Church Music Association Rehearsal

“C. M. A. rehearsal (Trinity Chapel) just concluded. Beethoven’s Mass—Qui tollis to end of Et incarnatus, & the Lorelei music all through. I am reverently trying inwardly to digest the Mass, but it is as refractory as a lunch of Welsh rabbit with pickles. But when more accurately rendered, with all the solo parts (we have thus far had but two of them), & above all, with the orchestra, I hope to appreciate it. At present, the melodic pretty simple opening chorus of the Lorelei (Ave Maria) ‘like a poultice comes, to heal the wounds’ inflicted by the Briarean Beethoven. Even now, however, I dimly perceive the shadows or vague outlines of heroic & noble forms moving amid the confusion of Beethoven’s hyper-harmonic & sublimated chords, and strange bewildering intervals. I see ‘men as trees walking’—glimpses of beauty which I hope will reveal themselves more distinctly.”