Church Music Association Public Rehearsal

“C. M. A. rehearsal, at Steinway 4 p. m., with orchestra. Overture to Le Pardon de Plörmel, Meyerbeer, with the little choral bits toward its close, went off well enough. It’s a scrappy incoherent composition, full of strain after effect, but there are in it pretty & brilliant passages of orchestral manipulation that people will like. Then the orchestral introduction to the Lobgesang. Thirty-six minutes long. A deadly-lively symphony in itself. People may say what they please about delicate conceptions & artistic work. To me, it seems full of most damnable iteration—most intolerable & not to be endured. There is in it a nice Mendelssohnish phrase that one would like to hear repeated twice or thrice. But it is produced twenty times or fifty times—ad infinitum, in fact—till one loathes it. Edmund, Tucker, Rev. Cooke, & I came to the same conclusion without concert or conference—viz., that it must be eliminated. Then came the chorus, & certain soli, from the Lobgesang. Hill (tenor) excellent, Mrs. Mixsell powerful but feline. There was a large audience. Shook hands with Peter Remsen Strong & his little Miss Mary, now quite an attractive young lady, Miss Louisa Schuyler (of S. C. days), Richard S. Tucker, Mrs. Christine Griffin, etc.”