The Sacred Harmonic Society have begun their concerts for the
season at Exeter Hall. Their first performance, last night, consisted of Handers Coronation Anthem " Zadok the priest," the " Dettingen Te Deum," and Mozart's Twelfth Mass; pieces which the Society have repeatedly ex- ecuted before. The Coronation Anthem and Te Deum are not well adapted for a concert-hall. Having been written for particular occasions of great pomp and solemnity, their style corresponds with their purpose; they are broad, simple, and overpoweringly loud, without any of those finer traits of genius which are necessary to give interest to music when it is heard merely as music and divested of extraneous associations. Mo- zart's Twelfth Mass is a divine composition, second only to his Requiem, and little inferior even to it ; but it likewise suffers by being transferred from the church to the concert-hall and performed without the religious service of which it forms a part. Even under this disadvantage, how- ever, it is a musical treat of the highest order, It was very finely exe- cuted last night. The concerted movements for solo voices were per? fectly well sung by Miss ilirch, Miss Dolby, Mr. Benson, and Mr. Lawler ; but in the choruses there was occasionally a little unstetulgtess, particularly among the treble voices.
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