Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/46

32, 4th April, 1831. first of the offices was on Palm Sunday. The crush was so great that I could not make my way into the interior to my accustomed seat on the so-called bench of the prelates, but had to remain standing among the guard of honour. I could see the ceremony well enough, but could not follow the music completely, for they pronounced the words indistinctly, and I had no book. So, this first day, all the different antiphones, the chanting of the gospels and psalms, and the reading in recitative, all which exist here in their primitive form, gave me the strangest, most confusing impression; I had no definite idea by what rule the various cadences were adjusted. My efforts to get a grasp of these rules were, however, gradually successful, and at the last I could have taken a part in the singing. They helped me also to escape the ennui which everybody complains of during the endless psalms which come before the Miserere; I could catch the differences in the monotony, and by writing down any cadence I was sure of, at last, as I deserved, secured eight psalm chants, noted down the antiphones and so forth, and thus