Church Music Association Public Rehearsal

“Moreover the funds of C. M. A. run low, there is a bad look out for concert number 3, and the probable deficit will fall on me, very naturally & justly, as chief promoter of the undertaking and “President” of the Association. Great glory & dignities bring burdens with them, & sometimes, cost more than they come to.

But I feel a little consoled after our orchestral rehearsal at Steinway this afternoon. (The principals in the Mass rehearsed here by the by Saturday night: Salvotti, Kempton, Leggat, Jewett). That noble genial wholesome music so rendered, with full orchestra, repays one for pecuniary losses & much vexation of spirit. I hope to hear it again tomorrow night, and that will probably be the last time I shall hear it in this world—eheu!

Steinway was full. Pech began with Meyerbeer’s Pardon de Ploermel overture, & (injudiciously) played it all through twice. Bad policy. The attention of the audience flags, and the piece is always worse rendered the second time than the first. Then Haydn’s 16^th Mass, & certain portions of the Lobgesang. The Lobgesang is mere Handel & water (except perhaps “I waited for the Lord”) but the Mass is prodigiously great. Haydn is profound & inexhaustible, but the most attractive feature of his church music is, to me at least, what seems a simple childlike feeling underlying its finest art. The Gratias, Sanctus, Benedictus, Gloria, & Dona of this Mass, the Kyrie of No. 1, it’s Benedictus, that of No. 4, the Gratias of No. 6, etc., seems to embody the feeling of worshippers such as poor Margaret was reminded. She had been in her days of innocence over her prayer book.

“Halb Kinderspiele, Halb Gott in Herzen”—or as Dr. Auster translates it—if I remember aright—“Half with the children out at play, & half with God in heaven,” which is a very good paraphrase. Mozart addresses himself rather to a congregation of refined cultured gentlemen & ladies. Beethoven in his Mass in C, at least (and I don’t believe anybody knows anything about his second Mass) writes like one who is “Looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.”

Such sentiment is natural enough in Beethoven after years of poverty, neglect, & depression. But after all I know his Mass in C, mainly by spelling out its piano score, and may have misconceived it. About dear old Haydn though, I am not mistaken. With all his learning & his command of musical language, he was himself a joyous healthy-minded child, writing for children like himself, when he wrote the Gloria—Gratias & Benedictus of his 16^th Mass. He may have been, chronologically, seventy years old, but he was still at that age, & for that purpose, little Joseph Haydn, making up pious little melodies for his little friends & playmates, in spite of all his artistic experience & contrapuntal erudition wherewith he has given lasting value to these lovely phrases.”