Church Music Association Concert

“Thereafter to Edmund Schermerhorn’s & discussed the next (hypothetical) season of C. M. A. Horsley is not devoid of counsel. Gerard I [think?] talks too fluently. Our subscription list now foots up about $3000.00. But if things happen to go wrong in Rev. Cooke’s household, as I trust they may not, C. M. A. would probably collapse, for it would be hard to find anyone who combines the business talent, the knowledge of music, the interest in the subject, & the official position (with Horsley at St. John’s) which Cooke possesses, & which seem to make him not only invaluable, but essential to the very existence of the C. M. A.”

“At Edmund Schermerhorn’s yesterday afternoon, with him, Ben Stephens, & Horsley. Agreed on the Christus aus Oehlberg for 1^st concert of next (hypothetical) season, either as the Mount of Olives, or under its alias of ‘Engaddi.’”

“At Edmund Schermerhorn’s with Rev. Cooke, Horsley, Jem Gerard, & Ben Stephens [for C. M. A. committee]. There will be a trifling surplus left, as a honorarium for Horsley.”

“If anyone covet an uneasy time, by way of penance for his sins, & want to be ‘worrited’ & aggravated, let him ally himself with a professional musician or musicians, especially if they call themselves composers. Monday afternoon, at Edmund Schermerhorn’s, Jem Gerard, Jr., being thereto instigated by that pushing Mrs. Horsley (who has called on me with the same suggestion), blurted out, more suo, & without consultation, a proposal that we produce, next season, ‘our friend Horsley’s cantata, entitled Comus. Don’t know anything about it—but it’s very fine—very fine—very fine—no doubt.’ The suggestion was received with silence, & then we adjourned. We could not discuss the question of bringing out this work, in the presence of the composer—even had we known anything at all about its merit.

Today I receive[d] a cantankerous, hyperesthetic & self-laudatory letter from Horsley, who calls himself ‘the first of living English composers.’ Perhaps he is. It is no position to brag of.”

“More epistolography from Horsley, who however professes himself entirely satisfied & perfectly serene, at last. I shall do my endeavor, next fall, to fill up the subscription list of C. M. A., according to my promise & (if I succeed in doing so) shall then abdicate. Horsley is a good man & musician, no doubt, but he is evidently too vain & too sensitive to be a comfortable colleague.”

“Visit from Rev. Cooke. His wife & baby are doing well. He has been most viciously discoursed & clapperclawed by Mrs. C. E. H[orsley]., who gives her tongue great license in personal abuse of him & of all the C. M. A. committee, & this in H[orsley]’s presence. E. g., ‘Who & what is W. Schermerhorn? I suppose his grandmother was some Dutch market-woman before she came to this country.’ The lady’s grievance against Schermerhorn & against myself & the others, is that we did not instantly adopt the suggestion to produce ‘Comus’—of which we know absolutely nothing—& to give our subscribers Horsley instead of Haydn. She is evidently a Tartar, of an uncommonly vulgar type. A letter of hers to Cooke is sufficient to prove this. And she is inseparable from her vain goose of a husband (once even attending a committee meeting with him). I think I shall cut loose from this most sublime of “English composers.” We might get on with him, in spite of his sensitiveness & his preposterous conceit, but we cannot have a cantankerous low-bred woman interfering in what we do, & blackguarding us for doing what we think best.”

“Long & solemn conference with Jem [Gerard, Jr.] this a.m. He wanted to contribute his $500.00 toward the C. M. A. deficit of Pech’s last year of administration, but I rather declined it, & he acquiesced. I allowed Edmund Schermerhorn & Charles C. Dodge to do so, because $500.00 is to them what $500.00 is to me. But that is not Jem’s case, though he is a prosperous man. I was instrumental in bringing all these gentlemen into this scrape, & ought, in strictness, to bear all the deficit. As it is, I get off with a loss of $1000.00, & perhaps I have had the worth of the money. No thanks to that scallywag, ‘Dr.’ Pech.”

“C. M. A. $4105.00. Am now opening the fall campaign.”

“Visit from Rev. Cooke, who doesn’t get on with H[orsley], & wants to abandon the C. M. A. Prevailed on him to suspend action. The trouble is not so much with H[orsley] himself as with a certain vixen tartar, a termagant, who is pars magna, or maxima of all that Horsley does or is concerned in, & whose tongue & temper seem ungovernable, pestilent & lethal [his wife].”

“Busy day. Rev. Cooke, Horsley, & Gerard at 187 Fulton St. in regard [to] C. M. A. I have been sending out C. M. A. and Philharmonic circulars—thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa—but responses are as yet but faint & few. ‘Le tocsin ne rend pas.’ The C. M. A. shall not go on till the money is secured. I guess it will be, somehow.”

“And subscriptions to C. M. A. are so slow that I fear C. M. A. will not survive for another season, but die of ‘defective nutrition.’ People feel poor just now.”

“Engaged a friend of Horsley’s—one Barron—to beat up C. M. A. subscriptions, for we are still at least $1700.00 short of our working minimum, & our prospects bad. Folks feel poor & timid.”

“Horsley gallantly announces that if our executive committee be afraid to run the C. M. A. this winter, he will run it at his own proper risk, rather than let the chorus disband. Vive Horsley!”

"Times grow harder & harder. I think our C. M. A. concerts must be given up."

“This afternoon, Rev. Cooke, Horsley, Gerard, Stephens, & I took counsel together at my office in re C. M. A. Edmund Schermerhorn couldn’t come, but sent me a kind note, full of timidities & nervousness. The question we had to consider was whether the C. M. A. should be dropped & left to perish & its chorus disbanded, or should be kept alive by another ‘season’ of concerts. When we came together, C. M. A. was in imminent peril of dissolution. I was disinclined to undertake the pecuniary risk of running it, & Ben Stephens was of the same mind. But it appeared that our subscriptions suffice to carry us through the season, with strict economy. Probably the ‘shrinkage of values’ will enable us to secure our soli, etc.—possibly even our orchestra—at reduced prices. There is a chance that some of our subscribers may repudiate. If so, we shall know it when the first installment is called in, & we must then issue a circular to our honest & solvent subscribers, tell them why we can give but one concert, or two (as the case may be), report to them the names of the defaulters, & return to them whatever little dividend may be left of their respective subscriptions. So jacta est alea, & we go ahead. I hope I shall not be saddled with another deficit.”

Brief.

“Sick headache, which has tormented me all day, & kept me from C. M. A. concert tonight. Ellie has gone to represent me.”

“Last night’s C. M. A. concert seems to have been brilliant. Ellie enthused about it, & no wonder. The Gratias, Benedictus, & Agnus Dei of the Niedermeyer Mass are severally gems—and that lovely little ‘Cujus regni non erit finis’ comes in after the ‘Judicare vivos et mortuos’ like a streak of pure clear sunset sky after a day of tempest—beautiful in itself & in its promise of severe weather to come.”

“Steinway Hall was crowded even to its second gallery last night by people anxious to hear the first concert of this society. There were a chorus, large in numbers and including many prominent choir singers in this city; an orchestra in which some of the best members of the Philharmonic Society took part; a solo quartet consisting of [lists soloists]. [Lists program.] We have already spoken of the first performance of the symphony by this society last season, and have nothing to add to our previous remarks. The mass was not satisfactory in the rendering. There was too much mechanism and an entire absence of expression from beginning to end. The conductor is principally to blame for this, as his ideas of tempo are destructive of all effect. Whether the time was marked Largo assai,—80, or Andante mosso,—88, Mr. Horsley did not seem to mind the difference. The work of Niedermeyer might have found a better substitute in some of our modern masses, despite the intemperate onslaught made upon the well known compositions of Rossini and Gounod in the programme. We can only designate this mass as an ineffective imitation of the old fashioned style of writing masses. The sublime words of the ‘Gloria’ and ‘Credo’ are not illustrated in the vivid colors that some of our present composers make such liberal use of, and the ‘Scantus’ and ‘Benedictus’ are subject to the same criticism. The ‘Agnus Dei’ is the best part of the mass, although its rendering last night was of a nature calculated to destroy all effect. Beethoven’s oratorio, which was originally intended to represent Christ on the Mount of Olives, but which squeamishness on the part of the English people changed to ‘David in the Wilderness,’ does not present the immortal symphonist in a favorable light, especially when chimes and orchestra were at sixes and sevens last night and the soloists were unworthy of special notice. The English and American public object to a tenor taking the part of our Saviour, and hence the change to David. The royal prophet had a very poor representative in the ranks of the Church Music Association. The choral part of the concert was anything but satisfactory in both works, and the orchestra seemed to have a commune of their own. Mechanical correctness, or rather the avoidance only of a positive breakdown in the rendering of great works, cannot be considered as a satisfactory result of such a pretentious concert. When blunders thicken and real intelligence is absent, there is little to hope for. Yet this is what happened at the first concert this season of the Church Music Association.”

“The first concert given this season by the Church Music Association took place at Steinway Hall last evening. The reunions of the society have always been numerously attended, and yesterday’s gathering was as large as usual. The performance, as well as the audience, was of the wonted kind. It is plain that an organization having at its disposal the choral forces and the funds of the association might accomplish a great deal. Experience, unhappily, has proven that, like amateur enterprises in general, it confines itself to supplying agreeable entertainments which are not, of course, without influence upon the public taste, but which labor under the disadvantage of not making known any new works and not furnishing conspicuously-good recitals of familiar compositions. Last night’s recital should be mentioned, it is true, as having included among the selections Beethoven’s ‘Engedi,’ which has not been done here for many years. But the principal part of the concert was occupied by Haydn’s Symphony in C minor, and Niedermeyer’s Mass in B flat—both of which productions have been interpreted already by the association—and we really think that the performances of the society are not so frequent that the almost total repetition of a programme is necessary. We can now follow the example set by Mr. Horsley in the pamphlet he has prepared, as heretofore, for circulation, and in which the symphony and the mass are dismissed with brief notices. That the first named piece is indeed ‘lovely’ is indisputable; we are not, however, inclined to share Mr. Horsley’s views when he places Niedermeyer, as a composer of sacred music, above Gounod and Rossini, and speaks of the former writer’s ‘straining after effect,’ and of the latter’s ‘French sensationalism.’ The director and lecturer of the Church Music Association appears to more advantage in the notice of ‘Engendi’ following, in the pamphlet we allude to, than in the harmless outburst quoted from. This notice, as possessed of decided interest, we reproduce. It runs thus:

[‘]Although this work, from its outset, enjoyed vast popularity, it was for many years a sealed book in England, the home of sacred music, on account of the objectionable nature of the words. This will be understood without further comment when it is stated that the Savior himself is represented as singing the tenor part. This serious obstacle prevented the music being known to any but musicians, who possessed it in their libraries, and to the present day the beautiful music might have been hidden under the bushel of this difficulty had not an English amateur luckily hit upon a narrative in the Second Book of Kings, describing the persecution of David at the hands of the followers of Saul, in the caves and rocks of Engedi. This discovery cut the gordian knot, and at once unlocked the treasures of Beethoven’s inspiration. The words are not unskilfully [sic] adapted to the music, and, had it been otherwise, a much worse selection would have been forgiven, as one of the master’s best vocal compositions is now available for general performance—a great boon to the music-loving public of England and America. ‘Engedi’ commences with a short [new column, hereafter becomes a bit difficult to read] instrumental introduction in the sombre [sic] key of E flat minor. The gloomily-colored orchestration, highly indicative of the subject, leads to a long recitative by David, followed by a beautiful agitato [illeg.] in the course of which a soothing, prayerful strain is introduced, which is repeated at the end of the movement, previous to the Coda. A soprano recitative describes the trouble that David has to suffer from Saul’s persecution, which is then succeeded by an adagio and air, with choral accompaniment, praising God’s love and goodness and describing the torments of the wicked. In the chorus a great fugal point—‘destruction is their lot’—is introduced, and is well worthy of notice. The fate of David, ‘to wander among rocks and caves,’ is now foretold by a prophetess, and a duet of resignation, one of the most lovely of Beethoven’s vocal compositions, is then sung, and will, undoubtedly, give great delight. After a short recitative the followers of Saul then appear in search of their enemy. In a soft march movement, varied by a crescendo indicative of approach, they assert: ‘We surely here shall find him.’ Again David declares his submission to the will of the Almighty, and is interrupted by a furious chorus of his foes. They cry, ‘Where is he, the deceiver?’ and David’s followers plead for mercy. The music of his chorus is highly dramatic, and cannot fail to interest its hearers. David’s friend now comes to the scene, and in a bass recitative declares his willingness to use his sword in his leader’s defense. In a trio, for soprano, tenor and bass, (a highly finished work) David deprecates any measures against the ‘Lord’s Anointed.’ Another chorus of Saul’s soldiers and David’s friends expresses the wrath of the former and the dread of the latter, and with this is interwoven a grand solo for David, accompanied by the chorus, which is most exciting and effective. Saul’s adherents then retire, and David exclaims: ‘They are gone; our fears are over; let us praise His holy name.’ The work concludes with the magnificent chorus, ‘Hallelujah! Praise the Lord; worlds unborn shall sing His glory.’ This is the best known of Beethoven’s choral works, and, although in no way to be compared with the Hallelujah in ‘Messiah,’ is a grand, glorious massive work, clothed with all the orchestral magnificence in which Beethoven is unapproachable, and to which Handel was a total stranger.’”

“Haydn, Niedermeyer and Beethoven provided the music sung last night at Steinway Hall on the occasion of the opening concert of the Church Music Association. The genial Haydn was represented by his symphony in C minor. The young Niedermeyer, who died in 1827, in early manhood and in the first flush of success,  by his elaborate mass in B minor; and the Titan of musicians, by his oratorio or cantata, Engedi.

Niedermeyer’s mass has been sung before by the Church Music Association. It is a grand and a massive work, rich in harmonies and in orchestration, and not affluent in melody. Perhaps its finest feature is the Credo, a noble and grandiose movement, in which the fullest resources of the orchestra are brought into service. The Et Incarnatus, for voices alone, is also very striking, and the antiphonal treatment of the words Crucifixus etiam pro nobis are worthy of note. To the phrase, et redet ad de exteram Patris, there is a pizzicato accompaniment for violins, which is decidedly original. The Benedictus contains the most marked melody in the score, and is a composition of great merit. The orchestration of the Agnus De—especially the treatment of the violins—is in many respects novel and striking, and at the date when the composer wrote must have been quite an innovation.

Beethoven’s ‘Christus am Oelberg’ (Christ on the Mount of Olives) was produced in 1809 at Vienna. The official programme in use last night says of it: [quotes the same passage as does the New York Times review, concluding at “a great boon to the music-loving public of England and America”].

The oratorio consists of recitative and aria, duet, trio and chorus. Its main features are the aria and duet, ‘I Love the Lord,’ and the grand final chorus, ‘Hallelujah.’ Its great and prominent merits should secure for it an early repetition at the Church Music Association concerts.

The singing of the society last night was powerful and effective; but the enunciation of words was defective, the attack at times uncertain, while all the solo and quartet passages were overpowered by too heavy an accompaniment. Miss Beebe sang charmingly, and Mrs. Barron and Mr. Remmertz were so good that the audience would have been pleased to have heard more of them, but the music allotted these vocalists was such as prohibited any vocal display. We may add that the audience was very large and fashionable, and that the season of the Association seems to have opened most auspiciously.”

Three separate entries beneath the “Musical Notes” heading.

“Mr. Bergner and Mr. Werner, two of the finest violoncellists in the country, played in the orchestra in the last concert of the Church Music Association.”

“The Church Music Association concerts continue to be in point of attendance the most brilliant of the season.”

“Beethoven’s ‘Egendi,’ says the Church Music Association, ‘is numbered Op. 85 in the thematic catalogue of the author’s compositions, and was immediately preceded by the Mass in C. It was, therefore, written in the zenith of Beethoven’s life and fame, and before the terrible affliction of deafness became so great that all sense of hearing was lost—a calamity which fully accounts for the subsequent vocal impossibilities of the Second Mass and the choral portion of the Ninth Symphony.’”

"Letter from Sir J. Benedict eulogizing Horsley & urging me to 'use my great influence' to bring out some of Horsley’s 'great works.' A letter probably instigated by Horsley or more probably by the indomitable Mrs. Horsley. But his works may be valuable. Johny—a competent & rather severe critic—ranks a certain stringed quartette of Horsley’s high, and the composer of a good stringed quartette can do anything."