CONCERT PROGRAMMES have been subject to many changes during recent times, not least in the matter of their length. More and more it has come to be recognized that, in the case at all events ' of serious music, the amount which can be properly assimilated and enjoyed at one sitting is strictly limited, and modern concertgoers read with amazement of the Gargantuan musical feasts which their robuster predecessors were apparently able to digest. Thus of a concert given by Beethoven in 1807 one reads that the programme consisted of no fewer than four of his symphonies (the first four) ; while that of another concert which he gave in the following year was even more astonishing, includ ing the C minor and Pastoral symphonies, the Choral Fantasia, the G major piano concerto, two extracts from the Eisenstadt Mass, a vocal item ("Ah ! perfido") and an improvisation on the piano. Modern concert programmes are not only more reasonable in length but also, in the best instances, far more thoughtfully and artistically arranged.
In this connection reference may be made to the analytical pro gramme or concert programme with explanatory notes and com ments. This is usually regarded as a recent invention, but it goes back considerably farther than is generally supposed. As early as 1783, according to Grove, something of the kind was tried in Berlin, while in Great Britain Thomson, the first Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh university, in 1841 incorporated historical and analytical notes on the pieces to be performed in the pro grammes of the concerts of the Professional Society of Edin burgh. Later Ella, in connection with the concerts of the Musical Union, which began in 1845; Wylde in the programme books of the New Philharmonic Society, whose first concert was given in 1852; John Hullah, and others, adopted the same procedure, which has since become practically the rule in England and Amer ica in the case of concerts of a suitable type. Elsewhere the analytical programme has never established itself to anything like the same extent as in England and America.