The concert season has returned again Such difficulties had to be overcome to produce it, and such responsibilities taken on. Imagining it is simply too easy; everything, or almost everything, stands in the way of such an undertaking. A certain freedom of action and thought are required, yet the circumstances sometimes limit them excessively.

From establishing a budget to selecting the programs, and from choosing performers to pleasing the audience—there are nothing but surprises, problems, pitfalls, and traps.

For a single success, so many disappointments!

And then, when everything seems sorted out, still nothing can be taken for granted. Has the program truly been properly assembled? The works, in contrasting one another and in being joined together, will they form the desired whole? Will the performance, however well prepared it may be, still be faithful, vibrant? And with all of these conditions satisfied, what will the audience actually be like? Will they do their part? What will they expect [certain things] and for what reasons?

Because, as paradoxical as such a conclusion may seem, is it not reasonable to think that, in the end, everything is in the hands of the audience?

The artists will be, for the most part, as the audience wants and deserves them to be. The demands of the one determine the value of the other. It is again the relationship between consumer and producer that Valéry has spoken of.

When the audience is enlightened, cultivated, civilized, one sees everywhere, in all domains, the erection of monuments reflecting the quality of social, intellectual, and spiritual life, The debate that should be had about this lies beyond the scope suitable for this paper.

After all it is only a matter here of greeting the artists who will appear on stage, and not of judging society. Could it be hoped, nonetheless, that the audience will take a position, that they will insist on being informed; that they will endeavour to expand their horizons, here and there, beyond where habit usually confines them?