelssohn was the soloist.