Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/99

 the Düsseldorf school. As is usual, the boy in me was first fascinated by the subject of the picture, until repeated scrutiny gradually stirred my critical faculty and developed my taste as to composition and execution.

Nor were opportunities for musical delight wanting. On Sunday morning the so-called “Musical Mass” was celebrated in the cathedral, at which frequently the archbishop officiated and the church displayed its splendor. The principal charm of the service was the music, which attracted not alone the devout, but also the art-loving public. A full orchestra and a choir of selected voices rendered a Mass by some celebrated composer. These performances were sometimes of singularly marvelous effect. I have already mentioned that the cathedral at that period resembled a ruin as to its exterior. This was also true in great measure of the inside. Upon passing through the time-worn portals into the middle nave one was confronted at a distance, just beyond the transept, by a bare, gray wall shutting off the choir from the rest of the cathedral; this was the back of the great organ, placed temporarily in this position because the choir was the only really completed portion of the edifice. The organ therefore stood, so to speak, with its back to the larger part of the church. On the platform in front of the organ, facing the choir, were placed the orchestra and the singers. Thus the people standing in that part of the church between the back of the organ and the portals heard the music not directly, but as an echo wonderfully broken. The forest of pillars and the arches high as heaven, carried it back as from a far distance, aye, as from another world. It was a mysterious waving and weaving and surging and rolling of sound; the violins and 'cellos, and flutes and oboes, like the whispering and sighing of the spring winds in the treetops; the trumpets and trombones and the mighty chorus now and then like the