I have often wondered that music seems to have been, but for the operations of the York Musical Society, almost at a standstill in York since the war began, and I am not surprised to find Mr. Reginald Rose writing to a local paper to endeavour to excite the musical people of the city to put a little more life into its music before another season begins. What is wanted is not the chance, spasmodic efforts represented by casual touring concert parties, which, though they may afford opportunities of listening to eminent instrumentalists and vocalists, do little or nothing to develop a taste for music that signifies. A peripatetic prima donna who comes round and warbles a few hackneyed operatic selections, a royalty ballad or two, and so forth, may afford momentary delight, but does nothing for music. After all, we have as a rule to look to the chief choral society of a town as the centre of musical enterprise, and, if it realises its responsibility, its opportunities are great.. But it cannot cover the whole ground, and orchestral and chamber music are on the whole of greater artistic value, and it is only because they do not afford the same possibilities for amateurs to take an active part that they are less cultivated. Probably the York Musical Society has enough on its hands without undertaking any further responsibilities, and, if is like other similar societies, it may even be affected by a certain jealousy of other forms of music than that which it cultivates, a condition of affairs which is lamentably narrow-minded, but undoubtedly exists. Yet I have often thought it might be possible for orchestral and chamber concert enterprises to be affiliated to the chief choral society, and run by separate committees, in sufficiently close touch with one another to avoid friction, overlapping, and consequent waste—I fear the idea is Utopian, yet it has something practical to recommend it.