The Mass for Mixed Chorus and Wind Instruments, one of Igor Stravinsky's (1882–1971) most beautiful compositions, was written in 1948 and first performed in Milan on October 27, 1948, under the direction of Ernest Ansermet. Stravinsky himself conducted the American premiere the following year in New York City; its first performance in Boston was given in 1950 by the Chorus pro Musica under Alfred Nash Patterson.
In a letter to the English author Evelyn Waugh, Stravinsky stressed the liturgical aspects of his setting of the Mass: “Liturgical music has practically disappeared, except, of course, the third-rate academic kind. The tradition has been lost. …The Credo is a kind of contact with God.”
Elsewhere, the composer has said that by restricting his orchestral forces to the rather cool, unemotional timbres of a double woodwind quintet (two oboes, English horn, two bassoons, two trumpets and three trombones), he wished to bypass the heart and go directly to the listener's soul. Any appeal to the heart is made by the voices: the beautiful duet for two trebles in the Gloria, for instance, with bouncy, impersonal interruptions from the chorus; the extraordinary rhythmic drive of the choral “Hosanna” in the Sanctus movement; and the restrained, moving harmonies of the Agnus Dei.
Anton Bruckner, Mass in E minor
Worlds apart from the Stravinsky emotionally is Anton Bruckner's (1824–1896) second setting of the liturgical text, his Mass in E minor. Stravinsky's piece is very intimate; Bruckner's, using only three more instruments, is on an altogether more massive scale. Its use of a wind band makes it unique among the composer's works, indeed, among 19th-century liturgical works in general.
The Mass in E minor was composed in November 1866 at Linz, where Bruckner was the Cathedral organist, and was first performed there on September 25, 1869. The composer revised it a few times thereafter; the final revision was made in 1882 (tonight's performance uses Bruckner's final version), and the Mass was published in 1896, the year of the composer's death.
Bruckner's wind orchestra is the largest of the three on tonight's program: two obes, two clarinets, four horns, two trumpets, and three trombones. Even so, it is seldom heard by itself for very long, and much of the Mass is entirely, or at least fundamentally, a cappella.
Bruckner's choral writing is among the most glorious and powerful in all Romantic music: the polyphony for eight-part chorus in the Kyrie and the Sanctus is matched by few of his contemporaries. Some of the choral writing also ranks among the most difficult in all music: there are frequent, unusual chord changes to tune, sopranos find themselves above the staff for long stretches at a time, and the baritones must execute some tremendous leaps in the “Miserere” portion of the Agnus Dei. Nonetheless, Bruckner's harmonic language is enormously expressive throughout, and much of the music is obviously inspired by the music of Wagner, whose Tristan und Isolde Bruckner had just heard.
—David Frieze