DEAR MOTHER,--Thanks for your letter. I had hoped to have received better
news of Charles.
When he left Thursday he did not look well, but I thought it was owing to
the excitement and late hours and the irregular life we have been leading.
He wanted to go to Cambridge, where he thought that he could take better
care of himself. I would have gone with him, but I felt that I could not
leave Strakosch and Worcester in the lurch.
If I don't receive a reassuring telegram from you, I shall start off
without delay.
I was dreadfully nervous and unstrung, as you will see, when I tell you
how I blundered. I do not like singing in oratorio. Getting up and sitting
down all the time, holding and singing from a book, losing my place and
having to find it in a hurry, is not what I like. However, I got on very
well at first, but there is a place in the score where three angels come
forward and sing a trio without accompaniment. Then the soprano (me) steps
in front and sings, without a helping note: "Hail, Hail, O Lord God of
Hosts!" The orchestra and chorus take up the same phrase after me.
I sang boldly enough, "Hail, Hail, O Lord God of Hosts!" but suddenly felt
cold shivers down my back when Zerrahn tapped his baton on his stand,
thereby stopping all further proceedings, and turning to me said, in a low
whisper, "A half-tone lower."
Good gracious, how could I find the right note! First I had to remember
the last tone I had sung, then I had to transpose it in my head, all in an
instant. It was a critical moment.
Suppose I did not hit the right note! The whole orchestra and the two-
hundred-man-strong chorus would come thundering after me--the _orchestra
on the right key_ and _the chorus following in my footsteps_.
I turned cold and hot, and my knees trembled under me. You may imagine
what a relief it was when I heard things going on as if nothing had
happened. _I had struck the right note!_ And I finished the oratorio
without further disaster. I do not think that any one in the audience
remarked anything wrong.
I said to Zerrahn, after: "Could you not have helped me? Could you not
have given me the note?"
"No," he answered. "Impossible! I could not ask the nearest violinist to
play the note, and I could not trust myself to find it. I was as nervous
as you were."
[Mrs. Moulton was called to Cambridge the next day. Mr. Moulton had died
suddenly.]