Church Music Association Rehearsal

“C. M. A. rehearsal yesterday was mainly devoted to the toughest & most fugue-y movements of the Requiem (Louis called them “scale-y”). They were done over & over, ad nauseum: the Kyrie six times in a string. But we had the beautiful “Lachrymosa” & the Benedictus. Both Temple & Louis [Strong’s younger sons] came to me spontaneously to say with emphasis that they thought the Requiem (on the whole) a bore—but ‘that Benedictus the most beautiful thing they ever heard in their lives.’ Though little chaps, they do not say such things lightly, & their appreciation of a quartette so quiet, refined, subtle & delicate in expression, with only a piano accompaniment, shows that they know fine dignified music when they hear it. ‘Every note seems so earnest,’ said Temple at dinner today, ‘It seems so cheerful & sorrowful at the same time,’ & ‘you feel as if you were in some great cathedral, at some great man’s funeral, you know.’ Mrs. Gulager continues to gain kudos in her Lurline music.”