Church Music Association Rehearsal

"C. M. A. rehearsal tonight at Trinity Chapel Schoolhouse. Was more than usually satisfactory. Chorus took up the Requiem for the first time, but read it (everyone said) with wonderful precision. Quartette (viz.: Mrs. Ackermann, Miss Antonia Henne, Leggatt & Remmertz) was admirable. After the lovely Benedictus there was a spontaneous outbreak of applause from the chorus. Then bits of Lurline were attacked. (Mrs. Gulager, soprano) certainly came out with great brilliance & effect. They will be liked. The public of New York will think the Requiem heavy, but its great name, & our very nice soli, will carry it through, & the public will praise it. I don’t believe I have heard it (except in New York at Roman Catholic funerals) since the spring of /3g when it was given at a concert at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, in Barclay St.—with orchestra. I then thought it obscure. Since that distant time my discrimination of good music has been improved by experience. But all I can say of the Requiem tonight is vague. I feel that I have been in contact with a work of the first order, & I am impatient to hear it again. But it has, as a whole, made no definite impression on me yet. I recognize the construction or contrapuntal talent displayed in the Kyrie & the final fugue. I feel the gigantic power of the 'Dies irae' in 'quantus tremor'—& I began to appreciate the refined & perfect art embodied in the Recordare & the Benedictus. I am not quite sure but that I see the Tuba mirum—just a little. The rest I do not yet grasp. I wish the short Requiem, with its lovely clear melodies (e. g. the Te decet hymnus & Benedictus) could have been stirred up in this big scientific Requiem, so as to flavor it a little. That ‘Te decet hymnus’ has always seemed to me among the most loveable & pathetic little melodies ever written.”