...It is undeniable that the singing festivals in America have entered a new phase. At each new festival the need for change and improvement is voiced. The old Constitutions have been changed, computated, enlarged, without any great improvement of the results, and ever wider spreads the conviction that one must reform the kernel, real essence of the thing if these festivals shall eventually become what so far they only have been in name.

When twenty years ago the first American Singing Society was called into life the leading idea was the national principle analogous to the Turners', Sharpshooters' and their Associations. One wanted to organize the German singers into an impressive mass, in order to foster the feeling of unity and in order to win respect from the other nationalities which people the United States. The improvement and cultivation of singing was indeed envisaged, but 2but was pursued in so unsystematic and luke-warm a manner, that this main object degenerated more and more into a side-issue, and so the singing festivals are even today not yet what they should and might be. The Germans have long since, through their intelligence, won a respected position, and it would be unjust if they as citizens of a republic, misjudging the principle of equality, would now want to become dominating. The original purpose of all the Singing, Turn and Sharpshooters Festivals has been realized. With all their splendour, public processions and shows, they have been in a way, only a demonstration and manifestation of German-dom. Now it is time to look to the inner development of such associations...

At the Xllth Singing Festival of the N. A. S. B. (Nordamerika-nischer Sanger-Bund) one has for the first time tried successfully to make the singing, even "good singing", the main issue. Through the strictest control it was possible to get the singers to study well the general choruses, and so a mass chorus of 3,000 voices could be formed which distinctly surpassed the choruses at former festivals......