Church Music Association Rehearsal

“First C. M. A. rehearsal for 2^nd concert at Trinity Chapel Schoolhouse tonight with Ellie. Mrs. Gulager present—nice Mrs. Burton Harrison, etc. Mrs. Gulager accepts our invitation, though she has no showy work to do. Beethoven’s Mass to end of the Hosanna & ‘Come gentle spring’ and ‘Be propitious’ from The Seasons. Attendance large. Applications for admission to the chorus declined. This rehearsal was chaotic & cacophonous beyond all precedent—a mere succession of blunders, discords & collapses. It alarmed me, for we have but scant time to prepare for the 2^nd concert, and one or two stormy nights, keeping people from rehearsal, might prove ruinous. But I have faith in Pech’s star. It was delightful to hear these two lovely Haydn choruses once more, though so vilely rendered. They carried me back twenty-five years, to oratorio evenings at the ancient Broadway Tabernacle, when I used to worship every note of ‘Spring’ as given us by the defunct Sacred Music Society. I dare say it sang even worse than our chorus did tonight, but I saw no defects in its work. That first chorus has always seemed to me a star of the first magnitude, & with a lustre of its own that is absolutely unique. Of course I do not mean that it is the greatest of extant compositions, but merely that it stands alone as the finest thing extant after its own kind. Mrs. Gulager & Mrs. Harrison, who had never heard a note of ‘The Seasons,’ were delighted with it on their first—and very slight—acquaintance.”