The Hymn of Praise," was given.
A sketch of this has already appeared in the "Standard Oratorios."

Lauda Sion.

The "Lauda Sion," or sequence sung at High Mass on the Feast of Corpus
Christi, was chosen by Mendelssohn as the subject of one of his most
beautiful cantatas, for four solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. The
majestic rhythm of Saint Thomas Aquinas's verses loses none of its
stateliness in this musical setting. The work was composed for the
celebration of this Festival by the Church of St. Martin at Liege, and
was first performed there June 11, 1846. Chorley, the English critic who
accompanied Mendelssohn on that occasion, has left us in his "Modern
German Music" an interesting sketch of its first production. He says:--

"The early summer of 1846 was a great year for the Rhine Land and its
adjacent district; since there the Lower Rhenish Festival at
Aix-la-Chapelle was conducted by Mendelssohn, and starred by Mlle.
Jenny Lind; and within a fortnight afterwards was celebrated at Liege
the 'Fete Dieu,' for which his 'Lauda Sion' was written....

"It was a pity that those who had commissioned such a composer to write
such a work had so entirely miscalculated their means of presenting it
even respectably. The picturesque old Church of St. Martin is one of
those buildings which swallow up all sound, owing to the curve of the
vaults and the bulk of the piers; the orchestra was little more
powerful, when heard from below, than the distant scraping of a
Christmas serenade far down the street; the chorus was toneless, and
out of tune; and only one solo singer, the soprano, was even tolerable.
On arriving at Liege with the purpose of conducting his work,
Mendelssohn gave up the matter in despair. 'No! it is not good, it
cannot go well, it will make a bad noise,' was his greeting to us....

"We drove with him that afternoon up to St. Martin's Church, to hear,
as he merrily styled it, 'the execution of his music.' The sight of the
steep, narrow, winding street, decked out with fir-trees and banners
and the escutcheons of the different towns of Belgium, pleased him, for
he was as keen a lover of a show as a child, and had a true artist's
quick sense of the picturesque....

"Not envy's self could have helped being in pain for its composer, so
slack and tuneless and ineffective was the execution of this clear and
beautiful work, by a scr