Church Music Association Public Rehearsal

“Event of today, the last C. M. A. rehearsal, with orchestra. All the programme gone through. Its selection does Pech credit. The ‘Lorelei’ music, after the sublime Mass, is in its right place. Anything lighter (e.g. Preciosa, or the Midsummer Night’s Dream) would have been too glaring a contrast. The two overtures also are most happily chosen. Strange how tired one is, after two hours of the Beethoven Mass. Repeats included, we spent two full hours on it. One’s attention is so constantly stimulated by glimpses of a power & beauty which one can’t quite grasp—& the whole work is so concentrated & so intense—that I feel, this minute, as if I had walked twenty miles. I’m partially stunned, moreover. I remember ‘a mass of things, but nothing distinctly’—a long eerie of wonderful effects, melodic harmonic, instrumental—periods of arrhythmical choral declamation on a single note, magical in their simplicity—but I can’t fix my mind on any one passage. I have brought away with me only a glowing haze of glorious color investing a succession of noble but mystic & shadowy forms, and the general impression of the whole is so intense that I can think of no details.

Except that ‘Ante omnia saecula.’ Heaven, earth & sea! Time & eternity! What an awful phrase it is! How Beethoven makes a very simple modulation carry one on & on into infinity! The orchestral introduction to the Kyrie stands out—& so does the most serene & celestial ‘et in terra pax,’ and the gorgeous orchestral work in the Et vitam, and the ‘Gratias’ & ‘Et incarnatus’ (loveliest of quartettes)—and the spiritual beauty of the ‘Et Maria Virgine’ & the jubilant acclamation ‘Et homo factus est.’” 

“The final public rehearsal of this society took place yesterday before a large audience. The difficulties of Beethoven’s colossal work, the Mass in D, were boldly encountered and generally with success. Mendelssohn’s ‘Lorelei’ music was also sung.”

This review covers both this rehearsal and the final performance on the following night. See that event for text of the review.