92. To Camille Saint-Saens
Very honored Friend,
At last your compositions have come, and I spent all yesterday in their amiable society.
Let us speak first of the Mass: this is a capital, grand, beautiful, admirable work—so good that, among contemporary works of the same kind, I know perhaps of none so striking by the elevation of the sentiment, the religious character, the sustained, adequate, vigorous style and consummate mastery. It is like a magnificent Gothic Cathedral in which Bach would conduct his orchestra!
After having read your score three times I am so thoroughly imbued with it that I venture to risk a few remarks.
In the Gloria one should, I think, preserve the literal text entire: "Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam."— Consequently add four or five bars.
At the beginning of the Sanctus it would be better to continue the voices, and to complete by them the sense of the orchestra; similarly it would be advantageous to interlace, by means of an alto solo, the text of the Benedictus (which you have omitted) to the Organ melody, pages 77 and 78 after the Hosanna, as well as to add the chorus to the final phrase of the "Dona nobis pacem," pages 88 and 89.
You will find all these small matters carefully noted down on your score, which I will venture to return to you, begging you to let me have it back again soon, for I must possess this extraordinary work, which has its place between Bach and Beethoven.
Bear with one more liturgical question, and, in addition, a proposition boldly practical in the Kyrie, the spire of your Cathedral. The inspiration and structure of it are certainly admirable…"omnia excelsa tua et fluctus tui super me transierunt." Nevertheless, during these 300 bars, about, of a slow and almost continuous movement, do you not lose sight of the celebrant, who is obliged to remain standing motionless at the altar? Do you not expose him to commit the sin of impatience directly after he has said the confiteor?…Will not the composer be reproached with having given way to his genius rather than to the requirements of the worship?
In order to obviate these unpleasant conjunctures it would be necessary for you to resign yourself to an enormous sacrifice as an artist, namely, to cut out 18 pages! (for church performance only, for these 18 pages should be preserved in the edition to your greater honor as a musician, and it would suffice to indicate the "cut" ad libitum, as I have done in several places in the score of the Gran Mass).