Bruckner & Stravinsky: Music for Chorus and Winds

While best known for large-scale works, both Bruckner and Stravinsky wrote masterful intimate Mass settings for chorus and small wind orchestra. This music was intended not for the stage but for the altar, and will be heard to good advantage at the Church of St. Paul. Soloists include soprano Junko Watanabe, mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo, and tenor Thomas Gregg.

Anton Bruckner's Mass in E minor for chorus and wind instruments is considered his first great work, premiering in 1866 when he was 42 years old. It is a beautiful combination of intricate Italian Renaissance polyphony and the dark sonorities and lush harmonies of the Romantic period. Often overlooked because of their brevity, Bruckner's Graduals and Motets are among the most beautiful short choral works in existence, simple but profoundly expressive.

Igor Stravinsky's Mass of 1948 is written for chorus and ten wind instruments, which, in Stravinsky's words, “tune” the chorus. Unmistakably Stravinsky in its incisive harmonies and rhythms, the Mass evokes pre-classical music with Gregorian modes and early polyphony, achieving an austere beauty that Stravinsky hoped would “appeal directly to the spirit.” Stravinsky's sacred music expresses a profound spiritual impulse dating to 1926, when at age 44 he rejoined the Russian Orthodox Church, an experience he called “the most real in my life.”

Chorus pro Musica gave the first New England performance of the complete Stravinsky Mass on June 20, 1950, at the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Boston. It must have been one of the first performances in the world, since the world premiere had been less than two years before. It was also one of the chorus's first seasons (CpM was founded in 1949). Here is what CpM founder Bud Patterson wrote to the chorus on May 10, 1950:

“The Strawinsky Mass is regarded by musicians as a very significant work – not yet understood thoroughly, but to be studied and heard as a great contribution to today's music – and as such we take on a serious responsibility in performing it. That we can handle it, I have no doubt.

“It is easier than the Dupré [Marcel Dupré's De Profundis]; in the sense of plain singing and reading (witness the smart job you did on it last Thursday), But to do it properly, and to sell it to an audience, there are new ideas we must absorb, techniques to improve, and musical disciplines we must accept. This is music to which we must grow up, in our ears and voices, and on which we can grow, in reputation. I suggest that you hold your fire in judging this piece until you know pretty well what quality of stuff you are dealing with.”

“Simple” Spirituality

The works on this program generally reflect a reaction against secular-influenced romantic music such as that of Mozart and Beethoven. Bruckner's E-minor Mass (by far the smallest-scale of his Masses) and his motets were influenced by the Cecilian movement. Stravinsky said his decision to write a Mass was prompted by his discovery of some Mozart Masses, with their “rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin.” In his own, “real” Mass, Stravinsky's avowed goal was to “appeal directly to the spirit.”

Anton Bruckner in 1860

• Kyrie of the Bruckner Mass in E minor, from the MP3 recording of the Chorus pro Musica performance (March 14, 1980, Donald Palumbo conducting, at Old South Church, Boston).
• Program notes for the March 14, 1980 concert, written by David Frieze.
• A British educational outline analysis of Bruckner's E-minor Mass, particularly the influences of the Cecilians and the Mass's relatonships to music of Palestrina.
• A good brief biography of Bruckner and descripton of motets can be found in the description of a St. Bride's Fleet Street recording of Bruckner Motets.
• Notes on Bruckner Motets by James C.S. Liu, M.D., a Boston-based physician and amateur musician.
• Brief description of the Bruckner motets to be performed on April 7 (all written for liturgical use):
  • Os Justi is a setting of Psalm 37 that is used as an Introit for a Mass said on the feast day of a Confessor who was not a Bishop. Bruckner's setting was completed in 1879 and dedicated to Ignaz Traumihler, then music director at St. Florian, the abbey where Bruckner spent much of his early life. Traumihler subscribed to the Cecilian movement, which sought to bring the spare, a cappella choral style of Palestrina back to 19th-century Austria.
  • Locus Iste is a Gradual that is used in Mass services for the dedication of a church. This setting was written to celebrate the dedication of the votive chapel of the cathedral at Linz in 1869.
  • Christus factus est, written in 1844, is a setting of the verse sung at Lauds (morning prayer) on the final three days of Holy Week, starting with Maundy Thursday. The liturgy at this time is reduced to its simplest form.
  • Ave Maria is a setting of the offertory hymn at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was written in 1861 and first performed at the cathedral in Linz as an antiphon for a celebration of a Feast of the Blessed Virgin. The seven-part a cappella setting reflects the rigorous lessons in counterpoint (just concluded) that Bruckner had received from Simon Sechter.
• Classical Net description of Anton Bruckner
• A “Tribute to Anton Bruckner” web site constructed several years ago, with a good biography and overview of Bruckner's music.

Igor Stravinsky in 1930

• Gloria of the Stravinsky Mass of 1948, from the MP3 recording of the Chorus pro Musica performance (March 14, 1980, Donald Palumbo conducting, at Old South Church, Boston). Soloists (from the chorus): Sharon Kelly, soprano; Virginia Sheppard, alto; Alexander Clement, tenor; Ralph Bassett, tenor; Santo Cataudella, bass.
• Program notes for the March 14, 1980 concert, written by David Frieze.
• Notes on Igor Stravinsky's Religious Music (including Pater Noster, Credo and Mass) from a North London Chorus performance of the Symphony of Psalms. The point: Stravinsky's relatively small number of specifically religious compositions had a central role in his work. Music, he asserted, has “the sole purpose of establishing an order in things,” part of which is as “a form of communion with our fellow man — and with the Supreme Being.”
• Critical Comment on Stravinsky's Mass of 1948, from Barry Creasy of the Collegium Musicum of London, and a brief performance review in the Times of London by Barry Millington
• A brief, illustrated Stravinsky biography by Thomas Neenan, Lecturer in Music History and Music Theory at Caltech. Neenan's section on Stravinsky's Mass includes background, description, a brief listening guide, and a line-by-line translation.
• Classical Net biography of Stravinsky

Site maintained by Peter Pulsifer, concert promotions director for Chorus pro Musica in Boston, MA, USA.

Last update March 28, 2006. (Archived June 26, 2006.)