Central Park Band Concert

“Last evening, for the second or third time since Comptroller Green, after much hesitation, decided to have music not only in Central Park, but in a couple of parks down town as well, there was music at the Battery. The greatest pains, however, seemed to be taken to make it as unenjoyable an affair as possible. There was certainly a band, composed of some forty or fifty very well dressed young gentlemen, all of whom wore high-crowned white hats of exactly the same shape, but they played with a painfully apparent air of condescension, and disdained to exert themselves except in the mildest possible manner, while the pauses between the pieces were expanded to the utmost extravagant dimensions. You were treated to a feeble infliction of Strauss or Meyerbeer or some other classic composer familiar to the inhabitants of the First ward for the space of three minutes and then had to wait for another ten while the band men chatted in German, and looked contemptuously round at the crowd gathered about them. And, to tell the truth, the crowd attracted by the performance was not altogether one calculated to inspire profound respect even among men less exclusive and high-toned than those who belong to the Protective Musical Union. Round the band stand, which was constructed of a few trestles and planks of unpainted wood, there were a couple of rows of park benches, most of which were occupied by young ladies varying age from nine to fifteen—precisely that period of feminine existence when even rich maidens are more or less addicted to a careless toilet, and when maidens of the lower social strata are almost sublime in the reckless slovenliness of their attire. Sprinkled in this part of the audience, also, were some elderly matrons of the Sarah Gamp type. The men and the boys, most of whom seemed more or less demoralized by loafing, or perhaps politics, formed in a circle behind the ladies, and skirted, like a sort of shabby fringe, the main body of the audience. Altogether there were not more than two or three hundred persons present, even though you counted in children of tender age as ‘full fares.’ Now and then a party of emigrants lingered a moment or two to listen to the music, but were evidently under the impression that it was a sort of street-minstrel troupe, and they therefore judiciously left at about the time when it might be expected that the hat would be passed round for contributions. Nowhere at any time did the crowd acquire anything like an element such as so constantly may be found at Central Park, composed of people attracted to the concert by a real love for al fresco music and of a refined and harmless pleasure. And if any such had been drawn thither they would have soon discovered that they were not wanted by the rest of the audience and certainly not by the Park authorities. The site selected for the band is precisely that where it is impossible for you to listen to the music without enduring the greatest personal discomfort. It is at the corner of the Battery Park, immediately at the foot of Broadway, and stone walks, heated by the fierce summer sun, and sheltered only by the most insufficient foliage, constitute the sole accommodation provided, with the exception of the score or so of benches already alluded to. One side of this miserable auditorium, it may also be said, lies directly in the main path of passengers from Castle Garden, and emigrants with sharp-cornered boxes every now and then run you down, unless you keep a very sharp lookout for coming danger. How different from the charming concerts at the Park, with the gaily painted bandstand and the thousands of awning canopied seats, and the spacious green sward carpeted with velvet turf! And why could not the Park Commissioners, if they really desire to give the people of the lower ward of the city a summer treat in the way of music, throw open for these special occasions the central patch lawn? The only trouble involved in doing so would be to pull down the chains and announce to the people that they might enter, for it would be as easy to erect a band stand, such as is now used, in one place as another. And even if the grass did suffer a little the public would at least get their money’s worth out of the musicians, whose efforts are at present almost utterly wasted. Unless the present design of the authorities is simply to keep the ‘word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope,’ some reforms of this kind are absolutely necessary. A Battery concert, as at present conducted, is simply a dismal sham, unproductive of enjoyment and provoking in the minds of the poor a bitter sense of the difference involved in living down town and living in the immediate neighborhood of our great Park.”