Ravinia Results

Customers of hot-weather music have no very intense convictions about what is played to them. This fact is known to every conductor, every musician who plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with his eyes shut. In Chicago's Ravinia Park last fortnight, to give the program committee some ideas for next summer's series by the Chicago Symphony, questionnaires were handed to the 8,000 people who went to concerts during the week. Only 550 bothered to answer the questionnaire.

Favorite Ravinia composers proved to be Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Bach, Sibelius--in that order. This suggested nothing new to the committee, since Wagner, Brahms and Beethoven were most frequently played at Ravinia this summer. Only 4% were bored by any one number, only 8% enjoyed one just moderately. The rest enjoyed everything greatly, except for five people who were bored by a whole program, ten by half of a program. One person asked for a special number next summer--"Roosevelt's Funeral March." The committee decided to look elsewhere than in questionnaires for program ideas.

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