Church Music Association Public Rehearsal

“C. M. A. rehearsal at Steinway 3 ½ p.m.—satisfactory. Audience uncommonly appreciative, though not large. It applauded Mrs. Gulager/Remmertz & Leggat in Lurline, and (perhaps with questionable taste) the quartettes of the Requiem. The Lurline music is pretty & popular, & some of its phrases quite original fresh & striking. Mrs. Gulager will distinguish herself in it & recover from her comparative failure at the Philharmonic, which is gratifying, for she is among the nicest of women & the most conscientious & faithful or soprani. The Requiem, never at all understood till now, begins to reveal itself (to me) at last. How could I have missed the force of phrases like the ‘Et lux perpetua’ & the ‘Salve me,’ or of the exquisite quartettes? I am permeated with a sense of its purity & majesty. It is so pure—artistic—perfect—elegant—refined—spiritual—(or something else) that one does not at first perceive its rigor & its significance. I am still unable to grasp the ‘Domine Jesu Christe,’ the ‘Hostias et preces,’ & the ‘Hosanna,’ but I begin to see something of the grandeur of the Requiem as a whole. People like it better than I expected. Applause of movements of the Mass at a piano rehearsal is a novelty. Morgan Dix was there with a copy of the score, & enthusiastic. It was new to him, & ‘the most wonderful music I ever heard in my life.’ What will it be with orchestral color?”

“The first rehearsal for the second concert of the Church Music Association took place on Thursday, the 25th, and was in all respects encouraging. There is scarcely any great work on which the labors of the Association could so well be bestowed as the Requiem of Mozart, whether we consider its romantic history as the last effort of the much-loved composer, the unworthy and foolish prejudice which has kept it out of our concert-rooms, or the wonderful beauty and impressiveness of the work itself. In a choral rehearsal the interest naturally converged on the quartets, ‘Tuba Mirum,’ the ‘Recordare,’ and the sublime ‘Benedictus,’ which were all listened to on Thursday with every mark of satisfaction by a large and refined audience. The choruses increase in numbers and improve in tone, and we trust that none who love the better kind of music will fail to take advantage of the three rehearsals yet to come, and to make themselves perfectly acquainted with a work which is likely and deserves to be immortal.”