At a time when music promoters every where are toying with the conventions of the concert series in hopes of increasing box-office business, it should come as no surprise that the Metropolitan Museum of Art also wants into the act. This past fall the museum inaugurated its “Music for a While” series, nine hour-long concerts scheduled for Fridays at 7:00 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. These have been zealously marketed by the museum’s concert-and-lecture administration as a concertgoing op portunity for almost everyone—from those who “wish to experience a variety of museum activities”to those who may be “loath to commit a whole evening”to music. The concert-and-lecture brochure distributed last summer suggested that listeners com bine this musical interlude “with a visit to the Museum’s exhibitions or an early supper.”

In the context of the Met’s expanded weekend-evening hours, the advertising pitch might deceive. For working people at all interested in art, there perhaps would be time for a hurried dinner before or after such a musical event, but certainly no time to browse in the collections. (With only a half hour to forty minutes—the museum closes its doors at 8:45—one hardly has time to run, much less walk, through an exhibition).

Despite the fact that Program Adminis trator Hilde Limondjian (quoted in a New York Timesarticle of October 19) has promised her prospective audience a total break with traditional concert formats, the series offers no such thing. What it represents is nothing more than a