Pittsburgh Blues

Perhaps it was because they had heard that arch-Fundamentalist Dr. Clarence E. N. Macartney of Philadelphia was coming among them, to fill the sacred shoes ot old-school Dr. Maitland Alexander at the First Presbyterian Church (TIME, Feb. 21). Perhaps they wanted to assert themselves before the younger lion of righteousness arrived, or perhaps to prepare for him a fitting atmosphere of holiness. Or perhaps they were truly indignant with no thought of Pittsburgh as the northern capital of Fundamentaland. Whatever the reason, ten Pittsburgh ministers left no churchman dubious, about the spirit that was in them when, last fortnight, they evoked a Pittsburgh Sunday-closing law dating from 1794 and protested loudly to their city's "safety director" that two Sunday concerts, planned by the newly-formed Pittsburgh civic symphony orchestra, would constitute that horrid thing, "a menace to public morals."

Pittsburgh's "safety director," one James M. Clark, churchgoer, announced that the concerts would not be permitted. Music-lovers murmured. Safetyman Clark, officeholder, melted and said he would get an opinion from the city solicitor. But last week the orchestra, ''in preference to entering a religious controversy," canceled its own plans, explaining 1) tha Sunday had been chosen for the concerts because most of the civic musicians were employed by theatres on week days; 2) that the prevalence of organ recitals, park band concerts and radio jazz on Sundays in Pittsburgh, against which there had been no organized protest, had seemed to indicate that Sunday symphony concerts might be no more pernicious. Few Pittsburghers stopped to consider that a Beethoven symphony or even a Debussy suite might contain more of the stuff of the spirit than a Moody & Sankey hymn.